Bull Run, The Alamo, Pearl Harbor; these are all names of places that have left an indelible image on the American psyche. Now we can add to these names another one that will become an event signifying the epitome of reckless terror, the massacre of September 11, 2001. This day will go down in history as the worse single attack of terrorism in the world. This is the day that 19 men guided four hijacked jet airliners to targets of American and Western dominance on a suicidal mission to repudiate the Western ideals of freedom and trade in a religious nation with a secular government.
  Why did they do this? The answers may never be determined in exact terms. The madmen who murdered nearly 7,000 innocent persons from a score of countries both Western, Islamic and Oriental left no letters detailing the corruption of their thinking. All we have to attest to their delusions is the carnage of a world center of trade, and the widows, widowers, some 20,000 orphans and tens of thousands, no…millions of shocked persons from around the world. This is one of those events that will be remembered for generations. Fifty years from now people will be able to tell what they were doing, and where they were when they first heard the news. And in this era of mass communications, and instantaneous news and communications many of us saw the second jetliner crash live in the second tower of the World Trade Center. We all sat transfixed that fateful Tuesday in horror at the magnitude of the damage, lost in a wonderment of the hatred that must run in the abysmal morass of those foggy delusional minds that so long ago decided to take up arms against a free people, using the very tools of their capitalism against them. How we wondered as the events unfolded in the next week could these people live amongst us, using our free public libraries to send e-mails back and forth to one another? Perhaps plotting the destruction they planned to wreck on that sunny morning.
  The perpetrators of this carnage have died in their fiery tools of destruction, they have left no written record yet uncovered detailing their warped bent of mind. No tapes to loved ones explaining their course of action has surfaced. Instead we have the haunting memories of phone calls made from the doomed jetliners, phone calls made by the fated passengers to their own loved ones. Phone calls giving a last goodbye, a fond farewell, and a kiss goodnight. The first jetliners had no idea of the mission of the suicidal hijackers, the passengers did what Americans generally do when confronted with authority good or ill, they obey to save lives. It can be surmised that the passengers were told that the hijackers were taking the plane back to the airport; that they should remain calm and in their seats or perhaps the back of the plane. In such circumstances the theory was always that the hijacker was just wanting money, or to take the plane to some 'peace and freedom loving land' such as Libya or Cuba. In such a situation to sit calm, to comfort the frightened would seem the better part of valor. Heroics were not called for in such a situation, why try to rush a madman with a bomb and get the plane blown up when sitting and complying with him will likely lead to people making it out OK? But this is a new type of hijacking, just as we are in a new type of war. In this case the perpetrators were bend on suicide…yes suicide, just what all the major religions rail against. These so called Islamic Fundamentalists were going against one of the major tenants of their own religion. They committed suicide and took several hundred innocents with them, and several thousands in the buildings that they bored into.
  Yet out of this carnage and smoke there were some real stories of heroism, the jetliner that crashed in Pennsylvania is reputed to have been informed of the attacks by the other jetliners, it seems certain that the passengers decided to rush the terrorists and risk plowing into that Pennsylvania field rather than into a building full of people. It is spirit such as this that made this Nation great and mighty in the world. It is the spirit exemplified by those doomed passengers that will sustain this great land through the coming years of turmoil we are bound to experience. To experience, not to suffer, suffering is an experience through which one cannot see through to a clear day, but we in the United States of America see a brighter future through the smoke and haze of the collapsed World Trade Center. We see the sun shine though the piles of collapsed rubble and bent beams and girders that are now the symbols of American and Western Capitalism. We will not suffer in the coming years, each deprivation we experience will be a token of the rewards we will share with the world on the day that we feel the world is rid of the rabble that cause such heedless destruction. We can endure, and we have in the past. We have seen it when the US Army beat our own Native tribes into submission. We have seen the indomitable spirit of the Mountain men, on their relentless hunt for furs to supply Eastern markets. We have seen the cattlemen and sheep men converge in their fiery battles on the limitless plains. It was evidenced to us during the relentless plowing of the Great American Desert, and again during the Dust Bowl that plowing caused. Yes, we cause problems sometimes, who hasn't? But, what is more to the point is the fact that we try to fix the problems we cause; we fixed the cause of the dust bowl with contour plowing and other conservation measures. The mountain men opened up the mountains and plains, killing countless buffalo and other animals for furs. But when we saw that we were about to lose the last of those animals we were the first in the world to create national parks to protect that land and the animals on it for future generations. And the Native Tribes that remained at the end of the great land grab were brought to the bosom of America, embraced as fellow Americans and brought into the American Family. Now most of us Americans carry some of that same Red Man's blood in our hearts and the spirit of the Red Man lives still in the wild heart that pounds this Red American blood through our bodies.
