Anniversary
By Mitch Berg
I’ve always written something about 9/11. I stand by it all; I’m proud of some of it.
This year, I’ll let Michelle Malkin sum it up for me:
But remembrance without resistance to jihad and its enablers is a recipe for another 9/11. This is what fueled my first two books, on immigration enforcement and profiling. This is what fuels much of the work on this blog and at Hot Air. Not every American wears a military uniform. But every American has a role to play in protecting our homeland–not just from Muslim terrorists, but from their financiers, their public relations machine, their sharia-pimping activists, the anti-war goons, the civil liberties absolutists, and the academic apologists for our enemies.
The Left greets such a commitment with mockery and derision, preferring instead to suck its collective thumb, play the grievance card, and engage in hindsight hypocrisy.
As the most infamous of all Internet leftists once said: Screw them.
With a stick.
Red was across the Hudson as it all happened – and her writing about the whole thing helped reel me into her blog, years and years ago:
Behind me, pacing in the dark bar, was a guy on his cell phone. He had obviously gotten through to someone. Finally. I only heard snippets.
“So he called you? ….. When? …. Had he gone downstairs yet? …. What time was that? Yeah … he called me when the first plane hit … I told him to fucking get the hell out of there … So he was on his way out when he called?”
Snippets. Fragments of a story. A life.
A man missing. Like so many people were missing in those days. Every empty wall covered in “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON?”
I heard the pain in the cell phone guy’s voice. But he was trying to keep it together. It was almost like when you know you need to cry, but you feel you can’t – and what happens to your voice when you’re holding all of that back. It gets tight, like a wire, rigid – but occasionally what’s going on inside you betrays you. There’s a waver in the voice, or you take a deep shaky breath … and there’s a tsunami there. Hovering above your head. Waiting for an opening.
And of course Lileks:
Six years.
It seemed right away like it would be a big war, three to four years – Afghanistan first, of course, then Iraq, then Iran. The idea that it would have stalled and ended up in diffuse oblique arguments about political timetables would have been immensely depressing. There was a model for this sort of thing, a template. Advance. But that requires cultural confidence, a loose agreement on the goals, the rationale, the nature of the enemy and the endgame. We don’t have those things. Imagine telling someone six years ago Iran would be allowed, by default, to make nuclear weapons. They would wonder what the hell we’d done with half a decade, plus change. What part of 25 years of Death to America didn’t we get, exactly?
For today, I have nothing to add that isn’t either specious or four or five years old.
The only commentary worth reading isn’t written; support it by supporting our troops.
September 11th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Ann Coulter’s recipe, written on September 12, 2001:
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.”
Urban II, speaking in Clermont in 1095, was more prolix. But the message was the same.
The more things change . . . .
.
September 11th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Six years after the murder of 3,000 Americans and all you wingnuts can do is slag the left. But for some reason you can’t even bring yourself to write the words “B-I-N L-A-D-E-N.”
Buncha frauds.
September 11th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Six years after 9/11 and all you moonbats can do is ignore and appease the enemy. But for some reason you can’t even bring yourself to write the words “I-S-L-A-M-I-C J-I-H-A-D-I-S-T-S.”
September 11th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Many lefties are fixated on killing Bin Laden, as if that will solve the problem. Focusing on Bin Laden is stupid because it will not solve the problem. Therefore, many lefties act stupidly. Consequently, wingnuts mock them.
Bin Laden is no more the problem now than Saladin was the problem in his day. They are mere men and when they die, others can take their place. The problem is their belief that their religion compels them to make war on us. Since we can’t kill an ideology (if nowhere else, it will be incubated in universities), we must kill as many adherents of the ideology as practicable until we run out of adherents or lose our will to survive.
It’s really quite logical, though I don’t suppose the sort of people who find themselves chanting “Bin Laden, Bin Laden” would care about that sort of thing.
September 11th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Good luck finding him, Angry Clown. I wish you well!
Write when you get work.
September 11th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Cowards. Blowhards. Hypocrites.
September 11th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Gosh AC, since Mr. Osama has declared Iraq the foremost front in the “war between us” you should be 100% behind the surge. It’s so much easier having these gentlemen present themselves for extermination than rooting around the Hindu Kush, dontcha think?
September 11th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Go wet your pants in the IDS Center, Kerm. Angryclown demands vengeance for 9/11. Bush’s greatest failing isn’t that he pushed us into an illegal war. It’s that he has completely fucked up his illegal war. Bin Laden’s winning and you rightwing dickheads have to answer for it.
September 11th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Bin Laden, Bin Laden, Bin Laden…wah, wah, wah, wah, wah!!!
When you’ve something to REALLY contribute Angry Clown, then post.
You lefty pukes are and have always been about symbolism. To quote Mr. Spock “form without substance.” Bin Laden as a leader is fungible. Period. Why waste assets on him that could take out 100’s of The Pedophile Prophet’s bacon boy acolytes? If OBL gets whacked, the Islamists have an instant martyr. So what? There will be another to replace him hours before he reaches room temperature.
The asymmetry of Al Queadea is it’s cellular nature. It is a belief system. AC,you’re thinking as an Occidental, not an Easterner.
Revenge for 9-11. Nope. Not even close.This is a war, not a revenge mission, ya flamer.
Besides, 95% of the war on radical Islam will be fought black ops or Spec Ops. No headlines, no troop movements.SEAL platoons going in, coming out. A Ranger company on a two month force recon. All fought off the front pages. Israeli Marines into the Biqa River Valley (aka Muslim Terrorist Central-where most likely Snappy Saddam’s WMD are currently being warehoused).
