GROUND ZER0, New York, N.Y.--Nov. 13, 2003-- Terrorism comes in degrees.   It starts out in Little League fashion, and, as it realizes it has the power to create Fear, force Intimidation and drive its fans into Complacency, it chugs forward until it steamrolls toward the Big Leagues.   Right now, it's evolved to Triple A play in Iraq.  And the fans are cheering--unfortunately, many of those fans are American politicians siding with world opinion that America is wrong and shouldn't be the Nation of Vigilance protecting the world from the Beast of Terror.

      Each day more and more Americans are dying at the hands of Terrorism.  For some, it is a sign we should get out of Iraq.  For others, it is the most important reason why we should finish what we started.
       Body count is what Terrorism thrives upon; it reminds Americans and the world that we have little chance to win a war of stability when the national field upon which it is playing is laced with booby traps.   Every time a fielder runs to catch a ball he steps on a landmine.   The pitcher on the opposing team is throwing hand grenades instead of baseballs.   And the TerrorTeam is using rocket launchers rather than bats.
       The ugly side of war--it's aftermath--isn't glorious.   Occupation and restructuring a society built on political and religious tyranny and oppression to one of freedom and liberty is not unlike trying to leap from the Model T to the Lincoln Navigator.   
        And the world knows it.
        Even the Red Cross is hightailing it out of Baghdad.
        And at home, political Terrorists are attacking the President and his Administration.  The Democrats are blocking judicial appointments, using the filibuster to shout and rage over appointments that will keep the system of government flowing.  By clogging up the appointments, Political Terrorists hope to weaken the President, to shoot holes in his ability to lead within his own country, further fueling the fires that enflame Terrorists in Iraq to play harder ball, to kill more Americans and drive the United States out of Iraq.  A house divided is a playground for Terrorism.
        There's an expression that best sums up what is happening abroad and domestically.  It goes:  "Never hit a man when he's down:  kick him, it's easier!"
        The Democrats are in the process of kicking President Bush as he's scrambling to keep his batting order in tip-top shape.   But, the fans in the stands are unruly.   Even his own are booing and cheering; their Voices melding and blending with the Terrorists in Iraq as they try to clog and bog him in a domestic quagmire geared to cut his legs off and render him an "impotent coach."
        The Senate filibuster and the mounting deaths in Iraq are weakening the USA Team at home as well in the battlefields far away.  

       It makes one wonder what America's national and domestic policies are all about.   If one looks at the rhetoric of the Democrats, it's about fostering Terrorism.    The goal of the invectives issuing from their mouths is about America's flaws in leadership in Iraq, and the waste of effort to protect the world from Terrorism.    The filibuster effort by the Democrats is nothing more than a diversion, a fire set in the kitchen to keep the head of household from focusing on the Beast of Terror who threatens not only the United States, but the world at large.
        One of our nation's greatest critics, the famous French publication, Le Monde, ran an editorial on September 12, 2001 with the headline:  "We Are All Americans."    It recanted that implication a few months later with another publication, a small book, titled:  "All Americans?  The World After September 11, 2001."
         Charles Krauthammer's essay in the November 17, 2003 Time Magazine sums it up.   The title of his lucid commentary is "To Hell with Sympathy."    His point is that immediately following the attack on the World Trade Center on Nine Eleven, the world seemed to rally around the United States.

       In his own way, he slams the Democrats with a hard curve ball of his own.   He points out how Al Gore said:  "The president has somehow squandered the international outpouring of sympathy, goodwill and solidarity that followed the attacks of September 11."   He cites John Kerry saying:  "He has squandered the goodwill of the world after September 11."   Krauthammer doesn't buy the vitriolic words spewing from Democratic candidates, and critics seeking to oust the President and his team of anti-Terrorists who have acted unilaterally despite every effort to seek support from other nations.
         Krauthammer's point is as clear as a 98 mph fastball slicing the outside corner of home plate a Yankee Stadium.    He reminds every reader whose eyes touch his words that the world doesn't like America, never has, and, as long as we are the world power we are, never will.
        He makes the point that until America is on its knees, groveling, the world will continue to throw its rocks and stand by in hopes we will eat ourselves to death from within an a vainglorious attempt to appease all our critics.
        The Time author reminds us that our most apologetic President, Bill Clinton, went to his knees in forgiveness of great American sins to no avail.   He says this of President Clinton:   "Bill Clinton was the most accommodating, sensitive, multilateralist President one can imagine, and yet we know that al-Qaeda began the planning for Sept. 11 precisely during his presidency.  Clinton made humility his vocation, apologizing variously for African slavery, for internment of Japanese Americans, for not saving Rwanda.   He even decided that Britain should return the Elgin Marbles to Greece.   A lot of good that did.  Bin Laden issued his Declaration of War on America in 1996--at the height of the Clinton Administration's hyperapologetic, good citizen internationalism.   

