“It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.” — Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 1, 19 December 1776)
Reference: Thomas Paine: Collected Writings, Foner ed., Library of America (97)
Just seems like something to keep in mind regarding our jihadist enemies…
Tag: national security
[T]he world seems to have all but forgotten an Israeli town situated on the border with Gaza that has been under withering and nearly non-stop attack. Sderote has actually been hit with more than 100 Palestinian terror rockets and mortars this week and with more than 1,500 rockets since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June. Yet where is the outrage? Where is the international condemnation of the terrorists and the states who support them? How can either side — the Israeli people or the Palestinians who do want peace and security for both sides — ever make peace until these radical Islamic jihadists are stopped?
The TSA detained and searched a five year-old boy.
Read that again. It was a case of mistaken identity; a five year-old boy has the same name as another individual who is on the no-fly list. The Consumerist adds:
When his mother went to pick him up and hug him and comfort him during the proceedings, she was told not to touch him because he was a national security risk. They also had to frisk her again to make sure the little Dillinger hadn’t passed anything dangerous weapons or materials to his mother when she hugged him.
For those of you wondering, “Why the heck would they do all this?”, Bruce Schneier has the answer:
The explanation is simple: to the TSA, following procedure is more important than common sense. But unfortunately, catching the next terrorist will require more common sense than it will following proper procedure.
[Emphasis added. –R]
It’s all theater. It does nothing to protect the public; it simply pulls the wool over the eyes of those who choose to not think about it, to make those sheeple feel better. Five year-olds do not pull off terrorist acts, nor are they engaged in chatter with sleeper cells, which land them on a no-fly list. Any five year-old could figure that out. Okay, that’s not fair. Five year-olds might have a hard time figuring it out. But I know an eight year-old who’d know it was wrong…
[Wave of the phin to Lee and Tanner Lovelace.]
Day of Terror: A September 11 Retrospective
“September 11, 2001, was a defining moment in American history. On that terrible day, our nation saw the face of evil as 19 men barbarously attacked us and wantonly murdered people of many races, nationalities, and creeds. On Patriot Day, we remember the innocent victims, and we pay tribute to the valiant firefighters, police officers, emergency personnel and ordinary citizens who risked their lives so others might live. After the attacks on 9/11, America resolved that we would go on the offense against our enemies, and we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor and support them. All Americans honor the selfless men and women of our Armed Forces, the dedicated members of our public safety, law enforcement and intelligence communities, and the thousands of others who work hard each day to protect our country, secure our liberty and prevent future attacks. The spirit of our people is the source of America’s strength, and six years ago, Americans came to the aid of neighbors in need. On Patriot Day, we pray for those who died and for their families. We volunteer to help others and demonstrate the continuing compassion of our citizens. On this solemn occasion, we rededicate ourselves to laying the foundation of peace with confidence in our mission and our free way of life.” –President George W. Bush
“[A]s we approach the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, there are suggestions that we should begin to forget the worst terrorist incident in America’s history. Recently, a front-page story in The New York Times suggested it is becoming too much of a burden to remember the attack, that nothing new can be said about it and that, perhaps, Sept. 11 ‘fatigue’ may be setting in.
[…]
“9/11 forces us to be serious, not only about those who died and why they died at the hands of religious fanatics, but also so that we won’t forget that it could very well happen again and many of today’s living might end up as yesterday’s dead. That is the purpose of remembering 9/11, not to engage in perpetual mourning. The war goes on and to be reminded of 9/11 serves as the ultimate protection against forgetfulness. Terrorists have not forgotten 9/11. Tape of the Twin Towers is used on jihadist Websites for the purpose of recruiting new ‘martyrs.’
“What’s the matter with some people? Does remembering not only 9/11 but the stakes in this world war
interfere too much with our pursuit of money, things and pleasure? Serious times require serious thought and serious action. In our frivolous times, full of trivialities and irrelevancies, to be serious is to abandon self-indulgence for survival, entertainment for the stiffened spine.[…]
“Not to remember 9/11, is to forget what brought it about.” —Cal Thomas
“Last week The New York Times carried a story about the current state of the 9/11 lawsuits. Relatives of 42 of the dead are suing various parties for compensation, on the grounds that what happened that Tuesday morning should have been anticipated. The law firm Motley Rice, diversifying from its traditional lucrative class-action hunting grounds of tobacco, asbestos and lead paint, is promising to put on the witness stand everybody who ‘allowed the events of 9/11 to happen.’ And they mean everybody–American Airlines, United, Boeing, the airport authorities, the security firms–everybody, that is, except the guys who did it.
