Do We Need Another 9/11???

Stu Bykofsky of the Philadelphia Daily News believes we need another 9/11 to heal the wounds of divisive politics. Another terrorist attack, in his opinion, would at least bring some unity to our country. He opens his article with this...

"ONE MONTH from The Anniversary, I'm thinking another 9/11 would help America.

What kind of a sick bastard would write such a thing?

A bastard so sick of how splintered we are politically - thanks mainly to our ineptitude in Iraq - that we have forgotten who the enemy is.

It is not Bush and it is not Hillary and it is not Daily Kos or Bill O'Reilly or Giuliani or Barack. It is global terrorists who use Islam to justify their hideous sins, including blowing up women and children."

However, Bykofsky's next statement says a lot about America...

"Iraq has fractured the U.S. into jigsaw pieces of competing interests that encourage our enemies. We are deeply divided and division is weakness.

Most Americans today believe Iraq was a mistake. Why?

Not because Americans are "anti-war."
Americans have turned their backs because the war has dragged on too long and we don't have the patience for a long slog. We've been in Iraq for four years, but to some it seems like a century. In contrast, Britain just pulled its soldiers out of Northern Ireland where they had been, often being shot at, almost 40 years.

That's not the American way.

In Iraq, we don't believe our military is being beaten on the battleground. It's more that there is no formal "battleground." There is the drip of daily casualties and victory is not around the corner. Americans are impatient. We like fast food and fast war.

Americans loved the 1991 Gulf War. It raged for just 100 hours when George H.W. Bush ended it with a declaration of victory. He sent a half-million troops into harm's way and we suffered fewer than 300 deaths.

America likes wars shorter than the World Series."

I will agree with this to the extent that our society is very oriented towards instant gratification. Of course, it wasn't long before we won the actual Iraq War. What we're dealing with now is a long, drawn out occupation.

Bykofsky makes another point about what's gone wrong since 9/11...

"Because we have mislaid 9/11, we have endless sideshow squabbles about whether the surge is working, if we are "safer" now, whether the FBI should listen in on foreign phone calls, whether cops should detain odd-acting "flying imams," whether those plotting alleged attacks on Fort Dix or Kennedy airport are serious threats or amateur bumblers. We bicker over the trees while the forest is ablaze. "

However, I do think that his final comments below, while true, are a bit reckless and almost seems to be asking for another 9/11...which, honestly, it would be the last thing anyone wants.

"America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

The unity brought by such an attack sadly won't last forever.

The first 9/11 proved that."

I don't know about the rest of you, but I think we should focus on the singular task of PREVENTING these types of attacks from happening, instead of waiting for another one attack (and who knows how many deaths) to create that focus?

I see his point, I really do...I just think that wanting another 9/11-type of attack to reunite the nation is not the line of thinking we need to have as a society. However, I do agree that our society is too geared towards instant gratification when it comes to these matters, and that we need to focus on the big picture and the important things first.

(h/t Michelle Malkin)

Your News IQ Score

Take this test via the Pew Research Center.

Someone tell Mosquito that I also scored a 91%. Let's see if you guys beat that! :)

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! A Pot and a Kettle Debate!

So "Kos" and Harold Ford, Jr. are going on Meet The Press to debate the future of the Democratic Party. I'm just wondering how much of this is going to involve attracting voters for positive causes, i.e. courting moderates and conservatives...as opposed to simply defeating and degrading those dastardly Republicans by talking about how evil they are.

Seriously, I want know how they plan to court the swing vote (and maybe even some conservatives) in 2008? I mean, is it going to be a continuation of the "Republicans are corrupt, warmongering, hatemongering, evil evil evil!" banter that we hear from the liberal blogs? Or, are we going to hear a positive, dare I say enticing, agenda for the future? For the past several years, all I've seen is the former, and very little of the latter...which has been like gasoline on the fire of divisive politics. If the Democrats want to become this "big tent" party, as they have claimed to be...they need to turn their political tact in the opposite direction.

Then again, given their track records, I'm not sure that either of these men would be the ones to do it.

