So I take it we have a few--perhaps more than a few--people in this country who believe acts of terror committed against American civilians are a just punishment for the sins of American foreign policy. And why not?--It is, after all, what Osama bin Laden believes himself:

We believe that this administration represents Israel inside America. Take the sensitive ministries such as the Ministry of Exterior and the Ministry of Defense and the CIA, you will find that the Jews have the upper hand in them. They make use of America to further their plans for the world, especially the Islamic world. American presence in the Gulf provides support to the Jews and protects their rear. And while millions of Americans are homeless and destitute and live in abject poverty, their government is busy occupying our land and building new settlements and helping Israel build new settlements in the point of departure for our Prophet's midnight journey to the seven heavens. America throws her own sons in the land of the two Holy Mosques for the sake of protecting Jewish interests. ...

The American government is leading the country towards hell. ... We say to the Americans as people and to American mothers, if they cherish their lives and if they cherish their sons, they must elect an American patriotic government that caters to their interests not the interests of the Jews. If the present injustice continues with the wave of national consciousness, it will inevitably move the battle to American soil, just as Ramzi Yousef and others have done. This is my message to the American people. I urge them to find a serious administration that acts in their interest and does not attack people and violate their honor and pilfer their wealth.

And I take it some people in this country believe that flushing out the current administration will get the terrorists off our backs. That if we just quit antagonizing them, they'll leave us alone.

And I bet these people read the statement above and assume "the American government" that is "leading the country towards hell" is the one we got right now.

Guess again.

There's one thing we could possibly do, as a nation, to appease bin Laden and his followers: Abandon all support for Israel.

Then again, the UN did this long ago. And last I checked, there's still a price on Kofi Annan's head.

There is no appeasement in this war. Don't kid yourselves. Don't equate Abu Ghraib and this. They aren't equal. Our nation will receive no apologies. The perpetrators of this barbarity will receive no punishment. We will see no justice; indeed, we have yet to see any justice, any apology, any attempt to make amends to us, for September 11.

Electing John Kerry will not make the terrorists any happier.

They'll be happier when we're all dead or living in dhimmitude.

Which do you prefer? Because I vote "none of the above."

And today, I really wish our first response to September 11 had been--oh, let's haul out the handwringing journalists' favorite adjective--"disproportionate."

I'll get past that. But I'm not going to be sidetracked anymore, off into all these petty little arguments over whether America acted "unilaterally," whether we should have done more to support the "road map," whether the conditions at Abu Ghraib were generated from the top down or the bottom up, yada yada yada . . . hey, here: Have a big cup of shut the fuck up.

I'm sorry Zeyad's cousin died. I'm sorry we mistreated and tortured the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. I'm sorry some pro-war people go off the deep end from time to time, and holler at the very people we're trying to help. I'm sorry we sometimes stomp on the hearts and minds we're trying to win.

But mostly, I'm sorry that America's reputation for trying to do the right thing has been exploited so often by her enemies. (Link courtesy Ghost of a Flea, via Absinthe & Cookies.)

And I'm really sorry that so many in the Middle East fail to understand that we don't have to keep being this nice. We do it because we want to, not because we have to. We do it because we value life enough not to want to take it wantonly.

And I'll be shedding no tears if, or when, we decide it's No More Mr. Nice Guy.

You think Abu Ghraib was not nice? Because we can show you "not nice," boys. In fact, I seem to recall we showed the world "not nice" once already.

UPDATE: Several people have said this better than I did; blogging remains for me a daily exercise in humility. From Little Miss Attila:

We are not the rich spoiled people you see on television. We are not the people of the obesity epidemic, who gorge on McDonald's food and never exercise. We are not the sex addicts, the beer men who go to strip clubs for a cheap thrill on a Saturday night. We're much, much more than that, and each time the jihadists try to prove how weak we are they will be dealt another crippling blow until they have trouble finding a goddamned Western kitten to kidnap and torment.

And Serenity:

The issue is, there is a war on. This is a serious war. The war on terror. The war on our very way of life. We aren't taking it seriously. We're acting like a pack of imbecellic brats running around inside a burning building, refusing to let anyone out the door until we've all had a good swing at each other. All the while not realizing we are dooming oursleves in the process.

What's it going to take? How much must we endure before we go back to a country who respectfully disagrees? How far must we go before we can stand together as a country, as one, as Americans against the...well fuck, the forces of evil?

I think the first thing it's going to take is a widespread acknowledgement and acceptance of the existence of evil. Because there remain too many who deny that evil exists. That's "simplistic" thinking. That's "cowboy movie" thinking. That's "black and white" thinking.

And to them I say: Every time you sit before a computer, you are looking at a product of black and white logic.

Some things are binary. The war against islamofascist terror is one of them.

Posted by Ilyka at May 12, 2004 02:46 AM in i don't know you tell me