Not Ranked
A Marine General's Speech (said like ONLY a Marine could say it )!
Speech by former ACC Commander, Gen. Hawley:
"Since the attack, I have seen, heard, and read thoughts of such
surpassing stupidity that they
must be addressed. You've heard them too. Here they are:
1) "We're not good, they're not evil, everything is relative." Listen
carefully: We're good,
they're evil, nothing is relative. Say it with me now and free
yourselves. You see, folks, saying
"We're good" doesn't mean, "We're perfect." Okay? The only perfect being
is the bearded guy on
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The plain fact is that our country
has, with all our mistakes
and blunders, always been and always will be, the greatest beacon of
freedom, charity,
opportunity, and affection in history. If you need proof, open all the
borders on Earth and see
what happens. In about half a day, the entire world would be a ghost
town, and the United States
would look like one giant line to see "The Producers."
2) "Violence only leads to more violence." This one is so stupid you
usually have to be the
president of an Ivy League University to say it. Here's the truth,
which you know in your heads
and hearts already: Ineffective, unfocused violence leads to more
violence. Limp, panicky,
half-measures lead to more violence. However, complete, fully
thought-through, professional,
well-executed violence never leads to more violence because, you see,
afterwards, the other guys
are all dead. That's right, dead. Not "on trial," not "reeducated," not
"nurtured back into the
bosom of love." Dead. D-E-Well, you get the idea.
3) "The CIA and the rest of our intelligence community has failed us."
For 25 years we have
chained our spies like dogs to a stake in the ground, and now that the
house has been robbed, we
yell at them for not protecting us. Starting in the late seventies,
under Carter appointee
Stansfield Turner, the giant brains who get these giant ideas decided
that the best way to gather
international intelligence was to
use spy satellites. "After all," they reasoned, "you can see a license
plate from 200 miles
away." This is very helpful if you've been attacked by a license plate.
Unfortunately, we were
attacked by humans. Finding humans is not possible with satellites. You
have to use other humans.
When we bought all our satellites, we fired all our humans, and here's
the really stupid part. It
takes years, decades to infiltrate new humans into the worst places of
the world. You can't just
have a guy who looks like Gary Busey in a Spring Break '"93 sweatshirt
plop himself down in a
coffee shop in Kabul and say, "Hi ya, boys. Gee, I sure would like to
meet that bin Laden fella."
Well, you can, but all you'd be doing is giving the bad guys a story
they'll be telling for
years.
4) "These people are poor and helpless, and that's why they're angry at
us. "Uh-huh, and Jeffrey
Dahmer's frozen head collection was just a desperate cry for help. The
terrorists and their
backers are richer than Elton John and, ironically, a good deal less
annoying. The poor helpless
people, you see, are the villagers they tortured and murdered to stay
in power. Mohamed Atta,
one of the evil scumbags who steered those planes into the killing
grounds (I'm sorry, one of the
"alleged hijackers," according to CNN. They stopped using the word
"terrorist," you know), is the
son of a Cairo surgeon. But you knew this, too. In the sixties and
seventies, all the pinheads
marching against the war were upper-middle-class college kids who
grabbed any cause they could
think of to get out of their final papers and spend more time drinking.
At least, that was my
excuse. It's the same today. Take the Anti Global Warming (or is it
World Trade?
Oh-who-knows-what-the-hell-they-want demonstrators).
They all charged their black outfits and plane tickets on dad's credit
card before driving to
the airport in their SUV's.
5) "Any profiling is racial profiling." Who's killing us here, the
Norwegians? Just days after
the attack, the New York Times had an article saying dozens of extended
members of the
gazillionaire bin
Laden family living in America were afraid of reprisals and left in a
huff, never to return to
studying at Harvard and using too much Drakkar. I'm crushed. I think
we're all crushed. Please
come back. With a cherry on top? Why don't they just change their names,
anyway? It's happened in
the past. Think about it. How many Adolfs do you run into these days?
Shortly after that, I
remember watching TV with my jaw on the floor as a government official
actually said, "That
little old grandmother from Sioux City could be carrying something."
Okay, how about this: No,
she couldn't. It would never be the grandmother from Sioux City. Is it
even possible? What are
the odds? Winning a hundred Powerball Lotteries in a row? A thousand? A
million? And now a Secret
Service guy has been tossed off a plane and we're all supposed to cry
about it because he's an
Arab? Didn't it have the tiniest bit to do with the fact that he filled
out his forms
incorrectly three times? And then left an Arab h
istory book on his seat as he strolled off the plane? And came back?
Armed? Let's please all
stop singing "We Are the World" for a minute and think practically! I
don't want to be sitting
on the floor in the back of a plane four seconds away from hitting Mt.
Rushmore and turn,
grinning, to the guy next to me to say, "Well, at least we didn't offend
them."
SO HERE'S what I resolve for the New Year:
Never to forget our murdered brothers and sisters. Never to let the
"relativists" get away with
their immoral thinking. After all, no matter what your daughter's
political science professor
says, we didn't start this. Have you seen that bumper sticker that says,
"No More Hiroshimas"? I
wish I had one that says, "You First. No More Pearl Harbors." Semper
Fi!
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