        Krauthammer's message is the world doesn't like America because it is a superpower.  It is the "big guy" and the only superpower left on earth following the collapse of the Soviet Empire.   The world doesn't like us.  It never has.
        So, the cries of the Democratic wolves that President Bush has "squandered" our world support is nothing more than a prejudiced umpire calling a clear-cut strike on a 3-2 count a ball.
        It comes down to jealously.   The world doesn't like what we have, because we have it all.   If you live next to the rich guy in the big house who has all the food and clothes and technical amenities of life, and, all the opportunities and freedoms one can imagine, and you have less than that person, wouldn't you be jealous too?
        Of course, there's this other issue that Krauthammer makes.   It's about our willingness to die for everyone even when they kick us and spit on us for protecting them.   Here's how Krauthammer puts it in his essay: 

      "We cannot win for losing.  We are widely reviled as enemies of Islam, yet in the 1990's we engaged three times in combat--in the Persian Gulf and in the Balkans--to rescue Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo, Muslim peoples all.  And, in the last two cases, there was nothing in it for the U.S.:  it was humanitarianism and good international citizenship of the highest order."
          International citizenship of the "highest order."   What does that mean?
          For me, it means we are TerrorHunters.  It means we are Parents and Citizens of Vigilance, willing to die for the rights of the future generations, for people not only in our own country, but in any country.
          Yet this message is buried in ugly debates of our foreign policy and ignored by our own media and politicians.   The world doesn't like it when one parent tells another parent "if you don't protect your children we will."
           That gripes a world used to being ruled by selfish interests, by leaders who like to isolate themselves from the duty and responsibility to "humanitarianism."   America faces those challenges with its blood, the blood of its young.   But the world doesn't see us the way we see ourselves.

        We are Sentinels of Vigilance.  We have always been the world's policeman, the benevolent dictator of human rights.   We will preemptively attack those who threaten the world, while others sit on their hands and wait for the Beast of Terror to gobble up their own children.
           Krauthammer says in his concluding two paragraphs:  "The search for logic in anti-Americanism is fruitless.  It is in the air the world breathes.  Its roots are envy and self-loathing--by peoples who, yearning for modernity but having failed at it, find their own satisfaction in despising modernity's great exemplar.  
           On Sept. 11 they gave it a rest for a day.  Big deal."
         "Modernity" is more than just a word.  It is a the sum of the meaning of Vigilance, for it means we, as a nation, have always looked ahead to the future not only of our children, but to the future of the world's children.
         Terrorism is about threatening the future of the world's children.   Whether Terrorism takes the form of physical attacks by guerrillas in Iraq, or it takes shape in the abuse of children here in the Untied States, we jealousy guard the right of the child to live outside the shadow of the Beast of Terror.
         Sexual abuse of children has recently become one of America's great efforts to resolve.  A sex abuser today has his picture plastered in any neighborhood he tries to infiltrate.    Not many nations follow this path.
         The rights of all are championed to extremes sometimes.   Minorities become majorities in most conflicts, and the underdog is given the benefit of the doubt, for America's golden rule has always been, "do for the weak what the strong have already done."
         When we freed the rights of women in Iraq, we sent a shock through the Middle East.  
         But, our politicians--the alleged Voices of the people--speak not of America's greatness in the world despite its critics, instead they flog our success and feed the Beast of Terror's appetite for division and derision within our own castle walls.

        It bothers me greatly that a child who sees us fighting for the freedom of children in another land, hears alleged leaders of this nation crying that we are wrong, that our Chief Executive Officer is violating the rules of leadership by stumbling and bumbling, by spending money abroad that should be used at home.
        What a child in America sees is his parents and family in a bitter fight over who is the best parent.   The child sees people fighting over power and the victim of all that wasted effort is the child who needs to see unity and purpose rather than Fear, Intimidation and Complacency.
        If only the parents who fight for power knew the Beast of Terror was sitting outside their door licking his lips, eyeing the child, eager to eat him or her when the parents got into the next fight--if only then, they might stop and look to the horizon.
       They might see what Charles Krauthammer sees--that what someone thinks of us isn't as important as what we think of ourselves.
       If we think we are Sentinels of Vigilance, we will act that way.  But, if we think we are the opinion of others, we will become the Beast of Terror's next meal.

Nov. 12--America's 80 Percent Pride Factor Scares Nations of Complacency

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