Today is September 11, 2011
This dark anniversary makes me feel kind of blue, because I’m reminded of that ruthless and cowardly attack, and how so many lives were lost and ruined and for too many — both here and abroad — the anguish and the cascade of loss is still with us to this day. I am also reminded of how I had once despaired that we had the collective will and capacity to do anything about it.
I swore when I first realized what had happened, that I wanted Bin Laden’s head on a pike. I hated him and everything he stood for and believed in with a perfect and righteous hatred. I still do. I am not ashamed. I am proud of my hate, and I think you all should share it.
I am proud of it because it is based in a deep faith in the rightness of our cause, and the profound error of his and theirs. And a confidence that no amount of talking will solve this problem. They must be destroyed, their land salted, their names erased from the books, until the world has been cleansed of every trace of them.
I wanted vengance, yes. But I also wanted to send a warning. No one does this to us and lives. Like the decayed body of a rat caught in a trap serves as a sign and a warning to any other rats that may come skulking by, his ugly decapitated mug should stand at our borders for all to see: this is what we are! Don’t tread on me! I thought of the address Churchill gave the US Congress on December 26, 1941. Speaking of the treacherous surprise attack on Pearl Harbor he said of the Japanese: “what kind of people do they think we are? is it possible they don’t realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget! – And by God, we did, didn’t we? And I thought, that is the fate which awaits the cowardly, deceitful, loathsome Wahabiists who lurk in the shadows, as well as the palaces of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, hiding behind their women and children, and sending their pawns through the world to attack the innocent.
Eight years on, in 2009, I despaired, thinking, no, this is not what we are. Those of us capable of these emotions are apparently unable to accomplish the task, or they confused it with other, irrelevant and pointless tasks, and tangled it up in incompetence and errors of every sort, until we are all left wondering what the hell we are doing any more. Two years ago today, I wrote: “I’m ashamed of us. We suck.”
You all know what I’m talking about. I’m sick of talking about it.
Sometimes I think we’re all just a bunch of pussies and we don’t have the guts to stand up for what we believe in any more. Believe whatever you want to believe, but be prepared to defend yourself, or else there may come a day when it will be made a crime. And though like everything else, our rights and freedoms come from God, they can be taken away by men if we let them.
Then on May 1, 2011, we heard the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan.
And I thought: “Finally. Death is too good for him. Let his fate serve as a warning to whatever other cowardly rats lurk out there wishing to do us harm. Beware! And know what kind of people we are!”