Lessee here...first, there was the Syrian Band of Flight 327...14 Syrians with weak stomachs and a penchant for McDonald's, who may or may not actually have been conducting a Terrorist Probe, or maybe they were just messing with American minds, which is just rude, because this is where they're gigging, the ungrateful Semites. Then there's the story of a fellow with the Middle Eastern cant who was in an airplane bathroom removing the mirror and trying to get through the wall into the cockpit before an Air Marshal broke down the door which, if true, is certainly cause for concern. And, yesterday morning, authorities stopped a New York bound train in Newark and questioned the passengers, because someone found what the New York Times euphemistically calls a "religious message" in an envelope in the restroom. In one of those Gosh What A Modern Age We Live In moments, I was on a cellphone on a ferry in the middle of the Hudson river talking to my mother in California who told me about the train in Newark.
This has created a bit of nervousness for Your Humble Narrator. Not that I fear the loss of my own life life or limbs--I think that, most likely, the next Terrorist Event will be a plane going BOOM up in the sky, rather than being used as an Allah-guided air-to-ground missile...American passengers simply wouldn't allow anything else. Neither am I as nervous as some people, which I find odd, because I actually attended the first Terrorist Event. Still: frost this yummy concoction of fact and rumor of with 500 pages' worth of 9/11 Commission Report (.PDFs both great and small available here), and you've got yourself an anxiously tasty treat. It's nerve-wracking-riffic!
Before the July 4 weekend, Peggy Noonan suggested that Americans might need a sort of break from all of this History-Makin', and that Long John Kerry might be just the sort of dull Gaul to provide it.
The only problem with that: as Americans we haven't been asked to do anything. Except "shop." And "go about our business." Oh, and "be vigilant," whatever that means.
Packrat Lileks recently found a bar of Victory Soap in an old box o' krep--a small bar of cheap WWII-era hotel soap, emblazoned with the V-for-Victory insignia and its attendant dit-dit-dit-dah Morse code sigil. Back then, there was no possible way to deny we were at war. If your hotel soap didn't remind you, your monthly ration book of food staples did. You remembered we were at war when you had to patch your car tire instead of getting a new one, because all our rubber was transporting our boys across the battlefields of Europe in trucks and returning them safely to ground on fat-wheeled bombers. When you stuck your hand in your pocket to get some change your fingers got grubby because the pennies were made of easily-blackened zinc-coated steel instead of copper, which was being used for the shells that were pounding Japanese-held islands in the Pacific.
There was no doubt. There were no homegrown propagandists explaining to the stupid Americans how FDR was all buddy-buddy with Hitler's cousins. Celebrities weren't lining up to compare him to female genitalia, and they weren't giving speeches at the National Press Club about how oppressed and silenced they were.
It made sense to the polity: we were attacked by the Japanese, and Germany declared war on us four days later. To protect ourselves, we undertook a massive, nationwide effort that was directed not just at Tokyo, but at all of the Axis Powers that supported each other in their efforts to attack us and our allies. Did we head off to the South Pacific on December 8, 1941? No. We first invaded Vichy-controlled Morocco, so we could then move through it to attack German forces in North Africa while the British attacked them from Egypt.
Iraq is close to the geographic center of the Middle East. It borders Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. It's a stone's throw from Afghanistan and Sudan. And now, the US Central Command has a base of operations there with over 100,000 troops.
Does that make sense to you? It makes sense to me, because this is a war. Strategically, we have placed our forces in a position from which they can strike at any of our enemies in the region. That's the sort of thing you do in a war.
Not that you'd know that from watching the news or reading the papers, or from listening to our incumbent President or his hopeful challenger. During WWII, a troop ship was sunk, with a loss of 1,500 American soldiers. The papers didn't report it, because it might have adversely affected the morale of the nation. Today, we hear about every American death, in ones and twos, every scratch, every injury, day after day. Half of the political leadership is unwilling to behave as though we are in a war because it might benefit the sitting President. The other half is unwilling to do so because they're afraid of being accused of scaremongering and using the Iraq campaign for political ends. The incumbent has mistaken a time of crisis as a mandate for the imposition of Christian domestic policy, creating unnecessary strife on the home front. The challenger diffidently echoes the incumbent's war strategy while relying on the irrational animus of his base to carry him into office.
This is a sad, pathetic joke. The American polity is a moody, spoiled adolescent, so unsure of itself, so mired in the midst of a navel-gazing identity crisis, that it can't even clearly recognize a punch in the face as the initiation of combat.
Ms. Noonan thinks I need a break--and she's right. I need respite from this half-assed, wage- war- in- comfort- with- a- Frappuccino™- in- one- hand- and- the- TV- remote- in- the- other nonsense. FDR was on the radio 17 times in four years during WWII--where is our President? I want basic briefings on our progress abroad. At home, I want to know that our airliners are protected, and not subject to Norm Minetta's flaccidly inoffensive PC whims. I want to know that my local hospitals and first responders are being given extensive and effective training in dealing with biological and radiological exposure. I want to know that we're spending the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to secure our nation's seaports. And if these things are not occurring, I want to know that too, and I want to know why.
I'm sick of relying on rumor and anecdote, and I'm fed up with our half-educated, incompetent, partisan media, and I'm disgusted by our lazy, frothing, muddle-headed citizenry.
Are we at war or not, people? Make up your damn mind. Enough of this neurotic freakshow.