“According to the Times, many of the bereaved are angry and determined that their loved one’s death should have meaning. Yet the meaning they’re after surely strikes our enemies not just as extremely
odd but as one more reason why they’ll win. You launch an act of war, and the victims respond with a lawsuit against their own countrymen. But that’s the American way: Almost every news story boils down to somebody standing in front of a microphone and announcing that he’s retained counsel…[T]hose 9/11 families should know that, if you want your child’s death that morning to have meaning, what matters is not whether you hound Boeing into admitting liability but whether you insist that the movement that murdered your daughter is hunted down and the sustaining ideological virus that led thousands of others to dance up and down in the streets cheering her death is expunged from the earth[…]
“On this sixth anniversary, as 9/11 retreats into history, many Americans see no war at all.” —Mark Steyn
Dear American Soldier in Iraq:
There are a few things you should know about how tens of millions of us back home feel about you and the fight you are waging. These things need to be said…
What has happened is that many Americans, for all sorts of reasons–some out of simple fatigue, some because they do not believe that war solves anything, some out of deep loathing for the present administration–do not believe that what you are doing is worth doing. You know that what you are doing is worth continuing…
You know that you are fighting the most vicious and primitive ideology in the world
today. It is the belief that one’s God wants his followers to maim, torture and murder in order to spread a system of laws that sends societies back to a moral and intellectual state that is pre-civilization. You know that the war you wage against these people and their totalitarian ideology is also necessary because a society unwilling to fight for its values does not have values worth sustaining…We see you as the best and brightest of our society. Even The New York Times, one of the mainstream media publications that do not understand the epic battle you are waging, acknowledged in an article by one of its embedded correspondents that few Americans of your age can come close to you in maturity, wisdom or leadership abilities. It is unfortunate that the battle for moral clarity and moral courage in America is as divisive as the battle for freedom is in Iraq. But that is the nature of the world we live in. And it has ever been so…
You probably knew all this. But you need to hear it anyway.
That, and thank you. Thank you very much.
Mark Steyn, in the introduction to America Alone:
1970 doesn’t seem that long ago. If you’re in you fifties or sixties, as many of the chaps running the Western world are wont to be, your pants are narrower than they were back then and your hair’s less groovy, but the landscape of your life–the look of your house, the layout of your car, the shape of your kitchen appliances, the brand names of the stuff in the fridge–isn’t significantly different. And yet that world is utterly altered. Just to recap those bald statistics: in 1970, the developed nations had twice as big a share of the global population as the Muslim world: 30 percent to 15 percent. By 2000, they were at parity: each had about 20 percent.
And by 2020?
September 11, 2001, was not “the day everything changed,” but the day that revealed how much had already changed. On September 10, how many journalists had the Council on American-Islamic Relations or the Canadian Islamic Congress or the Muslim Council of Britian in their Rolodexes? If you’d said that whether something does or does not cause offense to Muslims would be the early twenty-first century’s principal political dynamic in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the United Kingdom, most folks would have thought you were crazy. Yet on that Tuesday morning the top of the iceberg bobbed up and toppled the Twin Towers.
This book is about the seven-eighths below the surface–the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and that call into question the future of much of the rest of the world, including the United States, Canada, and beyond. The key factors are:
- Demographic decline
- The unsustainability of the advanced Western social-democratic state
- Civilizational exhaustion
Let’s start with demography, because everything does.
I’m already enthralled.
The Global War on Terror is not about revenge for 9/11. It’s not about an eye for an eye. It’s not even about eradicating the Taliban. It’s about fighting against the same sort of Master Race mentality that made the Imperial Japanese and Nazi Germany a threat to our people and our way of life. We are the infidels. We are the subhumans to the Islamic sense of racial elitism.
I confess, though I always picked up the superiority aspect of radical Islam, I hadn’t thought of it in the terms of Muslims being a “master race”.
“In the annals of American history, only a few events are so well-known and so deeply rooted in national remembrance that the mere mention of their date suffices to describe them. Of these occurrences, none could have had more significance for our Nation than December 7, 1941. On that Sunday morning… the Imperial Japanese Navy launched an unprovoked, surprise attack upon units of the Armed Forces of the United States stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
“This attack claimed the lives of 2,403 Americans, wounded 1,178 more, and damaged our naval capabilities in the Pacific. Such destruction seared the memory of a generation and galvanized the will of the American people in a fight to maintain our right to freedom without fear. Every honor is appropriate for the courageous Americans who made the supreme sacrifice for our Nation at Pearl Harbor and in the many battles that followed in World War II. Their sacrifice was for a cause, not for conquest; for a world that would be safe for future generations. Their devotion must never be forgotten.” –Ronald Reagan
Today is Veteran’s Day, and we offer our heartiest and most humble thanks for those who have served, and those who are currently serving, in our nation’s armed forces.
“Across America, there are more than 25 million veterans. Their ranks include generations of citizens who have risked their lives while serving in military conflicts, including World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf and the war on terror. They have fought for the security of our country and the peace of the world. They have defended our founding ideals, protected the innocent and liberated the oppressed from tyranny and terror. They have known the hardships and the fears and the tragic losses of war. Our veterans know that in the harshest hours of conflict they serve just and honorable purposes. Every veteran has lived by a strict code of discipline. Every veteran understands the meaning of personal accountability and loyalty and shared sacrifice. From the moment you repeated the oath to the day of your honorable discharge, your time belonged to America; your country came before all else.” –President George W. Bush