America is not going to take any more!
Within a little more than one hour on Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, untold thousands Americans died in the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and four American commercial airliners. If the death toll reaches some estimated proportions it would represent a substantial number of those killed in the 10-year Vietnam War.
And they all died on American soil, not on foreign soil where America attempted, for more than a century, beginning with the Spanish American War in 1898, to bring freedom and liberty to the peoples of the world.
Enough is enough!
Any attempt to bring this disaster at the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon into perspective is beyond imagination.
Two thousand three hundred (2,300) died in the attack on Pearl Harbor, according to the World Almanac 2000.
This was America’s single worst military disaster.
Today, America faces a war from a faceless enemy operating from bases seemingly unreachable by conventional means.
For the first time since Dec. 7, 1941, I believe America has finally been galvanized into action. A national spirit, not seen in 50 years, seems to be gushing forth.
Hopefully, the sleeping giant has awakened. America is outraged, a quality that died at the end of World War II.
America is the only world leader today. America must act the part.
The United States must proceed with a program that is packaged not only to seek out the terrorists and the countries that protect them, but to resolve the problems in the Middle East.
The cancer that has festered between Israel and the Palestinians for 50 years has now attacked the vital organs of America. Radical surgery is necessary unless we wish to sacrifice tens of thousands more American lives by being the nice guys. The entire world is on the verge of becoming a tinder box of terrorism. No nation is now safe.
An attack tomorrow of a greater magnitude is possible. Are we willing to sacrifice a hundred thousand lives?
As recently as a month ago, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, on a fact-finding tour of the battle zones of the West Bank, suggested that a wall be erected to separate the Palestinians and Israelis. But where?
The United Nations passed a resolution in 1973 offering a solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Simply stated, all territories on the West Bank of the Jordan River and to the east including the Arab sector of Jerusalem were to be returned to the Palestinians for the establishment of a homeland, with the guarantee from the Palestinians and surrounding nations that the integrity of the boundaries of Israel established by the United Nations in 1948 would be honored. Here’s where a wall could be built. Now, the United States would have to be a signatory to that agreement and take the responsibility for enforcing it.
Clearly, America’s mission is to knock out the terrorists and the countries that protect them and enforce a treaty in the Middle East which would resolve both problems, once and for all. Today, America’s economic future is balanced on a razor’s edge.
With 60 percent of our oil requirements controlled by OPEC (mainly the Arab nations), a cutoff, as occurred in the fall of 1973, could prove fatal to America’s economy. Without this energy, the United States could not wage war, or worse, feed its people.
It’s time to think American!
In the past 50 years, we’ve spent billions of American taxpayer dollars in foreign aid going to many nations that would rather hate than heal.
America has a moral imperative that it must never forget, and that is the safety, and yes, the very survival of its people.
Publisher's Notebook 