First, I express again that the opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone. Make of it what you will. They are OPINIONS.
Let's talk about the Koran "abuse" first, shall we? The Koran is just a book. That's all it is. It's probably printed in Taiwan, for heaven's sake. It is an object, not a person, and as such, has no HUMAN rights. The whole Koran "abuse" is a tempest in a teapot. Muslims are upset that somebody at Gitmo may have dropped a Koran? HOW THE FUCK DO THEY THINK I FEEL WHEN I TURN ON THE TV AND SEE MUSLIMS BURNING THE AMERICAN FLAG?
Do I demand justice, the roll of heads over what I see as the desecration of a symbol? No. It is merely a symbol. They aren't actually hurting anybody. It is the same with the Koran - except that those abuses are only alleged, while I've witnessed the torture of the American Flag thousands of times on the news. It is a symbol. A thing. It does no actual damage to anyone, even if the allegations are true, which I highly doubt.
It is all a bunch of terrorist crap. You know that the Terrorist handbook mandates that, if captured, GI Jihadi make all sorts of claims of abuse - whether true or not, because they know that this is one of our weaknesses. Simply put, they don't play by the same rules of humanity, as evidenced by their preference for innocent civilian targets, unwilling suicide bombers, and videotaped beheadings. I'll eat these words if somebody can show me a videotaped beheading of a Terrorist by a Marine at Gitmo. So damn stupid.
Next, the Global War on Terror in general. Look, people, we are at war. My generation has never really known war, so this is new to us. However, I think it is fairly safe to say that you can't adequately fight this foe if you are going to play by the old rules and constrain yourself with handwringing namby-pamby excuse making. I suggest, no...I know, that war is dirty and ugly and mean. People get hurt. People die. But we can never lose sight of the cause. Shall we perish from this Earth because we lacked the fortitude to finish the fight? FUCK NO! If we do not chase victory to every corner of every cave, all the sacrifices are in vain.
Should we do as so many in the handwringing left suggest and close Gitmo, let the "detainees" better known as terrorists go free, and fight a gentler war on terror? Hooey. To all of the Jimmy Carters, Nancy Pelosis, and Joe Bidens of the world, I suggest that we put those "detainees" in those people's hometowns and make these liberal terrorist apologists responsible for them. If they start plotting to blow up children at a soccer game, you do time with them, how about it?
How stupid can you get? If this were WWII instead of the GWOT, would they be suggesting that we free Hitler and his minions over a little bad press? You don't give up the fight when you have the upper hand. You crush your foe and take advantage of every opportunity. Do you think the terrorists are going to fight more a more kind and gentle war? If you do, you are living a fantasy.
Now, the World Trade Center Memorial. This is percolating all over the blogosphere these days, and I can't say that I disagree with what I've read. Mostly, the controversy has to do with this editorial, written by the sister of the pilot whose plane was hijacked and flown into the Pentagon.
Her biggest issue is that the Memorial has been hijacked by those who feel that we don't need a memorial so much as a lecture on America's inhumanities and how we deserved what we got on 9/11/01. She is right to be outraged. I share her bile. It is reprehensible that this is being allowed. I quote her:
Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the
yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our
individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a
didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be
served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu
Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world....
The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.
The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation will have erected a building whose only connection to September 11 is a strained, intellectual one. While the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground. Most of the cherished objects which were salvaged from Ground Zero in those first traumatic months will never return to the site. There is simply no room. But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. These are important subjects, but for somewhere--anywhere--else, not the site of the worst attack on American soil in the history of the republic.
You should read all of it. You can find more on this, at a minimum, at Michelle Malkin's, Kathy's, Chrenkoff's, and Vodkapundit's.
I ask you, is this even human? When you go to a funeral and memorialize a grandparent, do you talk about their incontinence? Of course not. You remember the good ol' days. If you've ever been to Pearl Harbor and seen the memorial there, you will know that it is a respectful quiet place to mark the sacrifice of our fighting men and women. It doesn't say, "Here lies a bunch of carousing ne'er-do-wells who drank like fish, cursed like sailors, and slept with anything that moved." That would be disrespectful. When you go to the Vietnam War Memorial or the WWII Memorial in D.C., you are not bombarded with negative images and messages either. A memorial is supposed to honor, not disrespect. And, I'm afraid, that dwelling on the negative, on man's inhumanity to man, at the WTC site is the equivalent of saying, "Here lie 3,000 Americans who went to work on 9/11/01. They died here and they deserved it."
For heaven's sake, these people were innocents. They did not expect to die that day in a fireball, or leap from the 90th floor of their own volition. The emergency workers who perished that day were just doing their jobs. We should be honoring their sacrifices, not saying "karma's a bitch, ain't it?"
It is appalling. It is revolting. And my congressmen will be hearing about it. Furthermore, it isn't as though there isn't plenty of real estate in other places if we really need to dwell on these issues. But, I think you will find that most of these crimes of the past have been adequately covered in other museums.
George Soros: Pissing on the Graves of the Innocent.
