Again, I don't know if this is true, but it wouldn't be at all surprising.
Because even after the devastation inflicted at the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, there will even be Americans saying we should restrain
ourselves from angering the barbarians - just what they've been saying for the
last 30 years.
America followed their advice, and look where it got us.
Based on experience, some in the last few days, I think such confused advice
partly springs from disinformation inflicted by well-meaning, pacifist religious
leaders, many of whom insist on blindly believing - and making others believe -
that the Bible, or at least Jesus, prescribes unconditional non-violence. That
is untrue. As Jesus makes clear, for instance, at the Last Supper:
"...he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one."
Luke 22:36
Then there's the problem of "Thou shalt not kill", which many
scholars say is a mistranslation of "Thou shalt not murder." Others
say it doesn't cover all circumstances, or the act is excused by various
mitigating factors. Regardless, common sense and numerous passages argue that
it's not the panacea the pacifists wish it was.
I'm no Bible scholar, but I can read and I had some religious
upbringing. Take "turn the other cheek" for example. Many seemingly
inconsistent acts and advice by Jesus and others clearly argue that it's not a
prescription to bare your neck for any thief, rapist, thug, terrorist or
government that wants to kill you. On the other hand, hey, if someone slaps or
insults you, why not try turning your cheek instead of shooting him?
In any case, if the apocalyptic events of September 11th prove anything, they
prove that terrorists sooner or later will use every weapon they've got on us
anyway. So the only thing gained by not pulling up terrorism by the roots now is
more terrorists and terrorist governments that are better trained, organized,
and financed; and more heavily armed than before.
And yet we continue to hear the mousy voices of myopia, stupidity, and
appeasement from folks incapable of understanding the wisdom of Founders like
Benjamin Franklin, who said,
"They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
We hear calls to hunker down and go on the defensive, to disarm our own
citizens and destroy what's left of our Bill of Rights rather than change the
paradigm, go on the offensive, and commit to a relentless war to eradicate
terrorism by the roots.
Not a corrupt drug "war" no one wants to win. Nor a Vietnam
"war" with Americans as expendable chess pieces - dying with their
hands tied behind their backs while feckless politicians prohibit bombing the
enemy capital or mining its harbors. Nor a Lebanon "war" where Marines
confront evil with unloaded M16s. Nor a Gulf "war" where in order to
maintain international sportsmanship our stern yet fair-minded leaders stop at
the border of a mass-murderer, call King's X on his behalf, doom hundreds of
thousands of insurgents by reneging on arming them, then punish him with time
out after breaking his best toys & toy soldiers.
No, this should be a REAL WAR, declared by Congress as required by the
Constitution.
The United States has never lost such a war.
The civilized world should've done it decades ago after the Palestinians blew
up a SwissAir jetliner in mid air. After the Munich Massacre. After Navy Diver
Robert Stethem was executed and dumped on the tarmac in Lebanon. After CIA
Station Chief William Buckley was tortured to death on tape. After Lockerbie,
and countless other brutal mass murders of innocents.
But it's time to do more than settle the score. It's time to end the game.
It's time to prepare for a relentless, fully-committed, international bug
hunt. Every last terrorist vermin must be relentlessly exterminated along with
every last government, business, and private group that ever sponsored
terrorism. Not just the ones directly and indirectly responsible for this
incident, but for every incident in the last 30 years.
This has been a war all along, but a war only one side is committed to
winning or even recognizing, let alone fighting. Until the civilized world
decides to make the permanent eradication of terrorism a top priority, it'll
continue to grow. If we don't stop it now, next time it'll be a biological or
chemical weapon, or worse. Indeed, because we didn't take comprehensive action
long ago, the job will be far riskier. It's thought by some that Osama Bin Laden
now has perhaps 20 portable nuclear weapons.
(http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22611,
Trail of Terror; Bin Laden said to have nukes; Extent of fugitive leader's
arsenal 'no longer a doubt'; By Jon Dougherty, WorldNetDaily.com).
Who knows if any - or how many - have been smuggled in? Should we worry about
this and act accordingly? Yes. Should it deter a war to wipe terrorism off the
planet? No.
Make no mistake: The recent attacks prove that terrorists will eventually use
such weapons of mass destruction anyway. Failing to exterminate them now will
only strengthen them in numerous ways, as it already has. The longer we wait,
the worse it gets.
This is our reward for showing restraint in Iraq and elsewhere. Seems like a
natural law that the "free world" always tolerates threats and
aggression until the risk and cost of facing the problem is enormous, even while
the cost of not facing it is always eventually far greater. Probably natural to
want to think we can always push "eventually" off a few more years.
It's sad that like most peoples, Americans apparently can only learn such a
commonsense truth at so high a human cost. Yet once again, the cost has been
paid. Proportional response and gradual escalation won't work with terrorists,
and if what happened yesterday doesn't teach that lesson, then I'm afraid those
people died in vain and countless more will follow. More appeasement,
half-hearted responses, "measured" retaliatory strikes, limited
tit-for-tat, and other half-way measures that do not destroy the enemy in the
face of such a successful attack, will embolden him.
