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Jewish World Review Sept. 11, 2009/ 22 Elul 5769 9/11 Cannot Be Sanitized By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
No historical anniversary reveals the ideological bankruptcy of modern-day liberalism more clearly than September 11th — which is exactly why they are attempting to turn it into a "National Day of Service and Remembrance."
Barack Obama: "Eight years ago, the tragic events of that Tuesday morning inspired Americans to come together in a remarkable spirit of unity and compassion. In that same spirit, we call on all Americans to join in service on September 11 and honor the heroes of that dark day as well as the brave men and women in uniform who continue to protect our country at home and abroad."
David Paine, the president of MyGoodDeed, one of the organizations responsible for the event: "Our ultimate goal is to leave a positive legacy that honors the victims and those who rose in service. We hope to rekindle the spirit of unity and compassion that followed the terrorist attacks."
Reality check for historical revisionists: the primary reason the spirit of "unity and compassion" needs "rekindling" is because the American left did their very best to destroy it — for little more than partisan political purposes.
It wasn't conservatives, independents, or middle America that tried to undermine a wartime president in the middle of two wars. It was Democratic Senator Harry Reid who declared the war in Iraq "lost." It was former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry who characterized our troops as "terrorists" or stupid enough to get "stuck in Iraq." It was yet another Democratic Senator, Dick Durbin, who compared the treatment of captured terrorists at Guantanamo Bay to the victims of "Nazis, Soviet gulags and Cambodia's Khmer Rouge."
Can anyone find a historical slogan such as "Roosevelt lied, people died" while America was in the midst of prosecuting WWll? How about a mainstream media more than willing to publicize top-secret strategies designed to protect Americans from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan? How about Hollywood putting out anti-war movie after anti-war movie while the bombs were still exploding and the bullets still flying across Europe and Asia?
As I said a year ago, absolutely nothing about the genuine nature of 9/11 accrues to the interests of liberalism: "Not the jets smashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Not the people jumping off eighty-story window ledges to avoid being burned to death. Not dazed, debris-covered survivors walking aimlessly around lower Manhattan. Not the gut-wrenching image of the towers collapsing, nor the thousands of innocents atomized in less than an hour-and-a-half while the entire nation watched in horror."
Take the above and add the Democrats "we were for the war before we were against it" about face — even as American men and women remained in harm's way — and the bet here is most Americans will realize that the left's newfound desire for unity is utter hypocrisy.
So is their ongoing attempt to sanitize reality. The Obama administration's war on terror is now an "overseas contingency operation." Terrorist attacks are now "man-caused disasters." Jihadists are "extremists," and the term "Islamo-fascist" is no longer in use because it might offend Muslims.
Offend Muslims? Muslim radicals are responsible for the overwhelming majority of terrorist carnage around the world and were supposed to worry that telling the truth will hurt someone's feelings?
Totally unsurprising. As I have mentioned innumerable times, when you have people in charge dedicated to the idea that America is a nation in need of radical transformation, the notion that we're on the right side of history is a completely foreign concept.
From there, it's a seamless transition for Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Dept. to begin investigating the CIA agents for the "crime" of keeping America safe for eight years. It's an even smaller step for ideologues with the aforementioned skill of re-defining terms to decide what constitutes torture after the fact, even as they were kept in the intelligence loop all along.
Americans are in desperate need of unity. But it isn't the "see no evil" kumbay-esque unity of those for whom all evil is relative. It is the sober, no-nonsense unity that arises from the reality that Islamo-fascism remains a mortal threat to our way of life. It is the unity behind the reality that national security requires life-and-death choices, often formulated with less-than-perfect intel, within excruciatingly short time frames.
It is the unity that any nation would desire in the middle of a war for their survival.
September 11th is a day of remembrance all right. It is a day to remember the price all of us paid for believing we were invulnerable. It is a chilling reminder that evil exists, and it cannot be appeased, re-defined, or dissipated with clever rhetoric — or a world-wide apology tour.
And it isn't the vast majority of Americans who need to be unified. We're already there, and we don't particularly relish turning 9/11 into a "feel good" festival, any more than we would want to "celebrate" Pearl Harbor.
For all but the terminally confused and the morally bankrupt, the war against Islamic radicalism, much like WWll, has produced two easily definable sides. On one, there are those who believe in individual rights, freedom of religion and representative government. On the other, those who believe in oppression, subservience to theological tyranny, and inferior status for women and non-believers.
And despite all the intellectually elitist double-talk and hand-wringing, there is no middle ground.
The left wants to "rekindle" unity? Try standing with the rest of America, warts and all. Try sending a message to the rest of the world that whatever our differences are, they are "family" squabbles.
And woe to anyone who messes with our family.
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© 2009, Arnold Ahlert |
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