Enough

To show up terrorism, America needs to get back to work.–Ed

“Tomorrow, when you get back to work, work hard like you always have. . . . People will be amazed at how quickly . . . people come together to really wipe away the rubble and show the world that we’re still the strongest nation in the world. The markets open tomorrow. People go back to work. And we’ll show the world.”
–President George W. Bush

You have a choice starting today. You can let George W. Bush down, or you can let Osama bin Laden down.

If you’ve lost someone near and dear to you, or were upclose and personal with this, this isn’t for you. You have reason, but the sooner you get back into action, the sooner you can inspire the rest of us.

But for anybody else, if you’re just moping about, you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

If you’re going through the motions or less at work, you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

If you’re afraid to get on a plane, you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

If you’re afraid to go to a sport game, or a city, or any place you would have gone to a week ago, you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

If you’re afraid to do anything, period, you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Because the terrorist’s ultimate goal wasn’t to kill all those people. It was to make you afraid.

A handful of people killed about 5,000 last Tuesday and destroyed a few buildings. Compared to the overall power of America, that’s a mosquito bite.

The real goal of that mosquito bite was not the bite, but to infect America with a disease called fear.

Fear has many symptoms. It can be paralysis, but it can also be striking out at anything or anyone handy. Anger is just fear with a mask. Just as mindless, just as worthless. How useful is a rabid dog?

Five thousand killed by weapons is an enemy’s scratch. Millions deadened by fear is an enemy’s triumph.

But unlike malaria or rabies, we don’t have to be infected. Unless we let it infect us. And we’re letting it.

The terrorists don’t think we can shake it off. They think America is a nation of wusses, and the TV screens are telling them they’re right.

If you believe a few people jumping up and down on a TV screen represents the will of a country, what do you think pictures of us endlessly moping or jumping up and down, too, tells the world?

Let those TV screens show an America not infected by fear or hate but calm determination, an America not afraid of a few, an America back to work and life.

That’s how you frighten the enemy.

The Real Legacy of Pearl Harbor

Almost sixty years ago, we were attacked at Pearl Harbor.

On one end of the world, we were faced by an enemy occupying most of the Far East and the Pacific, almost a half-world away from us.

On the other side, we had Hitler. Britain was barely hanging on, and the Soviet Union was taking the brunt of Nazi body blows, absorbing several times the lives we lost last Tuesday every single day.

We were a nation with an industrial strength paralyzed by a decade of depression. A nation that was only in the beginning stages of rearmament, of building an army. A nation still divided on whether we should get involved at all.

Makes what we’re faced with today trivial.

Did we whine? Did we mope? No, we worked.

We went to our jobs and we worked like hell. By the end of the war, we were producing as much as the rest of the world combined.

The American soldier was good, but the American worker was frightening. To our enemies, he was the enemy.

He worked so the world could fight back.

Even in the Soviet Union, a nation that lost twenty-six million people while bearing the brunt of defeating Hitler, we provided invaluable assistance and maybe more importantly hope from knowing they were not alone.

This is our legacy. This is what our fathers and grandfathers left us to live up to.

Can we?

Let’s stop the whine and start the work.

A Word To Those Who Need It

We need work. We need money.

We don’t need genocidal babble on the Internet. We don’t need physical threats or beatings or property-wrecking of those with a skin color darker than yours.

If you do the latter, you are no friend of America. That’s not my opinion, that’s George W. Bush’s. Let him do the talking for America.

Don’t give more aid and comfort to the enemy than anybody short of the terrorists. Don’t convince people all around the world that America really is as ignorant and stupid and evil as the extremists claim.

The only people you are scaring the hell out of are our allies and friends. I’ve got plenty of emails to prove it.

Please stop hurting our country. Please put your country ahead of yourself.

Please stop acting just like those Middle Eastern people jumping up and down on the TV set you dislike so much. That’s what useless, powerless idiots do, wherever they are.

Shoot Money Off, Not Your Mouth

You want to help? Really help? Go out and do your job, whatever it may be. Those who did this particularly hate the American way of life. Do your part to keep it going.

Want to help more directly? Go out and make some money to help those directly involved in this.

There were plenty of widows and widowers and orphaned children left as a result of this. They don’t need you shooting your mouth off, they need you shooting some money over to them.

No matter what the U.S. ends up doing, at least some soldiers will die, and they’ll leave families that will need money, too. For that matter, there are plenty of families of soldiers that have already died due to terrorist attacks in the past. Help them out.

I’m going to gather and post those types of funds by tomorrow. Those of you who have that info handy, I’d appreciate it if you could drop me a note.

Email Ed