(h/t Blue NoVa)

FDT to Announce on Sept. 5th?

(h/t Virginia Virtucon)

That's what Tim Russert is saying. I don't know what his sources are, but that's encouraging news.

Makes sense...the "school day" schedule will be back in full swing, more people will be sitting down to watch the evening news after dinner, and just at the beginning of pre-primary season...Fred Thompson's name, face, and voice will be all over the evening news and on the cable news networks, as well.

I don't know if this is the logic behind such a date, but it makes sense to me.

Here's an Interesting Step Against Illegal Immigration

Culpeper County has made English the county's official language. They also passed a resolution to join other counties in assisting the General Assembly in combating the illegal immigration problem.

In fact, in yesterday's Board of Supervisor's meeting, both measures passed with a unanimous vote, and there was no dissent from any board member.

The reason why the county passed such a resolution is because they believe that it is not the county's duty to provide translations for people...which is true. English is the language of this nation. We should provide ample opportunity to teach legal immigrants the language, but to spend that kind of money on paying translators and creating duplicate documents for each language is a bit wasteful, when it could go towards expanding programs to teach immigrants to speak the language of the land.

Here's a Question For You...

cvillelaw at Democratic Central reminds us that, on this day in 1990, Iraq announced it's intentions to annex Kuwait...which led to the Gulf War. Later in his post, cvillelaw gives a brief synopsis of the war (which we all know how it went), but he states that by the time we decided to go to war, we had a troop buildup of over 500,000 ready to go.

My question is this...since we disposed of Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party, have we ever had 500,000+ troops fighting in Iraq?

As far as I've seen, it seems we've kept that number under 200,000. Now, I'm not making calls to escalate the troop number, but why did we use 500,000 troops stop an invasion...and only 200,000 or less to start one? I know we had troops on the ground in Afghanistan at the time the Iraq War started, but since the Iraq War itself ended (and this turned into an occupation), why have we been over there with such a smaller force if there is so much ground that needs to be covered to stop the insurgents?

Of course, my numbers could be wrong, so if they are I would appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction over this.

Krehbiel Hits It On The Head

A recent post at Krehbiel's Commentary caught my eye...

"Regarding the recent surge in good news about the surge that I keep hearing about, how will we know it was the surge that worked and not simply the passage of time? The answer, I suspect, is that politicians and pundits will tell us so, which is not much of an answer. But if that will allow us to finally declare victory in the "war" that we decisively won over four years ago, I'm all for it. Except then we'll have to start the reconstruction phase all over again -- maybe this time we'll actually get to call it a reconstruction and things will go better."

I do agree, we won this war decisively long ago...it's been an occupation ever since. The problem is, the Iraqi government needs to step up to finish this reconstruction. That's the key aspect that needs a lot of focus if we're going to end this thing right.

The People's Champ?

According to an article in The Hill (courtesy of imwithfred.com), Fred Thompson may very well be that.

They delved into Fred Thompson's June fundraising numbers of $3.4 million from over 9,000 donors. Many saw this as a sign of a struggling campaign, but let's see where those funds came from.

- Over 7,500 donors made their contributions online
- 6,888 made donations of less than $200.00

This is an indication that the actual electorate, and not just big-money/special-interest donors, that are contributing to Thompson's campaign. Now, if you look further...

- No telephone support
- No direct mail
- Only 2 fundraising events during the whole month
- Only 18% of the fundraising money was actually spent in June

So really, it's been the internet and word-of-mouth (which is controlled more by the electorate than anything else) that has been driving the Thompson campaign. From what I understand, this money will be used as we ramp up into pre-primary season, which would give Thompson an edge when it comes to "cash-on-hand" if he continues to be wise with these campaign dollars he's receiving now.

Now, many more fundraising events were held during the month of July, so it will be interesting to see what kind of a difference those events will have on the fundraising numbers. However, I truly believe that this is one campaign that the people, above anything else, have been driving and will continue to drive as we plow our way through these slow, sweaty summer months and into the pre-primary season.