A Reminder of Who We Are

I think I've already posted this. But it doesn't matter. It's so good, I should read it once a month. Alphadog sent this to me a while ago...and I thought you'd enjoy it (again?):

For those who don't know General Hawley, he's a newly retired USAF 4-Star
general. He commanded the USAF Air Combat Command [our front- line fighters
and bombers]. Formerly SAC!!! The Command headquarters is at Langley AFB,
VA. General Hawley is now retired and no longer required to be politically
correct. His short speech is very much to the point.

The following are excerpts:"

"Since the attack [9-11], 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, and everything is relative."

"Listen carefully: We're good, they're evil, and 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.

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-A-D! Well, you get the
idea.

3 "The CIA and the rest of our intelligence community have 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, and 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 "Hiya, 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. Mohammed
Atta, one of the evil scumbags who steered those planes into the killing
grounds is the son of a Cairo surgeon. But you knew this, too....you did
didn't you??? 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. It's the same today.

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. Please come back. Let's 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 Hiroshima's"? I wish I had one that says, "No
More Pearl Harbors!"

When the next American revolution breaks out, I nominate Gen. Hawley as "leader".

The Gunslinger