It's more critical than ever to take the gloves off, commit the resources for
however long it takes, unleash the dogs of war, and get it over with once and
for all.
While we're at it, those bloodthirsty Palestinians should pay a price for the
parties they've been throwing the last few days, dancing in the streets to
celebrate the mass murder of innocent Americans in our own land. We've
repeatedly tied Israel's hands behind her back and now we're getting a taste of
what we helped put her through. It's time to untie those hands and let the
Israelis deal with their problem. No more shoving land for "peace"
deals down their throats. And come Hillary Clinton's next election, I can only
pray that all those hard hit, wised-up New Yorkers will remember all the lick
jobs she gave Yassir Arafat and send that corrupt, trailer trash, limousine
liberal cracker back to Arkansas where she belongs.
Finally, Sky Marshals are not the answer now, any more than they were 20
years ago. Even if we can have armed guards on tens of thousands of flights,
what about the countless other unforeseeable locations where terrorists and
other criminals can strike at any time?
It would require an army of new police, posing the threat of an irreversible
slide into a real police state. Such senseless "defensive" strategies
draw resources and focus away from the offensive strategy we should undertake,
and their perceived necessity exists only because the government no longer
respects the Bill of Rights or trusts the American people with even the most
modest means of mutual defense.
We trust our pilots not to kill thousands of people by flying airplanes into
buildings. Why can't we trust them with guns to save those same lives by killing
a few terrorists armed with office equipment?
If we can't even trust our pilots with guns, how can we trust an army of new
police and sky marshals who, as you read this right now, are currently ordinary
citizens themselves, just like us? What elitist logic holds them superior to
decent civilians who undergo background checks and firearms training?
The hijackers used box cutters for Heaven's sake, to "herd" the
defenseless passengers, as news reports put it. But in one case they were
apparently overpowered by a few unarmed passengers, who in my estimation deserve
Congressional Medals of Honor. A few armed citizens or off-duty cops on each of
those planes, let alone armed pilots, would've saved thousands of lives.
It's time as a nation to quit being silly about guns in the hands of decent,
law-abiding, properly trained citizens. At the least it's time to allow pilots,
off-duty cops, and concealed weapon permit holders to carry their firearms on
board commercial airplanes. The same effect that lowers violent crime and
virtually eliminates public shootings in concealed carry states can vaporize the
risk of terrorism on airplanes. (Contrary to unfounded "wild west"
fears engendered by Hollywood hype, abuse of the right to carry is an almost
non-existent phenomena, as it was in the real west. That's because where the
right is respected, its abuse is deterred by the right itself. And in the
extremely rare cases where it isn't, the damage is also minimized by the right
itself, i.e., by other armed Americans.)
Think back to an earlier, in many ways better time, when good American
citizens would never have tolerated a government that saw us as a threat. In
World War II, the idea of armed civilian militiamen was seen as a welcome
addition to our strength, helping deter and prevent attacks and crime here at
home. By contrast, gun control, appeasement, and wishful thinking had left
Britain largely defenseless. With no militia in the face of a feared German
invasion, Britain had to beg American citizens to loan spare firearms to British
subjects for defense of the homeland.
"Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel: for
the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears...So it came
to pass in the day of battle, that here was neither sword nor spear found in
the hand of any of the people that were with Saul and Jonathan..." I
Samuel 13:19-22
Having learned nothing, after the war, the British confiscated and destroyed
the guns. Switzerland, on the other hand, was never invaded even though it was
smack in the middle of the conflict. Still Europe's most peaceful country, it's
no coincidence the Swiss militia system required virtually every adult male to
keep a machine gun at home, and still does. Victory would've been Pyrrhic.
Those were the days when any American citizen could buy machine guns by mail
order. Yet the America of 1940 was a safer place to live by far than the America
of the last 33 years, during which thousands of gun control laws have rendered
many Americans into pathetic nine-one-one herd animals, defenseless against
rapists, murderers, and now terrorists.
How much of what's left of our Bill of Rights, our privacy, and our right to
defense of self, family, and community is going to be gutted in the name of
"security" by patty-cake politicos like Diane Feinstein who helped
cause these problems to begin with by giving us open borders, victim
disarmament, and international meddling in every foreign dispute? How much of
the coming "war" will be directed against our own liberty here at home
rather than a real war against terrorism?
Assuming we have a real war on terrorism, once finished, we should heed more
closely the advice of George Washington, and stop trying to be the world's
policeman when we can't or won't even defend our own borders.
Russ Howard (former NRA-BoD, ED-CAC)
"If you want powder, you'll have to take our balls with it."
-Stephen Decatur; on his ship's deck during discussion of terms after sinking
much of the Barbary Pirate fleet; spoken to a pirate leader who asked for two
bags of gunpowder as face-saving tribute).