  So rise up to the challenge people, we have before, and we will again, we are unconquerable; there is nothing we cannot do when we are allied against a foe. Whether it is those high mountains over yonder that must be crossed, that great desert to enter, or those wild savages that populate some barren land, we will see to term the things that must be done. It has been said that we are a large fractious family; I cannot argue against that. We quarrel, we belly ache, and we bitch a lot. We are divided by petty things that don't really matter all that much. And now in the shadow of the smoke brought by some killer terrorists from some distant land, we find the unifying glue that will bring us all back together united as a hammer against the foe. The petty things don't seem all that important anymore. Looking back, seeing that jet slam into that building, it all seems like a dream, a Hollywood movie, but it was real, and so must be our resolve. We will unite as never before to conquer this enemy. The small matters of philosophy, race, slant of eye make no difference when compared to the people of all races, and nationalities that were crushed and incinerated in those buildings. This is something the enemy did not know about us, they have been watching CNN showing riots in the US. This large fractured family seemingly bent on self-destruction, a fractured rock easy to split with a few well placed blows. And we gave them the hammer! But…. we are not so easily broken. What has happened was not the hammer on fissured rock, but a mallet on hot iron. The blows they gave us annealed us, forged us into a harder, more cohesive whole. Being caught between their anvil of extremism, and their hammer of jet fuel we have found ourselves, like many times before; a harder, tougher lot. Hammered tighter and tighter together until we are harder than steel. Forged in the fires of the Twin Towers, annealed in the heat of retribution. We are tighter than any time in the lifetime of most of us. This has brought us kicking and screaming into a new time of war. We Americans are not warmongers regardless of how the world sees us. We do not rush out to do battle with people for no reason; most of our wars are to save others from oppression. And we are usually cast in the light of an Imperialists power for trying to help others. But this war will be different. This will be a war of retribution as well as a war to save others from oppression.
  The people we will be fighting will not be the common people of Afghanistan; the foe in this case is the Taliban, the ruling elite of this poor oppressed country that has known nothing but war for a generation. The Afghanis are a tough hardened people, but their rulers are oppressors the likes of which has been seen only a few times in the last century. They rank with Pol Pot, Hitler, and Stalin in their ruthless killing of innocents and dissenters. This is a regime that has so misinterpreted their Holy Writ that they require men to wear long beards; women are surgically castrated to deny them sexual pleasure. Women are denied education, stoned to death for adultery; homosexuals have walls toppled upon them to kill them. All forms of pleasure have effectively been outlawed, whether it be card playing, watching videos, or keeping a pet bird in a cage one is subject to disciplinary measures up to and including death. This is the evil that we must defeat, not the common people, but the misguided misanthropes that rule this desperately poor, bombarded country.
  But how to go about this? How does one destroy the infrastructure of a country with no infrastructure? How does one overthrow a ruling elite with no centers of government, fractured and split, little pieces of which are hidden in caves and stowed away in basements across a large isolated xenophobic mountainous country? This is indeed a new kind of war for us. And as I listen to the pundits, the hawks lamenting the absence of a retaliatory strike, and as I listen to the pitiful whining of the doves saying we should just let it go, that it is our own fault I am more appreciative of President Bush and his 'thinking man's ' way of war. There are some who call for the annihilation of the country of Afghanistan; "A dozen nuclear weapons should suffice for this", "turn the southern mountains of Afghanistan into a parking lot" is a sentence heard a few times on the radio. But this would do no good for our end cause. We must look to the end result of any military action or non-action. The court of world opinion would turn against us if we were the first to use nuclear weapons. And needless destruction of innocents must be minimized. Of course there will always in the words of Timothy McVeigh be 'collateral damage'. But the heedless wanton destruction of the people should be avoided. Restraint should be the watchword. But vigilance, watchfulness, these are also words that should be first in our minds, especially those of us on the home front. We must be aware of people who might be the sleeper agents we dread. Whether it is biological, chemical or some other means, there are almost certainly bound to be further attacks on us. And they will be more of the surprise attacks on civilians we saw on September 11, 2001. But just as the horrified world turned it's backs immediately on this ragtag group of cowards, so they would likely abandon their tacit support of us if we were to engage in similar targeting of civilians.
