Patriot Day Thoughts

It is September 11th, 2010. Here in Chicago, it's a very rainy, foggy, messy day.

9 years ago: we awoke to images on our televisions that we only expected to find in epic catastrophe movies like Volcano, or maybe from some far off place called Iran - or was it Iraq ("Isn't that the same place?", someone might comment). My younger siblings hardly remember it, since they were so young, and yet I wonder if they attach any more importance to it that do a lot of people my age, or even older. The graphic images certainly won't be forgotten fully, but are suppressed almost out of existence. "We will never forget" stickers used to be common place. Now, they are relegated to the rusting bumpers and dirty windows of the "red-neck" population - and those crazy, fundamentalist right-wing wackos called who drink to much tea.

I checked for any events going on here in the city as a remembrance of 9/11.  A few suburbs had moments of silence and such at fire stations.  There may well be something happening in the city today, but it certainly wasn't readily found via the internet.

Today:  Should we spend the day thinking about it, holding candle light vigils, rewatching the footage?  Honestly, we probably shouldn't.  But, should we expunge it all-together?  I think not.

Of course, I didn't do anything about it either, but next year is the 10th anniversary, and I intend to do something.  We need to pray for our country.  Pray for those who are leading it, and those who are trying to bring it to it's knees.  Pray for Muslim countries throughout the world that ultimately serve as breeding grounds for the organizations and ideologies that undergirded the attack on our soil.  If we do not pass the memory and its implications on to those who were too young to understand the geo-political, religious, and national importance, in another 10 years, if not much sooner, we will be right back where we were on September 10th, 2001.

December 7th, 1941 and the "Never Forget" Slogan

Pop Quiz: What happened this day 1941?

Answer: The day all Americans began waiting for VJ day, i.e., the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. We were thrown into a war to the west of us, along with the war we were already fighting to the east in Europe.

67 years ago, Americans didn't want yet another war, but they saw how clearly we didn't have a choice. In the Japanese we found an enemy more imminent even that Hitler at the time. Hitler was attacking our allies, while Japan had attacked American soil. We had to fight, even with all the rationing that was already happening, all the hardship, all the death. We entered yet another theatre of war where thousands of our sons, brothers and fathers died in a single battle.

We enjoy the freedom that they died for. We appreciate the families all over America who skimped, saved, and went without in order to allow our troops to have what they needed in order to gain freedom for Europe, and for us... the same freedom we now enjoy. Thanks, to all WWII Veterans, and all Veterans throughout our country's history.

But, what about today? Birdie announced to me what day it was as soon as I got up. Then, I checked email real quick, and found the Rasmussen Reports Daily Update waiting for me. I skimmed their headlines, and found something most disconcerting. "Confidence in War on Terror Declines" read the headline, and my stomach realized I hadn't eaten yet. Read the stats, or just know that only 47% of those polled believe that the U.S. and its allies are winning the War on Terror.

This is blatantly false, for one thing. We continue to turn over more and more sections of Iraq to the Iraqi military forces. Just this single statement implies so many other significant facts. In order to turn it over, we had to:

- Have control over those area's in the first place

- Have quelled things enough in that area that we and the Iraqi forces were comfortable having a less experienced force control them

- Train the Iraqi forces to the point that they could take over

- Build an infrastructure for them to operate in

The list continues. Can you imagine how much it must take to first have an Iraqi military to put in place, and then be able to put them there?

All that, along with the myriad of other things that the Main-Stream Media refuses to tell us, doesn't spell W-I-N-N-I-N-G? We haven't had another terrorist attack on our soil since the war began, that doesn't spell W-I-N-N-I-N-G?

This of course, brings us to the connection I want to make between December 7th, 1941, and December 7th, 2008. In 1941, America was outraged and reeling from having suffered an attack on our own soil. If you can remember, in 2001 we were also reeling from an attack on our soil. Four of them. There might have been more planned.

No American wants war, but we knew, and more importantly, President Bush knew, that if we were to keep our country from suffering another similar attack, we had to take the fight to the terrorists. We did. Congress supported it. President Bush ordered it. We did go to war. Now, because the political winds are so apt to change, it is proclaimed political suicide if a Democrat or Moderate should DARE to support the War on Terror that our brave military men and woman have sacrificed s0 much for. Republicans are war-mongers because we want to keep America, and other free countries, from yet another devastating attack like we had on September 11th, 2001.

In 1941, we didn't forget what Japan had done. We fought. We won. That's how wars are supposed to go: they attack, we protect ourselves, and the attackers don't do it again.

In 2001, it seemed America had covered herself in bumper stickers, window clings and flags with pictures of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and that spot in Pennsylvania, proclaiming, "We will NEVER forget".

