2002 Soap Box Archives

Complacency

If you read this column very often you probably get tired of hearing me harp on the same old subject, but I think it’s important enough to write about again and again. I hate to say it but I’m afraid America has gone back to business as usual in the tragically mistaken idea that this war against terrorism is over insofar as another serious attack on our shores is concerned. The stock market has recovered, the economy is coming back, ground zero has been cleaned up, we’re revving up for summer vacations while our media seems to be more concerned with Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee than the fact that we have sons and daughters staring death and injury in the face every day. Our politicians are back at each other’s throats, jockeying for position in the upcoming elections. The Democrats are trying to blame the shortcomings of Bill Clinton’s disastrous administration on the present one. Clinton left the Justice Department and our intelligence organizations in deplorable shape and it just can’t be fixed overnight. Louis Freeh was a miserable failure as head of the FBI. Janet Reno was little more more than a Clinton puppet. Warren Christopher facilitated the release of Mohamed Atta, one of the pilots of the planes which took out the Trade Towers. The Israelis actually had him in jail. The Clinton administration had the opportunity to have Osama Bin Ladin in custody not one but three separate times, and refused to even talk to the people who made the offer. Clinton cut our military to the bone and we can’t expect to build it back overnight. All the while Bin Ladin was wreaking havoc on America bombing our Trade Towers the first time, destroying two Embassies and blowing up the U.S.S. Cole while Clinton’s response was to fire a missile at an aspirin factory. George Bush had been in office all of eight months on 9 - 11, not nearly enough time to repair the damage done by the administration who occupied Sixteen Hundred Pennsylvania the previous eight years. Now before you Clintonheads start with the vitriolic e-mail, let me state that I don’t blame all of the ills of the world on Bill Clinton and I don’t claim that George Bush is perfect, but let’s at least be honest about the situation we’re in and what happened to allow it to happen. Anyway, that’s water under the bridge and what we need to be concerned about now is what are we going to do to keep it from happening again. Of course, we have to leave the police and military aspects of that task to our government. But as citizens we need to stay vigilant and patriotic, understanding that our lives have changed forever. That it’s just going to take longer to catch a plane or go into a public building. We’re going to be forced to accept some things we may not particularly like, such as going into Muslim communities to find the terrorists who hide among them. Any Muslim who is a loyal American should be willing to submit to a little inconvenience to root out the bad guys. After all, they’ve got a stake in the safety of America too. They came to this country to get away from such things and should be glad to do their part in doing away with terrorism. We need to stop letting the national media convince us that the FBI and CIA are a bunch of bumbling idiots who don’t know what they’re doing. Sure they’ve had some setbacks, sure they’ve made some mistakes but they’re still highly trained professionals who in many cases have had their hands tied by politicians and politically correctness. They are still willing to lay their lives on the line for this country. We have an election coming up in November and it’s one of the most important ones in modern history. The people you elect will determine what kind of America we’re going to live in. Either it will be a politically correct, wimpy nation which adheres to the misguided tenants of the A.C.L.U. and other socialist, atheistic groups who would lead this nation down the path of moral decay and godlessness. Or we can elect people who have the real good of this nation at heart, men and women with the courage of their convictions and the will to pursue the path to peace through strength and faith. It’s up to us. Watch and pray.

What do you think?

God Bless America
Charlie Daniels