It’s the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks tomorrow. It’s a good time to reflect, but I’m not sure everyone knows on what exactly. Of course, there are the tragic deaths, but one of the reasons to remember is to keep in mind the lessons we need to learn to keep such a horror from happening again. And what is that lesson?
Here’s what I think we need to learn from 9/11: There are large numbers of violent, irrational people out there and we can’t just ignore them and hope they go away. As we sit around with our iPads and our DVRs and enjoy our culture, it’s easy to forget there are barbarians standing just outside. They aren’t very good at anything, but they would like to see us dead.
I don’t think in this post 9/11 world most people have learned the appropriate lesson from this. The whole Koran burning insanity illustrates this. That a handful of people in Florida can hold the world hostage by threatening to burn a few books is beyond silly, yet the main reaction has been not to tackle how ridiculous that is but to figure out how to appease the irrational violent people. You can’t appease irrational people. They’ll get violent over one guy burning Korans. They’ll get violent over cartoons. They’ll get violent because of false rumors of Korans being flushed down toilets. And yet are focus is on how to keep these crazy people happy and calm.
There’s a popular school of thought that if we just got out of the Middle East, then all the irrational violent people would be happy and stuff. We want to prescribe rational notions to irrational people. The left think the people in the Middle East are like angry dogs; you can just do a few tricks to keep their simple minds calm. But they’re people, and people have a complex crazy. And you can’t just push that crazy off to some isolated area and think it will all work out for the better. At some point, we have to engage it. That doesn’t just mean militarily — hopefully it doesn’t mean anymore fighting — but at some point we have to stand up for ourselves. We can’t have people attack us and be all like, “Oh, we’re sorry. Let’s try to be nicer to you people.” We act weak, and we get attacked. The radical Muslims are stomping all over Europe now because those people are nothing but weak; they can’t even stand up for their culture anymore. We have to be strong, and if we’re strong enough, we can give people something better to hold onto that their current violent, craziness. The culture over there has to change one day, and we might as well lead the way.
We haven’t been good at the not being weak lately. We can do better. We can’t appease the craziness in the Middle East — we have to be more willing to call it out. With all the oppression and violence that goes on there every day, we should have been more willing to ridicule the notion that a bunch of Korans burning was anything worth our attention.
Well, that’s my ramble. 9/11 is complicated. There’s my attempt this year to figure some things out.
What have we learned? Burning Qurans is bad, Muslims are a peaceful people, If you burn the Quran Muslims will kill a lot of people.
If you today, decide to move the Mosque to a different location, it may in fact cause the peaceful Muslims to kill people “even in innocent”.
It is your constitutional right to be a dope and express your dopey opinions. I think you are right that our lower expectations of Islamists acting like a bunch of crazies at the drop of an unflushed Koran is dopey too.
I think I’ve got the whole Muslim/Islam/Quran/Koran/Jihad/Intifada/Fatwa/Imam/Sharia/no pictures of Mohammed thing figured out:
Our (non-Muslim types) full-time job: We have the responsibility to be very, Very, VERY sensitive to any and all things Muslim/Islam/Quran/Koran/Jihad/Intifada/Fatwa/Imam/Sharia/no pictures of Mohammed so as not to say or do anything that might offend them.
Some of us (non-Muslim types) have a second, full-time job in which we have the responsibility to predict what might offend them (Muslim types), and then scream “Islamophobe” at any of us (non-Muslim types) that we feel aren’t being sensitive enough.
Their (Muslim types) full-time job: They have the responsibility to keep coming up with new things about which to be offended.
Just my opinion, but I think their’s is the much greater responsibility.
We need an Islamaphobe Czar and we need him now! Obviously a lowly woman will not due as they should know their place which is at home cleaning the house, making tasty meals and pleasuring her male whenever he wishes.
It was beautiful that morning. Just another day in America. I wasn’t thinking about anything complex, I was just enjoying my day. Then I got the call from my Mom about what she heard on the radio and…I don’t have to write any more.
America still hasn’t woken up. America elected someone who hasn’t woken up. We’ve got people overseas and America hasn’t figured out why they’re in harm’s way, why a free society like ours has to do that now and then. We’re going to have to fight like wildcats to get people to wake up to reality.
