Twelve years ago our nation’s course changed when Jihadists attacked our people. Not for the first, second, or third time in recent memory, but in the most notable attack of the string. No longer was it possible for the people of this country to ignore the savage behavior of Islam in regard to our form of society. We were rocked. Tears were shed. Mourning overwhelmed us.
We got over it, shrugged off our coat, grabbed our rifle, and kicked some butts. Our populace was largely united in pursuit of the animals who flew airplanes into buildings. We went after the Taliban Mullahs that hosted them. We ruled the skies and covered the ground in our righteous anger. When we finished with that nest of vipers we turned our attention to Saddam Hussein. He’d been in defiance of the cease-fire since just after Desert Storm ended. He had boasted to the world that he had a program to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. He had a history of using chemical weapons in vast quantities against Iran and his own people. The intelligence services of the western states agreed that he probably still had them, was manufacturing more, working on nuclear weapons, and his continued refusal to let us in to verify the status of those programs eventually brought us to war. Our strategic interests were on the line. Like it or not, oil from the Persian Gulf states fuels the world economy. Saddam was a proven threat to that oil supply. Congress approved of the attack and we went to war.
Did we do a good job? Outstanding job. Our military was superb. Our diplomats and what we did with the peace weren’t so outstanding. It should have been anticipated but it wasn’t. Good idea, great execution, poor follow-through. Lesson learned.
Things seemed to quiet down in the intervening years. They really hadn’t. The swine who’d attacked us on that September morning were still at it, still plotting, still laying the groundwork for more attacks, and getting ready to kill more Americans. The difference was that we’d managed to fix most of them in battle overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. Killing jihadists there didn’t involve as many of our citizens as killing them here would. Our military is good at this stuff, grandmothers in Bend, Oregon aren’t so hot at dealing with improvised explosive devices.
The press managed to fall in line with the new administration in calling things by new names. It was a moment that George Orwell would have trembled to see. It was no longer a War on Terror, but an Overseas Contingency Operation. Nidal Hassan murdering his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood wasn’t a terrorist act, it was an act of Workplace Violence. And the changes in attitude, perception, and presentation picked up pace until a year ago on the anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001.
On this first anniversary of the attacks on our diplomatic personnel in Benghazi, Libya, it is my firm opinion that the people in leadership roles in this nation, both Republican and Democrat, have failed the populace and need to be censored or removed from office for malfeasance. It’s simple – we never leave our people behind. I was raised that way and I’m sickened and saddened that this act has been accepted by the public as tolerable. We left four to die in Benghazi, and a lot more to fight in solitude with no aid on the way. Never in my experience was that an alternative we would have embraced.
Any effort to seriously investigate the behavior of those involved, and those denied a chance to act, has been rebuffed by the administration. A cascading series of mistruths has issued forth from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue beginning with the explanation (proven to be false) that a video on youtube.com caused the attack. It went on downhill on the way to hearing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defying a committee of the Congress with the most obnoxious statement ever recorded within those halls, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Military personnel who had intimate knowledge of the affair have been shuffled about so as to be unavailable for interviews. Congress has been mislead as to the retirement status of those they sought to interview.
The whistleblowers have been besieged in their attempt to reveal the truth. Put in limbo and denied career advancement while those who were chastised for mishandling the events have been returned to their jobs with no official censure.
Four American men are dead. Our ambassador cruelly murdered. Our facility burned after being sacked. And one year later none of the people who led the attack have been “brought to justice.”
Our elected representatives have been almost as silent about this travesty as the press. Term limits may be the solution I seek, but it doesn’t seem strong enough.
The power brokers are not doing our business. Those in elected office work for us, not the other way around. They have forgotten who holds the power in this republic – the voters. The elected officials seem to have an agenda of their own. And the press is with them in this pursuit of – what? What exactly is the goal of lying to the American people and denying the four dead men justice?
One year later, just as this should probably be building to crescendo, we have our president leading the charge to back a faction in Syria that is intimately linked with both the attacks on 9-11-01 and with the attack on 9-11-12. We will become the tactical air force of Al Qaeda if Mr Obama has his way. The loyal opposition, in the form of John McCain, has taken to talking down to his constituents and being petulant when asked valid questions about the situation in Syria. Mr. McCain has a park bench with his name on it somewhere, I wish he’d go and occupy the thing.
My experience in the Middle East tells me that far more is going on here than we will ever know. I do know one thing – we’re being lied to in a rush away from responsibility and a rush toward war. As a nation we are perceived as weak and wandering. We’ve been taken in a game of backgammon by an optometrist and a former Colonel in the KGB. And they’re laughing at us while our President stomps his feet and fails to lead. He’s a reactor, not a leader. And those under him hold the public in contempt. We are not citizens of a republic any longer, we are subjects of an emperor. One crowned with a Peace Prize before accomplishing a thing to earn it.
It is not leadership to speak to the nation and blame your limited choices on George Bush. Listen carefully to the words of the President last night and you’ll see that it’s all the fault of Bush. I was appalled at the hubris of the man for couching his arguments in that mire. Leadership is clearly explaining your point based on its own merits. Instead I heard that chemical weapons are bad and killing children is bad. I’ll spot him that point. But how is it worse than killing children with bullets and bombs dropped from aircraft? How is a chemical weapon different when it’s used that way than any other munition?
A word about our threatened strikes against Syria is in order. We have been told as recently as the 10th of September, that the plan is for limited strikes to disable our “enemy” in their capacity to use chemical weapons. I’ve been gone a long time from the arena, and have no idea what Syria has in their inventory any longer. But the preferred method of delivery for chemical weaponry is via tubed weapons. Artillery, large mortars, rocket launchers (think MLRS or Stalin Organs) and not via aircraft or large missiles. I can hide a fairly large amount of ammunition and a sturdy artillery piece in my garage. Limited range, but it will sit comfortably in the stuccoed splendor that is my car’s home. In the warehouses I pass on the way to work every day you could hide thousands of weapons that would do this job. And yet we’re threatening to take them out?
I’d feel a lot better about Syria if the people we were proposing to aid weren’t the same ones killing Christians and shouting Allah Akbar under the black Al Qaeda flag. The same vermin who attacked the Twin Towers, The Pentagon, and tried to destroy the dome of the capitol building in Washington. The same ones who beat our ambassador, Chris Stevens, to death in Benghazi a year ago today while Barack Obama turned the crisis over to his minions and packed to bip off to Vegas for a rally. The same ones who will soon be attacking a target somewhere you have been or will be going in the United States. They will be back. They’ve been moving on to the next target since Mohammed led his first raid against the polytheists in Arabia.
Are those the allies we seek? Do we win anything by aiding them? Chemical weapons are nasty things, but call me skeptical – I’m still not convinced as to who used them in Syria, what the weapons were, and who was responsible for giving the orders. Most of the evidence is undoubtedly classified. But when the administration will not tell the truth about much of anything and stalls for time on every issue they run across, I’m unwilling to grant them any further tolerance. They must make a better case for their intended actions.
The time to come clean about Benghazi is long overdue. Don’t grant them a pass on it. Don’t let our military get involved in a war we cannot gain from in Syria. September 11th is a key to understanding our place in the world. We came back from an attack, cleaned up some unfinished business that threatened our economy and strategic interests, and then slid into being a reaction oriented state that denies the reality of our actions and our motivations. We’ve lost our compass heading and need to get it back. Don’t take on Jihadist forces as our allies.
Speak up, America. Demand answers. Demand the truth. Do not tolerate the lies any longer. It’s the least we can do if we are to honor our Constitution and the rights we’ve been given by God. I’m done turning rights over in the name of safety and security. I want the truth.
