Patriot Day

[TarpleyG]

Just wanted to remind everyone (not like you could forget, right) to take a few minutes to day and remember what happened and what's at stake.

I was never really sad I guess so much as I was mad...mad at our complacency...mad at the people who want us dead for no good reason...mad now that we haven't taken harsher action against those people.

Greg

[The Rabbi]

We are our own worst enemies in this regard.  The admin's plan has been to degrade their ability to carry out operations.  That involved eavesdropping on conversations, tracing money flows and stopping them, and overthrowing regimes that supported and encouraged terrorism.
Overall it has worked.

But on almost every thread even remotely connected to this topic people post griping about unwarranted gov't intrusion, like we're going to become Stalin's Russia tomorrow.  They gripe about Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries with demonstrated history of supporting terrorism.  They gripe about the draft, which no one in the admin is talking about reinstating.  They state absolutist Libertarian views that as long as bin Laden is not personally at their door with a shotgun they wouldn't consider him a threat.
People are all for pursuing terrorists as long as they are not inconvenienced or their principles compromised in any possible way.  That leaves the Clinton method of lobbing a missile or two at an aspirin factory.  That lets everyone feel good about themselves right up to detonation.

[Ron]

Wow Rabbi, very succinct and well said.

While I am happy there are those watching out for our civil liberties there seems to be a lack of perspective.

Civil liberties will be curtailed greatly if we have three major cities in ruin from terrorists setting off nuclear weapons in them.

[Chris]

On the way to work this morning, a local radio station played a segment, a series of clips from their boradcast on 9/11/01.  As they played it...their voices expressing shock and awe as they watched the video of the impacts...the towres falling...I could see it all again.  The tears welled up in my eyes as I recalled watching it happen, feeling the anger, the hatred, the pain.  A high school classmate went down in the towers.  A West Point acquaintance died in the Pentagon.  

The pain is as fresh today as it was then.  In fact, even more so, as their is no shock and numbness to insulate me.

As much as I know intellectually that a true war on terror is more of a cloak and dagger exercise than a combat maneuver, I wish there was more that could be done.  And, like many of you, I despise the violations of our rights that is occurring, but at the same time wonder if this is a sacrifice that must be endured, much in the same vein as my grandmother conserving supplies during WWII.

Not long after 9/11/01, I called some buddies and inquired about re-upping with the Army, to do something more than sit here in the middle of Ohio and prosecute people from seemingly inconsequential crimes.  They told me to forget it, a law degree would make me a paper pusher in the Army, and I was doing more for the cause by keeping the homefront safe than I would be pushing legal papers around the Pentagon, or somewhere else.

Five years later, watching the war on the news, reading the Sprots Illustrated story on Pat Tillman, I wonder if sitting on the bench as a Magistrate is really enough for the cause...

[garrettwc]

Never forget those who died.
Never forget who killed them.

It's not about convenience. It's about winning a fight against a group of people whose sworn goal in life is our destruction. Until the world's governments stop worrying about apeasement or "politcal capitol" and let our warriors take the gloves off, we will never be safe.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

It is only by the grace of God that my uncle didn't die on 9-11-01.  

He's a businessman from Long Island.  Every Tuesday he had meetings scheduled in lower Manhattan, in an office on the 45th floor of one of the towers (I forget which one).  One of the individuals he was to meet had gone on vacation for the week of 9-11, so their weekly meeting was cancelled for that fateful day.  If not for that vacation, my uncle would have been in the building when it came down.

At first it infuriated me to see the leftists trying to undermine our efforts to defeate those who made the attacks, as well as those who are/were likely to perpetrate new attacks.  Now it just gives me a bit of low-level, simmering anger.

What really gets me these days is the sheer level of irrationality running rampant in our country.  It's like the Twilight Zone out there in American politics these days.  Check out any leftist blog to see what I mean.  

9-11 was an inside job, perpetrated by Bush.  

Bush (and Bush alone) knowlingly and deliberately lied about Saddam's WMD program, simply so he could go t war and steal Iraq's oil for his pals in the oil industry.  

Terrorists deserve Geneva Convention protections.  

Secret national security programs such as intercepting international calls to/from terrorists, demonstrated to have prevented terrorist attacks, are to be exposed and torn down.  Political hacks like Valerie Plame, who is trading upon her former connection with the CIA to gain personal fame and fortune, are sacred national security assets and must be protected at all costs.  

The proper way to end terrorism isn not to incapacitate the terrorists, but instead to send them diplomats and lawyers to "talk out our differences".


The really scary thing isn't that these theories and ideologies exist, but rather that so many people believe in them.  The other day I read that a poll showed 36% of Americans believe that 9-11 was an inside job, that the buildings were demolished with explosives planted in the structures and that no airliners ever struck the towers or the Pentagon.  Thirty-six-effing-per-cent, more than 1/3rd of your neighbors, coworkers, family!

It's so incomprehensible that so many people can believe this tripe, that it makes you wonder if you really aren't the sane one afterall.

[TarpleyG]

The other day I read that a poll showed 36% of Americans believe that 9-11 was an inside job,

You have to consider the source...the "poll" was probably worded in such a way that the outcome was predicted.

Greg

[Marnoot]

the "poll" was probably worded in such a way that the outcome was predicted.

I hope so, but the percentage is even higher here where I work, at least. In my area in the office I'm about the only person who believes an airplane hit the Pentagon. I long ago gave up at arguing it with them, they're 100% convinced it was a government conspiracy of some kind. When I ask, if the goverment did it why they would hit the Pentagon with a missile and go to all the trouble of making an airliner disappear, rather than just hitting it with the airplane, they just ignore me and introduce a non-sequitur. Some people are just conspiracy-minded and see a conspiracy in every tragedy, attack(9/11), and natural disaster(Katrina).

[Car Knocker]

A significant percentage of the U.S. population believes the Earth is flat and/or the U.S. space program is a hoax.  The results of a poll on whether George Bush was a space alien would be interesting.

The dumbing down of America is proceeding apace.

[Lennyjoe]

"9-11 was an inside job, perpetrated by Bush"

Are you for real?  

People need to pull their head out of the sand.