Some Americans were aware. Most of the rest woke up. The problem is that few remaining who reuse to wake up, or support what happenned. It does not bode well that we have become so weak that the muzzies think we cower at their threats. Or that they can make those threats, or act on them, with impunity. Dear God I miss Reagan.
I would simply add “…or be destroyed if its adherents refuse to change and continue attacking us and our culture”.
“There are large numbers of violent, irrational people out there and we can’t just ignore them and hope they go away.”
Yes, those people are called Muslims. And, they bring violence and a will to offend every other religion (while claiming victim status) with them everywhere they go…probably has something to do with the fact that the whole mission of their “religion” is to eliminate every other legitimate religion…just a thought.
-Always surrender?
-blame the victim?
-Don’t put the government in charge of rebuilding anything that is not a sand castle?
It’s the shared hatred of the rest of us that unites Islamists and the Left.
American liberals don’t love America. They despise it. All they love is their own fantasy of what America could become. They are false patriots.
The Democratic Party: Con-men elected by the ignorant and the arrogant
The above true statements are from http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/ and they are true.
I’m getting real tired of tip toeing around so as not to offend the sensibilities of a bunch of loonies who want to enslave or destroy us.
I never thought I’d reach the point where the concept of genocide began to look like a rational solution.
I want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand:
Since 9/11/2001 there have been successful foreign Islamic attacks:
– On US soil: 0
– On Europe: Several (thousands injured and hundreds killed)
The lesson of 9/11 is that the US Military kicks ass, nuts and any other body parts in its way. Muzzle it at our extreme peril.
Burmashave, I often fear the public/Congress will try to remake or muzzle the military as they did after WW2. Think this DADT thing is the chance some are looking for? I do.
Well done, Frank J. 🙂
@Marko: You may well be right. I had been thinking the DADT thing was more of a distraction than anything else, but it was a series of such “distractions” that weakened our military during the 90’s..
What did we learn? Some of us learned nothing at all. Some of us were reinforced however in the belief that God exists and if He does than His counter part does as well. Satan lives and walks among us in the people who are willing to kill, maim and abuse all in the name of self gratification, greed, envy and power. No amount of diplomacy, counseling and pretending will make it other wise. There is only one way to deal with evil and that is to stand up to it, face it down and drive it out. Tolerance will never conquer it. Inclusion will never dismantle it.
Evil is as evil does and it does in todays world very well. All it takes to thrive is good people doing nothing. Complicated I agree but the line in the sand has to be drawn, we have to start somewhere.
You can elect a black president, and they will still call you a racist.
You can handle the Koran with rubber gloves etc. and they will still call you an Islamophobe.
You can give them dictatorial power over the whole economy and they will loot it and run it into the ground and they will still blame you for being greedy.
You can do everything they ask, give everything they demand, and they still will not be appeased.
It is not and never has been about solving the problem. It has been about trying to get jerks to feel good about themselves, even though it is impossible. Theirs is a hole in the soul that can never be filled by us.
It is time we just stopped doing what they want.
We do not owe them anything.
Here is the thing about Arabs from their veiw:
-They are Gods chosen people
-They are over 1Billion strong
-Jews and westerners have been oppressing them for all time
-Their God wont show up until they have killed a lot of us
Two things that would move us down the list of people who need destroyed
-Abandon Israel so they can destroy it
-Not be the top (for good and bad) cultural, financial, military etc.. top dog of the whole world which they see as their rightful place
They dont hate us for our freedom they hate us because we embarrass them and are in their way.
Trackback to real insight of the day material.
Also, in the last sentence of the third paragraph, “And yet are focus is on how to keep these crazy people happy and calm.” I think you wanted to say, “And yet our focus…”
The moral of all this is an old one; that religion is revelation. In other words it is a vision, and a vision received by faith; but it is a vision of reality. The faith consists in a conviction of its reality.
…
He (every man) does not think that everything is right or that everything is wrong, or that everything is equally right and wrong. But he does think that right has a right to be right and therefore a right to be there; and wrong has no right to be wrong and therefore no right to be there. It is the prince of the world; but it is also a usurper. So he will apprehend vaguely what the vision will give to him vividly; no less than all that strange story of treason in heaven and the great desertion by which evil damaged and tried to destroy a cosmos that it could not create.
– G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man