A perspective

[Ted Dinwiddie]

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Since the attack, I have seen, heard, and read
thoughts of such surpassing
stupidity that they must be addressed. You've
heard them too. Here they are:
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1) "We're not good, they're not evil, everything is relative."
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Listen carefully: We're good, they're evil, nothing is relative. Say it
with me now and free yourselves. You see, folks, saying

"We're good" doesn't mean "We're perfect." Okay? The only

perfect being is the bearded guy on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

The plain fact is that our country has, with all our mistakes and blunders,

always been and always will be, the greatest beacon of freedom, charity,
opportunity, and affection in history. If you need proof, open all
the borders on Earth and see what happens. In about half a day, the entire
world would be a ghost town, and the United States would look like one
giant line to see "The Producers."
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2) "Violence only leads to more violence."
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This one is so stupid you usually have to be the
president of an Ivy League university to say it. Here's the truth, which you
know in your heads and hearts already: Ineffective, unfocused violence
leads to more violence.
Limp, panicky, half-measures lead to more
violence. However, complete, fully-thought-through, professional, well-executed
violence never leads to more violence because, you see, afterwards, the
other guys are all dead.
That's right, dead. Not "on trial," not "reeducated," not "nurtured back
into the bosom of love." Dead. D-E-Well, you get
the idea.
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3) "The CIA. and the rest of our intelligence
community has failed us."
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For 25 years we have chained our spies like dogs
to a stake in the ground,
and now that the house has been robbed, we yell at
them for not protecting us. Starting in the late seventies, under Carter
appointee Stansfield Turner, the giant brains who get these giant ideas
decided that the best way to gather international intelligence was to
use spy satellites." After all," they reasoned, "you can see a license plate
from 200 miles away."
This is very helpful if you've been attacked by a license
plate.Unfortunately, we were attacked by humans.
Finding humans is not possible with satellites. You have to use other
humans. When we bought all our satellites, we fired all our humans, and
here's the really stupid part.
It takes years, decades to infiltrate new humans
into the worst places of the world. You can't just have a guy who looks
like Gary Busey in a Spring Break '93 sweatshirt plop himself down in a coffee
shop in Kabul and say "Hiya, boys. Gee, I sure would like to meet! that
bin Laden fella. "Well, you can, but all you'd be doing is giving the bad
guys a story they'll be telling for years.
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4) "These people are poor and helpless, and that's
why they're angry at us."
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Uh-huh, and Jeffrey Dahmer's frozen head
collection was just a desperate cry for help. The terrorists and their backers are
richer than Elton John and, ironically, a good deal less annoying. The
poor helpless people, you see, are the villagers they tortured and murdered
to stay in power.
Mohamed Atta, one of the evil scumbags who steered those
planes into the killing grounds (I'm sorry, one of the "alleged
hijackers," according to CNN-they stopped using the word "terrorist," you know), is
the son of a Cairo surgeon. But you knew this, too. In the sixties
and seventies, all the pinheads marching against the war were
upper-middle-class college kids who grabbed any cause they could think of to get out
of their final papers and spend more time drinking. At least, that was my
excuse. It's the same today. Take the Anti-Global-Warming (or is it
World Trade? Oh who knows what the hell they want, demonstrators) They all
charged their black outfits and plane tickets on dad's credit! card before
driving to the airport in their SUV's.
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5) "Any profiling is racial profiling."
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Who's killing us here, the Norwegians? Just days
after the attack, the New York Times had an article saying dozens of
extended members of the gazillionaire bin Laden family living in America
were afraid of reprisals and left in a huff, never to return to studying at
Harvard and using too much Drakkar. I'm crushed. I think we're all
crushed. Please come back. With a cherry on top? Why don't they just change
their names, anyway? It's happened in the past. Think about it. How many
Adolfs do you run into these days? Shortly after that, I remember watching TV
with my jaw on the floor as a government official actually said, "That
little old grandmother from Sioux City could be carrying something."
Okay, how about this: No, she couldn't. It would
never be the grandmother from Sioux City. Is it even possible? What are the
odds? Winning a hundred Powerball lotteries in a row? A thousand? A
million? And now a Secret Service guy has been tossed off a plane and we're
all supposed to cry about it because he's an Arab? Didn't it have the
tiniest bit to do with the fact that he filled out his forms incorrectly ---three
times? And then left an Arab history book on his seat as he strolled off
the plane? And came back? Armed? Let's please all stop singing "We Are the
World" for a minute and think practically. I don't want to be sitting on
the floor in the back of a plane four seconds away from hitting Mt. Rushmore
and turn, grinning, to the guy next to me to say, "Well, at least we
didn't offend them."
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SO HERE'S what I resolve for the new year:
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Never to forget our murdered brothers and sisters.
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Never to let the relativists get away with their
immoral thinking.
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After all, no matter what your daughter's
political science professor says,
we didn't start this.
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Have you seen that bumper sticker that says, "No
More Hiroshimas"? I wish I had one that says, "You First. No More Pearl
Harbors."


Dick Hawley

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ted

"I learn by going where I have to go." - Theodore Roethke

[Ian]

Agreed that these people are essentially psychos. However, doubt that we can sterilize the hills of afghanistan no matter how much we bomb. Violence alone isn't going to solve this problem. Ask Israel if it's helped. And it *is* true that from within their culture, what they did made sense. It's just that their culture is as f**ked up as a culture can get, to train children to think they're going to be swimming in virgins if they blow themselves up on a bus or in a plane.

Understanding that culture and working to change it, bit by bit, is going to do as much or more than missiles. Just like we're more likely to change communist China with the internet and coca cola than with an aircraft carrier.

PS I'd like this planet not to be schat on myself, and I've never seen my dad's credit card, though he did give me a a 1981 toyota station wagon with 173,000 miles and the exhaust system fallen off. The SUV's from daddy were being driven by the college anti--environmental republicans and frat brothers where I come from.

[Ted Dinwiddie]

I agree with you Ian.

I personally have a hard time reconciling the "conservative" agenda with the anti environmental attitude. I have a friend that was involved in Seattle during the WTO (I think it was) protests. He certainly does not fit the image portrayed here.

How does being better at killing the other guy than he is at killing you solve ANYTHING when dying means nothing to him and is unthinkable to you? Obviously, if all he knows is killing and violence then you better show him you know how to kick some serious a$$, but that is not going to solve the problem he has.

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ted

"I learn by going where I have to go." - Theodore Roethke