Posted on 05/12/2004 2:11:06 PM PDT by quidnunc
Every time we worry about whether the American people will have the heart and will to see this worldwide struggle against terror through, we realize that we needn’t worry. Because we will soon enough be reminded of the nature of the threat against us, and of the character of our enemy in this struggle — whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, at home or around the world.
It happened again yesterday: another bloody beheading for the edification of Web watchers everywhere. This — and worse — will continue to happen until these people are utterly defeated. Until they are, they will remain an unremitting danger. Because their aim, their will, their unrelenting barbarism is as clear as these televised pictures. Their aim is to kill us.
And as much as we would like to put off this confrontation, or escape this whole bloody mess, and turn aside from the inescapable reality now paraded before us once again, and somehow deny the undeniable danger, we can’t. For there it is. Again. The nature of the threat we face has been made clear once more. As clear as the continuous loop of September 11th images we once thought we’d never forget.
No, the atrocities in this war have not been limited to one side. We must face that awful reality, too. The difference is that we are ashamed of ours, that we want to know how they could happen, and are determined that they never happen again, while our enemy is proud of his. That much we know, and that is enough. This scourge will have to be wiped out, no matter how long it takes, or no one decent will be safe — American or Arab, Christian or Muslim or Jew…
Look at these latest pictures proudly beamed around the world. These people live to kill. They are out to kill as many of us as they can reach, and usher in a new, dark age in which the only law is their terror.
Yes, this is a complicated struggle with many elements, but one thing it doesn’t have, this struggle between us and them, is any kind of moral equivalence.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at nwanews.com ...
If Nick Berg really died for our sins, then I consider them redeemed in full.
EVERY TIME we worry about whether the American people will have the heart and will to see this worldwide struggle against terror through, we realize that we needn’t worry. Because we will soon enough be reminded of the nature of the threat against us, and of the character of our enemy in this strugglewhether in Iraq or Afghanistan, at home or around the world. It happened again yesterday: another bloody beheading for the edification of Web watchers everywhere. This—and worse—will continue to happen until these people are utterly defeated. Until they are, they will remain an unremitting danger. Because their aim, their will, their unrelenting barbarism is as clear as these televised pictures. Their aim is to kill us.
And as much as we would like to put off this confrontation, or escape this whole bloody mess, and turn aside from the inescapable reality now paraded before us once again, and somehow deny the undeniable danger, we can’t. For there it is. Again. The nature of the threat we face has been made clear once more. As clear as the continuous loop of September 11 th images we once thought we’d never forget.
No, the atrocities in this war have not been limited to one side. We must face that awful reality, too. The difference is that we are ashamed of ours, that we want to know how they could happen, and are determined that they never happen again, while our enemy is proud of his. That much we know, and that is enough. This scourge will have to be wiped out, no matter how long it takes, or no one decent will be safe—American or Arab, Christian or Muslim or Jew...
Look at these latest pictures proudly beamed around the world. These people live to kill. They are out to kill as many of us as they can reach, and usher in a new, dark age in which the only law is their terror.
Yes, this is a complicated struggle with many elements, but one thing it doesn’t have, this struggle between us and them, is any kind of moral equivalence.
Every year an award is given in the name of perhaps the most eloquent American jurist since John Marshall. He never served on the Supreme Court of the United States, yet his words shone like a steady light, in war and peace, at times of great testing and of quiet renewal. His counsel remains a guide and a rock. This year the Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence went to The Hon. Michael B. Mukasey, chief judge of the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, and, by a poetic twist, Learned Hand’s old court.
Judge Mukasey began his acceptance speech by referring to one of Chief Judge Hand’s better-known sayings, perhaps his best-known:
" Learned Hand, among the last century’s greatest judges, defined the spirit of liberty 60 years ago as ‘the spirit that is not too sure it is right.’ We must consider what message we can take from those words today. We are now in a struggle with a form of extremism that expresses itself in the form of terror attacks, and in that struggle we face what is probably the gravest threat to this country’s institutions, if not to its physical welfare, since the Civil War. When one tries to assess people who can find it in themselves to fly airplanes into buildings and murder 3,000 of us in a single morning, whatever else you can say about such people, they are very sure that they are right; and wouldn’t it be music to their ears to hear that our spirit says we’re not too sure that we are right?’’ We are not always right, Lord knows, as we have found out again just of late. But this much we can be very sure of: Our enemy is wrong. And dangerous. And he is counting on us to grow weary, to doubt our cause, to walk away and turn our backs once more. So he can strike again.
But every time we worry about whether the American people will have the heart and will to see this worldwide struggle against terror through, we realize that we needn’t worry. Because we will soon enough be reminded of the nature of the threat against us, and of the character of our enemy in this struggle.
I also like this quote by the obviously evry intelligent Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto:
You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.
I don't mean to be pedantic, BUT: Perl and Berg went to THEM, and both had been previously warned to get out, but didn't...
Also, beheadings and murders did not begin with David Pearle. There have been dead missionaries in other Asian countries.
(A) Define attrocity. (B) Observe the "response" by our government/public to violations of human rights and the Geneva Conventions.
Too many nations are infected with Islamofascists for there to be no government sponsorship of this evil. Some have tried to say that this is not a religious war, that the terrorists are like the KKK. The KKK is not in so many countries networking with so many others in so many countries targeting so much of the whole world (Western and Eastern).
Christians do denounce the KKK's appropriation of the cross (and the KKK even opposes Catholics), mulsims see no need to denounce the Islamofascists as "bad muslims" since they do not see them as muslims at all. Does this mean it is "someone else's problem"? All that is needed for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.
It is quite clear that some mosques support Islamofascism (everything from indoctrination videos shown in British mosques to the stockpiling of weapons in Middle Eastern mosques). Clean house or we will do it.
BUMP
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Thank you for posting the whole piece.
Glad to meet another grownup.
Blessings -- Brian
bttt
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