America: we have forgotten. It is shameful, wrong, and it brings tears for me to think that the American People could so easily forget such an awful time. I must echo they song by Darryl Worley, "Have you forgotten/how it felt that day/to see your homeland under fire/and her people blown away/have you forgotten when those towers fell?" We have, and we now need to remember.

Change You Do Not Believe In

Here is some excellent commentary on Obama's current and future actions. Really good, especially since I've been having withdrawal symptoms from Rush not being on the air for the past two days... Get Well Soon!!

Anyhow, here 'tis:

Brace for the Change You Do Not Believe In
A Commentary By Tony Blankley
Wednesday, December 03, 2008

From The Huffington Post and Daily Kos to National Review and The Washington Times -- and all the mainstream media in between -- commentators are puzzling over who the dickens President-elect Barack Obama really is. On the progressive left, they are beginning to fear he may not be for "redistributive justice." On The Wall Street Journal free market right, they are seeing in his economic team the possibility that he is really as safe for capitalism as a banker. Karl Rove has concluded: "(The) announcement of Mr. Obama's economic team was reassuring. He's generally surrounded himself with intelligent, mainstream advisers."
Those impassioned by the anti-war slogan "no blood for oil" are getting nervous. According to Politico, Jodie Evans -- a CodePink co-founder who, with her husband, helped raise a lot of money for Obama during the primary and general elections -- recalled her interaction with Obama: "It has gotten to the point where he sees me coming and before I am close he just keeps repeating, 'Jodie, I PROMISE, I will end the war, I promise I will end the war.'"
The mainstream media, still warmed by the success of their work electing Obama, comfortably headlined an article on the topic in the National Journal: "The president-elect's appointments reflect his confidence in his own idiosyncratic blueprint and his ability to hold together an eclectic administration."
It is a pity the conversation about what Obama might actually do as president didn't begin in the media until after the election. But not to worry. As Emma Goldman, a 20th-century anarchist and Marxist, is reputed to have said: "In America, elections are the opium of the people." Well, we have had our fix, no matter how uninformed we were during the injection.
There is something degrading about serious, prominent political people of the left or right (to say nothing of the broader public) being forced to play policy hide-and-seek with the president-elect of the United States. And there is something presumptive about a president-elect who is very satisfied to keep the public guessing about what he stands for and what he plans to do. It is redolent of the most cynical of 19th-century European politics. But if he wants us to play the guessing game, I'll play.
I suspect that free market advocates need to be careful not to jump to early conclusions about Obama. The fact that he has selected a senior team of credible, centrist financial men and women does not mean he is committed to free markets. As a cautious, shrewd man, he understands that he must steady the markets and the economy before he can start on his more ambitious, redistributive policies. As he said last week, don't worry about the centrist, experienced Clinton appointees he is selecting; it is his job, as president, to be the change.
Unlike some of his supporters, I take Obama at his word. In my reading of history, men with his level of intentionally displayed self-confidence should be believed when they earlier have asserted grand -- even grandiose -- goals. Whether they are actually that self-confident or tormented by secret self-doubt, it often leads to efforts at grand and "heroic" public policies once in office.
And as long as the president-elect will not declare himself publicly, these foolish psychological games are necessary. So I rather doubt that a man with his self-image is likely to be content to leave the White House eight years from now having been a mere steward of Republican capitalism and military policy. I suspect he wants to play for the history books and do something dramatic with America. I suspect, as he says, he intends to be the change -- and not merely of the "can't we all just get along?" variety. In fact, I suspect he doesn't want to get along with his philosophical opposition; he wants to overwhelm us politically.
On the foreign policy front, likewise, solid appointments may not lead to solid policies. Remember during the campaign when he was on his way to Iraq and he was quite dismissive of the role of the top generals? Once again, he used the phrase "my job, as president," and he said it is to make the policy. He said the generals' job is merely to carry out his orders. That was a very unrealistic view of the relationship between civilian and military leadership -- even by the example of such towering civilian leaders as FDR, Churchill and Lincoln.
Here is my suggestion to those who disagree with what, during and before the campaign, Obama seemed to be saying about economics, diplomacy, culture and foreign policy: Do not take too much comfort from his appointees. Brace for the change you do not believe in.

Tony Blankley is executive vice president of Edelman public relations in Washington.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
See Other Commentaries by Tony Blankley
See Other Political Commentary
Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports.

[and not necessarily those of the.joyful.one, but I'd say a large part of them are :-) ]

Homeland Security Alert

I wanted to quickly explain a new "gadget" of sorts I just added to the sidebar. The "Homeland Security Live Terror Alert" is something I saw on another site and liked. Here's why. People seem to be forgeting at least the implications of 9/11, as well as the fact that we are a nation at war, and it is not an aggressive war... we are on the defense... they attacked us first!!!

So, I hope that the little reminder of the hightened security level we are at will also remind everyone who and why we are fighting, or for some, that we are fighting at all.

In the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday:
God bless the troops, God bless America, and may we follow God always.