North Star Writers Group

What has happened to the America I once knew? The America that was convinced of the moral rightness of its stances and courageously held steadfast in the face of attacks of all types? The America, that when attacked at Pearl Harbor, resolved then and there to crush Japan (and Germany) and not relent until unconditional surrender was achieved - and then followed through with that commitment. Does that America exist anymore? Or has she rotted to the point of collapse from within, thanks to political correctness, propaganda thinly disguised as "news" and the presence of those who'd prefer to see her lose in high places of power?

The recent report of the Iraq Study Group serves as something of a Rorschach test in this regard. Its recommendations (hand responsibilities over to Iraqi forces and get out as soon as feasibly possible - a.k.a. the standard Democratic Party line) were completely unsurprising. Indeed, given the political makeup of its members, no other result was even possible. And the naiveté of its apparent belief that Syria and Iran, the two main troublemakers in Iraq (if not the world), can be appeased and negotiated with is still stunning.

Liberal or not, you'd think someone there would see that effectively rewarding deadly interference at the bargaining table probably isn't going to elicit the desired reaction from the Middle East's terror twins. If anything, it would make them more confident and thus more belligerent and even more of a problem. Yet the sixties-style peacenikism continues apace, convinced that if we just make nice and give them what they want, they'll just leave us alone and start liking us. Do none of these people remember 9/11 at all?

The same is true domestically. Recently six "imams" were made to disembark a US Airways flight at Minneapolis/St. Paul airport after they started acting just like the 9/11 terrorists, from their trashing America in Arabic (which another person on the flight understood and translated for authorities) to requesting seat-belt extenders though none were fat or made any effort to use them as designed (probably because they intended to use them as nooses or metal-ended weapons to swing) and so on. The crew and passengers would have been either crazy or suicidal to disregard the "imams" (a.k.a. terrorist dry-run crew) and, in fact, reacted correctly.

Not that it stopped the terrorist dry-run crew from whining about it afterward and playing every political correctness card in the book. So much so, in fact, that they're up to demanding "prayer rooms" (a.k.a. terrorist attack planning rooms) at MSP airport. I'm not sure which is more frightening – what the "imams" tried to pull or the fact that so many of the usual PC suspects were more than happy to cave in to them. (My approach would be profiling Arab Muslim males and arming the pilots.) Do none of these people remember 9/11 at all? Apparently not, since they're willing to enable those who would perpetrate another one.

And then there's the mainstream media. Emboldened by the election returns, they have dropped any pretense they still had left of simply telling what important things happened today and started propagandizing blatantly. From calling Iraq a "civil war" simply because they believe it to be, to trumpeting the Iraq Study Group report simply because they believe it the proper policy, to only reporting that which bleeds because it will turn public sentiment away from the war and toward what they think it should be – they have departed totally from the truth and begun spewing their opinions instead.

And sadly, it appears a largely ignorant American citizenry is falling for it. This would mean an institution that does not have America's best interests at heart would now have enough power to influence and shape policy – an unofficial, unelected fourth branch of government rather than simply the Fourth Estate. These people do remember 9/11, of course, but that is only because they have been scouring the truth right out of it from the day it happened. (How many replays of innocent people jumping to their deaths from the 104th floor of the World Trade Center have you seen on network TV since that day? That's right, none. They can't show the true evil of radical Islam or risk stoking up war support.)

The sad conclusion to draw from all of the above is that America doesn't have the will to win this fight. It will take something far bigger, far worse and far deadlier than another 9/11 to wake her up from slumber again. Doing what it takes in the Middle East to prevent such a calamity is something we just don't have the stomach to do, it would seem. Iran will get its nuclear bombs and missiles. Who knows what or whom their target will be? But rest assured, they will target someone. Al Qaeda is still out there, and while they may be reduced to regrouping at present (thanks mostly to President Bush, who gets no credit for it), all it will take for them to hit us again is another Clinton Administration asleep at the switch for four or eight years (Hillary, this time). We certainly haven't done a thing to make it tougher on Bin Laden's sleeper cells this time around: the borders are still wide open and unsecured, the INS still crippled by a combination of political correctness and bureaucratic stupidity and liberals are undermining legitimate prevention efforts (i.e. wire-tapping). Do you really think Afghanistan and Iraq alone are enough to get them to retreat?

We did not ask for this war, and we did not declare the larger war between America and Islamic terrorists. But we are in this war, whether we like it or not. And we must fight it with the same tenacity, determination, ruthlessness and commitment that we did World War II. Perhaps more so, since this enemy doesn't play by any rules and uses the fact that we do against us. If we fail to do so, then there is only one logical and inevitable outcome: defeat. Unfortunately, there is no sign that anyone really desires victory, certainly not enough to accept what must be done to achieve it. America's will to win is gone.

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This is Column # DKK38. Request permission to publish here.