Subject: Straight Talk from Marine General
Good old military tough guy talk!
Speech by former ACC Commander, Gen Hawley:
"Since the attack, I have seen, heard, and read
thoughts of such surpassing stupidity that they must be
addressed. You've heard them too. Here they are:
1) "We're not good, they're not evil, everything
is relative."
Listen carefully: We're good, they're evil, nothing
is relative. Say it with me now and free yourselves.
You see, folks, saying "We're good" doesn't mean, "We're
perfect." Okay? The only perfect being is the
bearded guy on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The plain
fact is that our country has, with all our mistakes
and blunders, always been and always will be, the
greatest beacon of freedom, charity, opportunity, and
affection in history. If you need proof, open all the
borders on
Earth and see what happens. In about half a day, the
entire world would be a ghost town, and the United
States would look like one giant line to see "The
Producers."
2) "Violence only leads to more violence."
This one is so stupid you usually have to be the
president of an Ivy League University to say it.
Here's the truth, which you know in your heads and
hearts already: Ineffective, unfocused violence
leads to more violence. Limp, panicky, half-measures lead to
more violence. However, complete, fully-thought- through,
professional, well-executed violence never leads to more
violence
because, you see, afterwards, the other guys are all dead.
That's right, dead. Not "on trial," not "reeducated," not
"nurtured back into the bosom of love."
Dead. D-E-Well, you get the idea.
"The CIA and the rest of our intelligence
community has failed us."
For 25 years we have chained our spies like dogs to
a stake in the ground, and now that the house has been
robbed, we yell at them for not protecting us.
Starting in the late seventies, under Carter
appointee Stansfield Turner, the giant brains who get these
giant ideas decided that the best way to gather
international intelligence was to use spy satellites. "After
all," they reasoned, "you can see a license plate from 200
miles away." This is very helpful if you've been
attacked by a license plate. Unfortunately, we were
attacked by humans. Finding humans is not possible
with satellites. You have to use other humans.
When we bought all our satellites, we fired all our humans.
Here's the really stupid part. It takes years -
decades - to infiltrate new humans into the worst places of
the world. You can't just have a guy who looks like
Gary Busey in a Spring Break '93 sweatshirt plop himself
down in a coffee shop in Kabul and say "Hi ya, boys.
Gee, I sure would like to meet that bin Laden fella."
Well, you can - but all you'd be doing is giving the bad
guys a story they'll be telling for years.
4) "These people are poor and helpless, and
that's why they're angry at us."
Uh-huh, and Jeffrey Dahmer's frozen head collection
was just a desperate cry for help. The terrorists and
their backers are richer than Elton John and,
ironically, a good deal less annoying. The poor
helpless people, you see, are the villagers they tortured
and
murdered to stay in power. Mohamed Atta, one of the
evil scumbags who steered those planes into the
killing grounds (I'm sorry, one of the "alleged hijackers,"
according to CNN. They stopped using the word "terrorist,"
you know),
is the son of a Cairo surgeon. But you knew this, too. In
the sixties and
seventies, all the pinheads marching against the war
were upper-middle-class college kids who grabbed
any cause they could think of to get out of their final
papers and spend more time drinking. At least, that
was my excuse. It's the same today. Take the
Anti-Global-Warming
(or is it World Trade? Oh-who-knows-what-the-hell-they-want
demonstrators).
They all charged their black outfits and plane tickets on
dad's credit
card(!) before driving to the airport in their SUV's.
5) "Any profiling is racial profiling."
Who's killing us here, the Norwegians? Just days
after the attack, the New York Times had an article saying
dozens of extended members of the gazillionaire bin
Laden family living in America were afraid of
reprisals and left in a huff, never to return to studying at
Harvard and using too much Drakkar. I'm crushed. I
think we're all crushed. Please come back. With a
cherry on top? Why don't they just change their
names, anyway? It's happened in the past. Think about it.
How many Adolfs do you run into these days? Shortly
after that, I remember watching TV with my jaw on
the floor as a government official actually said, "That
little old grandmother from Sioux City could be
carrying something." Okay, how about this: No, she
couldn't. It would never be the grandmother from
Sioux City. Is it even possible? What are the odds? The
same as winning a hundred Powerball Lotteries! in a row?
A thousand? A million? And now a Secret Service guy
has been tossed off a plane and we're all supposed
to cry about it because he's an Arab? Didn't it have
the tiniest bit to do with the fact that he filled
out his forms incorrectly three times? And then left an
Arab history book on his seat as he strolled off
the plane? And came back? Armed?
Let's please all stop singing "We Are the World" for
a minute and think practically! I don't want to be
sitting on the floor in the back of a plane four
seconds away from hitting Mt. Rushmore and turn,
grinning, to the guy next to me to say, "Well, at
least we didn't offend them."
SO HERE'S what I resolve for the New Year: Never to
forget our murdered brothers and sisters. Never to
let the "relativists" get away with their immoral thinking.
After all, no matter what your daughter's political
science professor says,we didn't start this. Have
you seen that bumper sticker that says, "No More
Hiroshimas"? I wish I had one that says, "You
First. No More Pearl Harbors."
Semper Fi!
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