Two Figures In A Post-9/11 World
By A.M. Siriano (09/29/04)
I don’t know why I wasn’t called in by the 9/11 Commission, for I could have told them straight up why we were attacked. I need only have quoted my father, who was always ready to deliver a rant, especially during the Seventies when it was first becoming obvious that Islamic terrorists were usurping Communist commissars as the new evil to be reckoned with.
My father was a high school teacher and a factory worker, but it didn’t take months of inquiry for him to figure out that we had better “get tough with these kooks” before they got too tough with us. Twisting Teddy Roosevelt’s words, he was fond of saying that it was time to “walk softly and carry a big bomb.”
Had anyone been listening to the common man, nearly 3000 lives might have been spared on September 11. But alas, it was a post-Vietnam era world, and no one in high places wanted to wield a sword to fix global issues. We had brought back our warriors, spitting on them as they walked through the gates. We were done with fighting, we assured ourselves. That vicious war, which was every bit as righteous as Korea, but one fought inefficiently thanks to meddlesome politicians and unbridled activism at home, rendered America weak with the disease of fear and despair. We had forgotten the great, universal words of F.D.R., delivered upon his first inauguration:
“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
We are still infected by the disease, and would be undone by it were it not for the actions of great men of resolve currently leading our country, and by the tough men and women in the military willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the many. The polls—and soon the election—make for an inadequate gauge of the strength of the disease, but presently, we are still dangerously close to being overcome.
When the Twin Towers fell, it was not only horrific, it was also symbolic—in one of two ways, depending on what the future holds for us:
If we win the War on Terror—and we must not be fooled into thinking this is a given—the falling towers will symbolize the beginning of the end of our former impaired condition. The giant, dealt a significant blow to the shins, will have been humbled, but not defeated. It will have risen to find its focus, its resolve, and will stand tall again for what it believes in.
If we return to the days of effete vacillation, the crushed towers will symbolize the beginning of the end of the giant itself. It will have fallen and lain there, awaiting its demise.
Right now we are in the process of actualizing the first symbol; but with almost half the country in a “cut and run” frame of mind, the latter figure is not inconceivable.
There is no point trying to pin blame on certain men and women, as happened frequently during the 9/11 Commission’s sessions. Before the Manhattan Massacre, all were acting within the context of a body wracked by the disease. The point now is, do we want to go back to that condition?
John Kerry, with his history of anti-war activism and do-nothing service in the Senate, is the perfect figure of the internal, cowardly disease, which hopes to use him to seize control again of the body. He has the backing of the party of appeasement, whose spores continue to contaminate America and the rest of the world. In that path lies the defeated giant, its open sore still visible where the towers once stood. A vote for John Kerry is a clear vote for the disease.
George W. Bush is the figurehead of the giant rising. His words to Vice President Cheney, shortly after hearing of the attack on the Pentagon, gives us a fair indication that Providence placed the right man for the job in the White House: “We’re at war … somebody’s going to pay.”
On that same day President Bush promised to the nation that this blow signaled no permanent defeat. America would no longer be just talking. “These acts shattered steel,” he said, “but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.” It was a promise he kept and continues to keep, and it is the noble mindset—unattainable by the party of appeasement— that is required to crush the terrorists and secure liberty for the future.
It is no longer a post-Vietnam era world. It is a post-9/11 world. And there is no more room for those who would allow the disease to spread.
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