  When the battle is finally joined there is likely to be a wave of the sleeper agents dispersed through the country to disseminate their form of 'justice' on us in return for the promise of a paradise and their 72 virgins to serve them in the afterlife. So let's spend the time rooting them out on the home front first. The FBI and civil police can do their examinations of all likely or suspected accomplices while the military annalists and strategists plot invasion routes and techniques. The military can plan to conquer, while the civil authorities sift through the mountains of documents and tips to ferret out the rebels in our midst.
  This brings up the news that there may have been more jetliners that were due to leave with more terrorists onboard, here we have good evidence that there will be more carnage yet to occur. This must make us watchful, ready to report suspicious activities and persons to the authorities, but we must not give the Taliban the victory they seek by greatly modifying our way of life. This must not become another Northern Ireland or Israel where the suicide bombers will walk into a nightclub or restaurant and detonate their explosive satchel destroying themselves and all those around them. We have the advantage over those afflicted countries in that these terrorists are persons not often encountered in the American landscape. In this way we should be able to investigate all persons recently arrived from Middle Eastern countries and verify their unwillingness to participate in such activities. Any found wanting in that regard if not deported, should be watched surreptitiously and arrested at the time that criminal intent can be proven. This will of course bring up the shadows and bad specters of 'racial profiling'. In actuality most so-called racial profiling might be more accurately called 'class profiling'. Even though we consider ourselves to be to a great extent a 'classless' society we do have several strata of class distinctions, as well as cultural distinctions. In fact most people put themselves into a class willingly donning the garb and mannerisms of a particular class or culture within our own great sea of varying cultures. This is what makes America such a great place; a man can appear with a beard or without, unlike Afghanistan where a man can be arrested for not having a long enough beard. And even though a person will face a certain amount of resistance and resentment as well as prejudice for appearing in a certain style of clothes, hairstyle or mannerisms, it is legal in this country. Still, there are certain mannerisms that are seen by the majority as telltale signs of association with unsavory and illegal activities. Therefore white youngsters cruising an inner city slum are likely to be seen by the police as potential buyers of illicit drugs. And young black men with baggy pants, pagers and their baseball caps on backwards are often associated with being drug dealers. These are sometimes unfortunate effects of internal prejudices that can be quite easily externalized and capitalized on to harass innocent persons. However in this instance it is more than just the threat of teenagers using drugs that must catapult us into action, we must rid the country of these insidious people living amongst us that might at any time rise up and ram a fuel truck into Caesars Palace, a Cessna loaded with explosives into Disneyland. It is time for us to examine our own petty preoccupation with Political Correctness and return to the core roots of American Idealism.
  It must be said and noted on every corner of our cities and every holler in the country that not all person recently arrived from a Middle Eastern country is likely to be a terrorist, in fact there are probably no more than a few hundred among the hundreds of thousands of newly arrived Mid Eastern immigrants. Therefore we must not harass or intimidate these new arrivals and potential citizens and parents of what will be a new wave of proud Native-born Americans. Do not alienate these people, but they must also be willing to se that they look and talk the same as these killers; therefore they should expect more scrutiny. They should plan that they will be examined in their personal, business and travel life. When they want to buy ten tons of high-Nitrogen fertilizer for their farm a red flag will be raised. When they set off a metal detector in an airport heads will turn, and some are likely to fall to the floor to escape the seemingly inevitable bomb blast. New arrivals; don't let this sour you on us, you are welcomed by most in this country, and you will succeed here. Just be patient, endure the extra inquiries and when this is all over you will feel the pressure and resentment ease. And truth be told, all arrivals in this country that come in large numbers feel a certain backlash when they settle in here. Their children will live the American life with few traces of their ancestry, but the first generation will forever be considered newcomers and aliens.
  Now that we have the flag flying from every flagpole again, now that the glorious banner has been hoisted in the rubble of the World Trade Center, we need to rise to the occasion and support our president, our military, our police and internal security personnel. I know my people, and we will conquer, we will do what is necessary, and with the grace, help and will of God Almighty we will rid the world of this vermin that lies within and without our own granaries and free the good people of the world of the terrible affliction they have put upon us.