 I sometimes stop what I'm doing and wonder what Gary Condit's doing these days.
I don't particularly care, mind you, but Gary Condit epitomized the 9/10 mentality, lo, those eight long years ago. Those were the days when The Gray Davis was running Caliphornia into the ground -- not quite as deeply as today, but continuing a process that had been under way for years and years. Caliphornia then was what Caliphornia looked like going under. Caliphornia today is what Caliphornia looks like when it's bankrupt.
There had been a spate of shark attacks in the water, and on land Terry McAuliff was about to go on the offensive against the young administration of G.W. Bush. But The Case Of The Missing Mistress was kind of the synopsis of the first eight months of 2001. And Condit, despite his statement that his wife had no thumbs, turned out not to be the one that dunnit.
 It's a "post-9/11" world now. The anger, the fury, the desire for the murderers' blood has long since subsided, not by that very November as Mickey Kaus had predicted, but by the next November in fact. The usual suspects rallied their forces with demonstrations and propaganda and charges of "permanent war." Iraq was invaded and Saddam Hussein ejected in an attempt to bring a stable democratic state to the heart of the Muddle East that may pay off years from now or never. Cindy Sheehan rose and fell. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi rose and fell. Shamil Basayev fell. Michael Moore remains, as large as ever.
| Larger, I think, and the increase doesn't appear to be slowing. |
Fidel Castro -- approximately 186 years old -- remains. Charlie Rangel remains.
The bravery of the men of Flight 93 has been forgotten. The gallantry of NYPD and FDNY have been misplaced. They were an aberration in a world where little boys are to be turned into little girls so they won't be threatening when they grow up.
| At least in the view of those who get paid to tell us what to think. |
 G.W. Bush has retired to Crawford. Karl Rove can sometimes be seen on Fox News and writes op-ed pieces for the Wall Street Journal. Dick Cheney keeps up the good fight even as the new president's minions try to find some way to run show trials with him playing the part of Louis XVI. Guantanamo is in the process of closing. The al-Qaeda prisoners have been dusted off and sent back to their countries of origin, a hefty percentage of them returning to the fight. Missile defense is being traded away for a mess of pottage.
We haven't won the war on terror. The Obama administration tries to pretend it's not there anymore. His Excellency was against the Iraq war, wanting to shut it down, pointing to Afghanistan as "the good war" that he'd pursue to the bitter end, "going after" al-Qaeda. Now the calls are coming for withdrawal, since we've come up with some convoluted rules of engagement, a "surge" that's not
working the way the Iraqi surge was, and the casualties are going up as our troops engage more closely under worse conditions with the enemy.
 Osama bin Laden's still there. He has a base, probably in scenic Chitral, that he goes to when he's not traveling to more civilized parts. Ayman al-Zawahiri's still there. He lives in North Wazoo. Mullah Omar's still there. He lives in Quetta and operates in Kandahar and adjacent areas. Jalaluddin Haqqani's still there. He lives in South Wazoo and operates in Paktika. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's still there. He lives in the Pak tribal area in comfortable circumstances and every once in awhile he rockets Kabul, just like in the old days.
A few days ago Binny promised a "gift to the Muslims." That sort of thing usually involves corpses in Islamic parlance.
Today's 9/11. It's also the anniversary of 9/11/2001. It's the anniversary of the Battle of Vienna where the Grand Turk was sent packing in the wake of the largest cavalry charge in history. Jan Sobieski zhil, zhivet, budet zhit'.
| (translation, please, for those of us who don't speak Russian... or Polish.) |
Sorry. It's a play on a Communist party slogan, maybe first spun by Mayakovsky: "Lenin lived, lives, will live."
 3000 died in the attack eight years ago, the combined casualties of New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon. We've lost about 5000 dead in Iraq and Afghanistan: 4337 in Iraq, 716 in Afghanistan, the figures current as of about a week ago. In 1683 the Turks lost 15,000 dead and wounded at the Gates of Vienna, plus 5,000 captured, compared to 4,500 dead and wounded for the Habsburg-Polish forces. There are those who would tell us today that 4500 dead and wounded is too high a price to pay for freedom. They're the same ones who'll tell us that 5000 dead is too high a price.
Al-Qaeda hasn't folded its tent. They want to kill as many of us as possible. There will be another attack. Probably Binny and Ayman will try to outdo their last attack. We'll see if those dead and wounded are a high enough price to pay for freedom. There will be another attack indeed. And it may well come across the border with Venezuelan passports handed out in Teheran. Or not. The opportunities are many.
Meanwhile the One is going to the UN to propose we disarm, starting with our nuclear arsenal, right about the time the Iranian program hits the tipping point. I've buried a few friends and colleagues these last 8 years who were wearing uniforms when they died. And I wonder if there is enough left of the center of our country to be worth their sacrifices.
I know the principles they protected are - but principles alone do not a country make. It takes citizens who uphold and defend them to make a country. And to do that they have to turn off Britney and Michael and stop drinking the Kool Aid ... or ingesting the pap dished out by the media. How many are left? Enough, perhaps, but only if we rouse ourselves. |
I wonder sometimes if we have fallen victim to our own successes. We've had some. We helped the Northern Alliance take back Afghanistan from the Taliban with only a few casualties to our Special Forces. We threw Saddam Hussein out in a campaign that, despite the loss of 4337 of our finest, has cost us in lives less than a tenth of what the Progressive Left claimed -- and hoped -- it would. Even today in Afghanistan we use a fraction of our available military power.
We've thwarted terrorist attacks around the world, many times very quietly. We haven't issued press releases on some of our most notable successes. If you only read the New York Times the only news you'd read would be the failures and the leaks. But the men and women who take security very seriously, and there are still many, have done their jobs.
We're safe. We're secure. For now. We've forgotten the hollow feeling in our guts that we had on 9/12, wondering when -- not if -- the terrorists would strike again. Wondering how many more of our own people would jump out of burning buildings. How much we'd have to change our society and forsake both comfort and freedom to stop a remorseless enemy.
Truth is, we haven't sacrificed much as a nation. For all the howling of the Progressive Left, the average American is as free and comfortable today as he was on 9/10. The TSA is an annoyance. The blabbermouths on cable news are an annoyance. We're right back to worrying about health care, the usual political corruption and Jocko. We're as free and satisfied as ever.
We're victims of our own success. I suppose that guarantees that we'll be victims of another kind again someday. |
| May Providence watch over us all, so long as that man remains in the White House. |
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