“Tear Down This Wall”
March 4, 2004
While schizophrenic John Kerry is simultaneously insisting that: (1) the threat of terrorism is exaggerated and (2) “We face a global jihadist...committed to assaulting the United States”, the NYT’s reports that “Day by day, the nation's capital is becoming a fortress, turning a city known for graceful beauty into a virtual armed camp.”
Excuse me for reveling in my childhood memories, but I can remember when Americans didn’t even have to lock their doors. More horrifyingly, my family’s door was always open for anybody who needed a hot cup of coffee on a cold winter day. Somehow, I was never traumatized or abused by living in a normal world.
Ahh, but you protest...things were different back then. Yes...they were. Children were raised (by both parents) with expectations...and actions had consequences.
The terror of my childhood was a spree of deadly hold-ups committed by Joseph Taborsky and Arthur Culombe in which six people were killed. On May 17, 1960, Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky became the last person executed by the state of Connecticut. After my parents reassured me that the switch had been pulled on Taborsky, all became right with the world...at least for awhile. It seems like such a simple lesson...you murder, you die.
And what is the lesson we are teaching the post September 11, 2001 generation? When terrorists kill almost 3000 innocent people in a single day, should the first order of business should be empowering Norman Mineta to grope grandmothers from Minnesota? Or perhaps to make the steps of the nation’s Capitol off-limits to the public while lowering your expectations to “an underground visitor center that will serve as the Capitol's sole public entry point”? Or to construct a new mini-beltway of permanent security walls within the Beltway?
This is not normal nor is it healthy. Any response to 9-11 which mandates a permanency to the normal conduct of American life is defeatist and a terrorist victory.
In the 1940’s, Americans tolerated blackout curtains and rationing because they were temporary and supplemental. They were measures that supplemented taking the war to the enemy. The real battles were on the shores of Normandy and isolated atolls in the South Pacific. By choice, we fought the Japanese at Coral Sea...not San Francisco Bay.
John Kerry sees the real battles as a fight to feather the beds of special interests. Kerry’s idea of Guns and Butter is the addition of 200,000 police and firefighters to America's ranks. This is a permanent response to what should be a temporary crisis. Police and firefighters react to crisis, they don’t preempt it. Is Kerry surrendering America to a Rope-a-Dope doctrine?
Of course, institutionalizing terrorism, like the institutionalization of poverty and substandard public education, does swell the pockets of the Democrats’ largest contributor...organized labor. Then again, if the claim that, “One of Senator Kerry's royal and saintly ancestors, Louis IX The Saint, King of France” is true...Kerry might just have an infatuation for the Maginot Line.
Kerry, while “touting his experience” assures us that “This war isn't just a manhunt – a checklist of names....” That’s as loony as believing that a snake’s venom has nothing to do with the snake’s head. This is a manhunt and the best way to deal with the “checklist of names” is “...to cut it off and...to kill it."
From a total of about 80 million Germans in the Greater Reich of the 1940’s, about 6 million were card-carrying Nazis. Hitler, Goebbels and Goering committed suicide. Nuremberg indicted 24 of the former leading Nazis. 22 were tried, 12 received death sentences, 3 were given life imprisonment and 4 lesser prison sentences, and 3 were acquitted. The Nazi party, as a threat to the United States, died with those leaders.
In 1940, Japan had a population of 73,075,071. The Tokyo War Trials saw 28 “Class A” war criminals indicted and a total of 7 executed. In the aftermath of deleting this “checklist of names”, both Germany and Japan euphemistically became America’s most ardent allies...along with France.
The immediate response in the terrorist war against America is a fairly straight-forward affair...strangle their resources and kill the leadership. The only certain way to protect America is to eliminate the threat. That threat is the terrorist leadership. Suicide bombers are nothing more than psychotic wackos. Without Hitler, the Beer Hall Nazis would have remained disorganized rabble. And a decapitated terrorist leadership is the surest disincentive for those “that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism”. Just ask Muammar Qadhafi for the origin of his epiphany.
The terrorist leadership will never be found on (or hiding under) U.S. soil, so the fight has to be taken to them. They are megalomaniacal bullies who, like Hitler and Tojo, mistakenly assumed a soft American resolve. Bullies only know how to exploit weakness because, at their core, they are afraid of strength. And...America’s greatest strength is its resolve.
Retrenchment behind “a new permanent 30-inch-high security wall” around the Washington Monument is a permanent surrender to terrorism. Creating massive new bureaucracies and swelling the civil service ranks may be good politics but lousy leadership. Quivering behind permanent defensive redoubts is a terrorist victory born of our own (un)resolve. It permanently bastardizes our way of life.
Unlike the Kerry Rope-a-Dope doctrine, President Bush is unequivocal in his conviction that, “We will direct every resource at our command...to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network... We will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail.” Americans remember a leader who demanded that we “Tear Down This Wall”...and, who knew how to get that job done. President Bush has not faltered from this commitment. Rope-a-Dope Kerry has a fickle history of waffling commitments...or does “Till Death Do Us Part” mean “Until a richer woman comes along”?
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