Asymmetrical war. Welcome to it Occidental thinker boy.
Oh, and we conservatives are to blame. So, it’s us on the right that control the NYT editorial board that outs at least two intelligence programs that hamstrings us? Amazingly the Islamists comm network went down less than 4 hours after one NYT story came out.
Now that we Vast Right Wing Conspiracy League Members control the NYT and WAPO, if only we could just get one more agent like Agent Lewinsky…
September 11th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
I see Mangy Clown forgot to take his lithium this morning.
September 11th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
“Cowards. Blowhards. Hypocrites.”
Funny how that applies so well to the Angryclowns of the world. . .
September 11th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Yeah, bin Laden’s so winning that the cowardly bastard is stuck issuing meaningless proclamations from some Pakistani safehouse while the the President can fly into the middle of the former “Islamic State of Iraq.” He’s so winning that most of his top staff are dead or captured. He’s so winning that he’s only been able to pull off a couple of attacks since 9/11, and none of them in the US.
Odd how the US can reverse the trends in Iraq and make significant headway against a situation that was supposed to be intractable, but not win, but OBL can be impotent and be “winning.” Apparently they didn’t teach elementary logic at clown college, did they?
September 11th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
When you’ve got something to REALLY contribute Angry Clown, then post.
Have you ever read one of his posts before? Clearly, substantive contributions are not his goal.
September 11th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
So, did you guys know we haven’t caught Bin Laden yet?
September 11th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
…and that if we DO, terrorism will end?
September 11th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Wow Anticlown. That’s one mean case of BDS augmented obsession. You really need to take a week off. Maybe visit Baraboo.
September 11th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
You wingnuts only believe in amnesty when it’s for a guy who killed 3,000 Americans.
September 11th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
I’m more interested in getting rid of “J-O-E B-I-D-E-N”, than I am B-I-N L-A-D-E-N.”
But, I’m sure special forces training is going well for you AC. What’s that? You haven’t finished basic yet?
September 11th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Remember the 1993 WTC bombing? six dead, over a thousand injured. Lucky for us the cyanide gas that was supposed to be released in the explosion was burned in the fireball.
Some of the perps were caught. They fingered a guy — an American citizen of Iraqi heritage — named Abdul Rahman Yasin. He was detained by the FBI, released, and fled to Iraq.
Saddam offered to give Yasin to the US in exchange for lifting the sanctions then in place for his non-compliance with the 1992 ceasefire that ended the Gulf War.
In Iraq in 2003 Yasin claimed, in a 60 Minutes interview, that he was so cooperative with the FBI agents who interviewed him a few days after the 1993 WTC bombing that they released him and urged him to leave the United States.
That was the kind of “vengeance” the US took against terrorists the last time a democrat occupied the White House.
Bush put Yasin on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list in 2002 along with Bin Laden. Yasin is still unaccounted for.
September 11th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Angryclown muttered through his cup of wrath “You wingnuts only believe in amnesty when it’s for a guy who killed 3,000 Americans.”
No, I’d shoot the prick myself if I could. I’d have to borrow a gun from Mitch. Hey, is this thing the safety?
September 12th, 2007 at 4:51 am
Jay Reding puked: “If OBL gets whacked, the Islamists have an instant martyr. So what?”
Cause he killed 3,000 Americans and is sitting around in Pakistan laughing at the U.S. and at your impotent, lame-duck president, you ridiculous moron. Six years and Bush hasn’t been able to find a way to put a cruise missile up bin Laden’s ass. Four years of failed nation-building in Iraq. And all you creepy litttle wingnut cheerleaders can do is make excuses for why it’s OK that bin Laden isn’t dead. Get bent.
September 12th, 2007 at 4:53 am
Master of Bation says: I’m more interested in getting rid of “J-O-E B-I-D-E-N”, than I am B-I-N L-A-D-E-N.”
That says all that anybody needs to know about you.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:25 am
AssClown ejaculated: “You wingnuts only believe in amnesty when it’s for a guy who killed 3,000 Americans.”
Au contraire my little colon comedian.
My favorite reoccurring dream features me beating Bin Laden to a bloody, slow death with the lifeless form of one of our homegrown leftist traitors…you know, one of your nearest and dearest friends.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Thanks notsoswiftee, but Angryclown would prefer that bin Laden’s death occur in the real world, not in that scary unconscious netherworld where every night you implore: “Take me from behind, Cheney!”
September 12th, 2007 at 9:04 am
That’s a hoot Swiftee, considering you and your fellow ineffectual smurfs don’t have the temerity to squash a ladybug much less go toe-to-toe with Osama bin Santa Claus.
September 12th, 2007 at 11:03 am
TiStP:
Um…huh?
September 12th, 2007 at 11:25 am
I think he’s calling you guys a buncha pussies.
September 12th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Huh.
From an anonymous commenter?
The hell you say.
September 12th, 2007 at 11:32 am
How many Tims do you have in St. Paul? Maybe three?
September 12th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Hm. The Governor – nah, it ain’t him – and the crazy guy who shoots lightning bolts over on Ramsey Hill – nah, not him – and that drooling schizoid drunk who’s always relieving himself behind that Cambodian fish market on University…
Yep. Three of ’em.
I vote for #3.
September 12th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Could be Pawlenty. Or his “evil twin.”
September 12th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
That says all that anybody needs to know about you.
That’s all you need to know about me. If you think you’ll ever get anything more from me than a snarky reply to any of your ridiculous comments, then you’re a delusional clown. But we knew that already.