Take it from an old soldier children. The Sky is not falling.
I am old enough to actually Remember Pearl Harbor. I am old enough to have actually served briefly both in Korea and in Viet Nam (tho I did not arrive in Korea until the shooting was over and my presence in Nam could hardly have been noticed--S. Vietnam was bleeding, but it was not yet a fashionable address--there were less than 300 USA Military there at the time).
I read with some concern the long recent thread about being afraid.
From the vantage point of history and reality, can I make a plea for a little prospective please? As times of great danger go, as a measure of the loss of property and lives, this is but a hickup.
(1) 65 years ago A. Hitler was in control of a Germany armed with an awsome miliary machine--by far the best in the world at the time. By contrast Ben Ladin is a bandit hiding out in some god forsaken deasert with a handfull of men armed only with AK-47s and a few SAMs and shoulder fired AA missles. He is not Hitler. He is Pancho Villa.
(2) 62 years ago, Hitler was the master of all continental Europe. England stood alone, with only her Navy, a handfull of spifires and hurricane fighter planes, the Channel, and the ringing prose of W. Churchill to defend her. Her cities were on fire, not from one randome attack but from consentrated bombing night after night.
(3) We lost some 6,000 people in the highjack attacks, a terrible frightful loss, but a long way from being catostrophic or decisive. By the spring of 1954, the USSR had sufferd 6 MILLION dead, and another 6 MILLION had died in Hitler's death camps.
(4) We have lost two great and beauiful buildings. That is terrible and heartbreaking. It is to be remembered tho, by the end of WWII entire german cities were great piles of rubble. In one night our B-29s burned 19 square miles of Tokyo to the ground and incinerated something in excess of 100,000 Japanese. Surely you have seen pictures of Hiroshima after the A-bomb. How many of you are diving German and Japanese made cars today?
(5) We had about 50,000 men killed in Korea, and about the same body count in Nam--in total about 20 times the lives lost at the World Trade Center. 50,000 is also roughly the average number of people killed on our highways each year. The interstate and the road you take to work are a 1000 or perhaps 10,000 times more dangerous to your life than a terrorist (not to mention cigarets, substamce abuse, and the burgers at MacDonalds).
None of this is to say that our complex technological society isn't hoplessly vulnerable to terrorist attack. Obviously these islamic fanatics can do unspeakably cowardly things to hurt us badly and have. Nor should they be take so unbelievably lightly as we have in the past. Their very weaknesses in numbers and means make the bastards very difficult to attack and destroy.
But My Children--compared to the crushing of Poland, the blitzkrieg across Fance, the battles of Britian, Stalingrad and on the beaches of Normandy, the defeats at Pearl Harbor and Bataan, the fight for survial on the Pusan perimiter, at the Chosen reseviour, at Hue, and at Khe San, Ben Ladin is a pimple on the ass of histrory. In the scale of opponets he is a lot closer to Saddam Hussain than to A Hitler and Ho Chi Minh.
Quit being afraid My Children, there is nothing to fear but fear itself (FDR). For God's sake don't listen to Hanoi Jane Fonda this time. Do what your fathers and Grandfathers did. Go kick some ass.
I am old enough to actually Remember Pearl Harbor. I am old enough to have actually served briefly both in Korea and in Viet Nam (tho I did not arrive in Korea until the shooting was over and my presence in Nam could hardly have been noticed--S. Vietnam was bleeding, but it was not yet a fashionable address--there were less than 300 USA Military there at the time).
I read with some concern the long recent thread about being afraid.
From the vantage point of history and reality, can I make a plea for a little prospective please? As times of great danger go, as a measure of the loss of property and lives, this is but a hickup.
(1) 65 years ago A. Hitler was in control of a Germany armed with an awsome miliary machine--by far the best in the world at the time. By contrast Ben Ladin is a bandit hiding out in some god forsaken deasert with a handfull of men armed only with AK-47s and a few SAMs and shoulder fired AA missles. He is not Hitler. He is Pancho Villa.
(2) 62 years ago, Hitler was the master of all continental Europe. England stood alone, with only her Navy, a handfull of spifires and hurricane fighter planes, the Channel, and the ringing prose of W. Churchill to defend her. Her cities were on fire, not from one randome attack but from consentrated bombing night after night.
(3) We lost some 6,000 people in the highjack attacks, a terrible frightful loss, but a long way from being catostrophic or decisive. By the spring of 1954, the USSR had sufferd 6 MILLION dead, and another 6 MILLION had died in Hitler's death camps.
(4) We have lost two great and beauiful buildings. That is terrible and heartbreaking. It is to be remembered tho, by the end of WWII entire german cities were great piles of rubble. In one night our B-29s burned 19 square miles of Tokyo to the ground and incinerated something in excess of 100,000 Japanese. Surely you have seen pictures of Hiroshima after the A-bomb. How many of you are diving German and Japanese made cars today?
(5) We had about 50,000 men killed in Korea, and about the same body count in Nam--in total about 20 times the lives lost at the World Trade Center. 50,000 is also roughly the average number of people killed on our highways each year. The interstate and the road you take to work are a 1000 or perhaps 10,000 times more dangerous to your life than a terrorist (not to mention cigarets, substamce abuse, and the burgers at MacDonalds).
None of this is to say that our complex technological society isn't hoplessly vulnerable to terrorist attack. Obviously these islamic fanatics can do unspeakably cowardly things to hurt us badly and have. Nor should they be take so unbelievably lightly as we have in the past. Their very weaknesses in numbers and means make the bastards very difficult to attack and destroy.
But My Children--compared to the crushing of Poland, the blitzkrieg across Fance, the battles of Britian, Stalingrad and on the beaches of Normandy, the defeats at Pearl Harbor and Bataan, the fight for survial on the Pusan perimiter, at the Chosen reseviour, at Hue, and at Khe San, Ben Ladin is a pimple on the ass of histrory. In the scale of opponets he is a lot closer to Saddam Hussain than to A Hitler and Ho Chi Minh.
Quit being afraid My Children, there is nothing to fear but fear itself (FDR). For God's sake don't listen to Hanoi Jane Fonda this time. Do what your fathers and Grandfathers did. Go kick some ass.
