Is America's New War Cry "Let's Get On With Our Lives?"

Maybe the years in between have really dimmed my memory, but I don't recall the 1942 mindset being one of "let's get back to normal." In a nation at war, we felt anything but normal. The entire population was involved ... in everything from working in defense plants to planting victory gardens. We were involved.

Things weren't normal. We didn't pretend they were normal, we were in a war mentality, a mindset of WIN WIN WIN. There was no political correctness. We weren't afraid of hurting people's feelings. If there were any whiners around, the standard answer was, "look, we're at war."

I do recall folks talking about gas masks but my family didn't own any. We moved to an apartment, so we didn't plant a victory garden either. Actually, other than rationing, air raids, black window shades, rancid butter and high security near military installations, things were kind of normal. We went to movies. My mom took me, once a week, to a cafe that served superb hot fudge sundaes. My dad kept working in the movie studios. When we came to Phoenix from Los Angeles to visit Granny, only the rationing seemed to be a war reminder ... well rationing and the military men on the streets of downtown Phoenix over the weekend. However, in 1942 Phoenix, a dozen people constituted a crowd.

Still, the air raid sirens blew in the middle of the night and we knew things were absolutely not normal, and it was a lot more abnormal in Hollywood where I lived than it was here in Phoenix where I now live.

We've gone nuts if we think we can be normal in war. It's easier to behave normally in conventional war, where you know your enemy, than it is in guerilla war, where you can't tell your enemy from a peaceful person who looks Middle Eastern.

What I don't recall is everything being federalized. I do remember the OPA ... the Office of Price Administration ... that was put in place to keep greedy landlords and merchants from hiking prices to where they would choke the ability of average people to have food and shelter. We had luxury taxes on some items too. My dad started having income tax taken out of his paycheck, but we always ate, we had a roof over our heads, and I went to school.

If the nation was paralyzed by fear, I don't recall it. Kids are affected by fear, and the only big time fear that still rings a bell is the midnight wail of the air raid sirens.

Now, we're being asked to get on with life and act normally. Well, what's "normal?"

So far, the utilities are working, the water isn't poisoned, the grocery stores aren't empty, my ISP is working, the radio and television are working, and we're having the usual traffic accidents on the streets of Phoenix.

The national guard is being mobilized in various places. That isn't normal but neither is it very visible. YET.

So far, what we see of government action has been to federalize things that affect our citizens and not the enemy. What kind of "normal" is that? The only normalcy I can recognize is that which has been defined by the liberal Left in its march to globalism and restricting American liberties. And the peaceniks are bawling about killing the innocents abroad, they manage to get on talk shows, and they say nary a word about our 7000 dead innocents cremated in the flames at the World Trade Center, on the airliners that crashed, or in the Pentagon. Many of them are Middle Easterners who claim to be American citizens. It seems their view is filtered by their country and culture of origin, rather than the facts they read in the news. We need them to form an ambassage to the Taliban and spew their propaganda there.

OH my, I forgot, we still have to be politically correct ... well, I guess we can pray in public for the time being, but we can't say the US should bomb the kazoos off the hostile nations if they don't deliver up their terrorists by date X. Deadline day. No equivocation.

Both our government and a hunk of our citizenry worries that innocent civilians will be killed if we get into a war with the Arab nations. Reminder: approximately 7000 innocent American civilians died in the terrorist attack on the WTC and the Pentagon, including those aboard the airliners. Civilian murders are the reason we're at war with the terrorists. (Just in case anyone has forgotten the events of September 11, 2001.)

What's normal in war time? Maybe it's time for the general population to get an education in how to live with the possibility that it could strike here again, time and again, until we wipe the terrorist networks off the face of the earth.

The normal wartime mentality is to support the military and keep in mind that the objective is to KILL THE ENEMY.

So far, we're gumming them to death with speeches, but that isn't a very effective battle plan.

Really weak premise. You fight each war with the strategy needed to win that war. Full frontal assaults used by Washington and Jackson failed at Gettysburg, and would have been disastrous at Guadalcanal.

What is the strategy in this war? It is a prolonged assault on difficult-to-find terrorists and their client states. This requires patience. It also requires COMPLETE refusal to buckle to the terrorists' goal, which was to KEEP us from our "daily lives." This IS striking a blow for freedom, because this is not a war where we can all sign up.

It is true that in this case "living well is the best revenge." Now that is not our ONLY revenge, but that vengeance is to dealt by specialized forces who have the ability to do what large groups of armed citizens milling around Afghanistan would not.

I submit that America's new war cry is "You don't scare us. And we have all the patience in the world." In "The Patriot," when Mel Gibson confronted by Col. Tavington at the fort, he promised to kill the Brit. "Why don't we just do it now?" sneered Tavington, knowing he had the advantage. "Soon," said a steely-eyed Gibson. Message to terrorists: "Soon."

What this authors fails to point out is that, unlike WWII, we are not at war. War must be declared by Congress.

This is not to say that I agree with the present Congress, I don't. I believe history shows the inprudence of our government when it chooses not to declare war on states hostile to our interests. Korea and Vietnam are prime examples of how we immorally spent the lives of our men in a real war, while traitors back home undermined the "undeclared war" effort. We need to declare war when we commit our troops and we need to hang traitors who oppose the war effort once war has been declared.

I was thinking the same kind of thing, especially the other day.

I played in a golf tournament last Tuesday. While driving towards downtown St. Paul, I saw a small jet rise over the city and take off for someplace, "no big deal" I thought, "business as usual."

Then my mind started to wander back to September 11th. What if? What if, after I saw that plane, it slowly turned back around and crashed in downtown St. Paul, then a minute later, another one, follwed by another. What would I do? As I drove along to the golf course, I pictured myself driving down the interstate driving around debris and bodies just so I could get to that stupid golf tournament.

As Americans, we are so anxious to get back to normal (pre-September 11th normal that is), because little Tommy has a soccer game on Saturday and the Johnson's are having a dinner party later that day, and we're going to watch the Vikes on Sunday with some friends from church, we just don't have time to fight a war.

Granted, we shouldn't all be hunkering down in our bomb shelters, but we should be ready, at a moments notice, to respond to anything.

we should be ready, at a moments notice, to respond to anything.

I believe we are. We're much more aware of our surroundings -- at least that's true of the people I know. We will not allow the terrorists to accomplish their goal -- the destabilization of our country -- so we "got back to normal" as quickly as possible.

However, I don't believe there will be as many sheep available for slaughter. Fewer people will allow themselves to be herded to the backs of planes, and more people are expressing the "if I'm goin' I'm takin' the bastards with me" attitude.

We are not, by any means, back to the pre-911 sense of security and comfort. We are getting on with it, and we are waiting for justice. No matter how long it takes.

Oh, but delcaring war is so politically incorrect! (/sarcasm). Our nation has become a wussified shell of its former self. The current "patriotic" outpourings will fade, "The War On Terrorism" will be yet another bureaucracy mired psuedo-legalistic road to nowhere, and the true underlying state forces, such as Russia, China and Pakistan, who have spent the entirety of the 1990s putting together an anti-American Axis (The Trans-Asian Axis) will regroup, now benefitted by critical intel info and direct observations of how the US deals with asymmetrical warfare. Equipped with these advantages, and with America now believing we have put together the "Mother of All Coalitions" and having twanged our way into a new and improved Bush 3rd Way Gramscian "New World Order", we will be as babes in the woods against the inevitable final attack on the West by "our friends". (Duh, gee Wally, I thought you wuz my friend! Now why'd you go an give me uh black eye?)

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