"Since the attack [9-11], I have seen, heard, and read thoughts of
such surpassing stupidity they must be addressed. You've heard them
too. Here they are:
1) "We're not good, they're not evil, everything is relative." 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, 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.
2) "Violence only leads to more violence. "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.
3) "The CIA and the rest of our intelligence community have failed
us. "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 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.
4) "These people are poor and helpless, and that's why they're angry
at us." 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 a good deal less annoying. The poor helpless people,
you see, are the villagers they tortured and murdered to stay in power.
Mohammed Atta, one of the evil scumbags who steered those planes into
the killing grounds is the son of a Cairo surgeon, but you knew this,
too. In the 60s and 70s, 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.
It's the same today.
5) "Any profiling is racial profiling." Who's killing us here, Norwegians?
Just days after the attack, the New York Times had an article saying
dozens of extended family members of gazillionaire bin Laden, living
in America, were afraid of reprisals and left in a huff, never to
return to study at Harvard and using too much Drakkar. I'm crushed.
Please come back. Let's 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."
SO HERE'S what I resolve for the New Year:
Never forget our murdered brothers and sisters. Never let the relativists
get away with their immoral thinking. After all, no matter what your
daughter's political science professor says, we didn't start this.
Have you seen that bumper sticker that says, "No More Hiroshimas"?
I wish I had one that says, "No More Pearl Harbors."
General Hawley - retired USAF general.
