VigilanceVoice

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Saturday--December 7, 2002—Ground Zero Plus 451
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Dawn Of Terrorism's Infamy
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by
Cliff McKenzie
   Editor, New York City Combat Correspondent News

GROUND ZERO, New York City, Dec. 7 -- Today is the dawn of Terrorism's Infamy.   The page of history is being turned slowly, right before our very eyes..  No one knows for absolute sure what is written on the next page.   We can only assume the ink is red, blood red. 
       Sixty-one years ago today a similar page in history’s book was written in blood.

       It was the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that killed 2,390 Americans.   Thousands of pounds of bombs fell on American naval ships and airfields.  They were the Beast of Terror's "eggs of destruction" dropped by 183 aircraft in the first wave, and in the second wave by 54 high level bombers, 78 dive bombers and 36 fighters launched from six of Japan's first-line aircraft carriers, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku.  The Japanese Strike Force included over 420 planes that slipped through Hawaii’s defenses from the Japanese carries 190 miles north of Oahu.   The Japanese cry, "Tora, Tora, Tora," signaled the success of the mission to Admiral Yamamoto.  The cry announced America had just been delivered its "Day Of Infamy."
        Six decades later, America is on the verge of another “Day of Infamy.”   As these words are written, we are massing troops around Iraq and waiting for a signal—a “Tora! Tora! Tora!”—to justify our 21st Century Pearl Harbor against Baghdad and Saddam Hussein.
        Our mission--as was the one issued by the Japanese government in 1941--is to rid the world of “Terrorism.”   Back then, Japan considered America a Terrorist threat to its domination of Asia.   To quash the threat of America outflanking Japan, the Rising Sun warlords elected to bomb America’s Pacific Fleet to obliteration.  We are thinking in the same vein regarding destroying Hussein's Republican Guard.

       Perhaps the Emperor of Japan on Dec. 7, 1941 and President George Bush of Dec. 7, 2002, have more in common historically than Mr. Bush or the current Japanese government would like to admit--both nations sought to dominate the world with their power—Japan intentionally, and America by default as the victor, responsible for occupying the defeated nation and rebuilding it in the aftermath of war.
        The difference between Baghdad and Pearl Harbor, however, is that everyone knows it is going to happen.  The question isn’t “if war will occur,” it’s “when will it?”
        In 1941 America was driven into war with the Japanese.  In a similar way, Nine Eleven has forced American leadership to stand up and defy all Terrorists--real and imagined--that they are not safe and their acts will not go unpunished.
        Even though the Terrorist attack of Nine Eleven was against civilian targets, it was nevertheless considered a military attack.  Not since the War of 1812 has any foreign national force attacked America's  homeland.   Hawaii, at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, was a possession, not a state.

        The Japanese sneak attack radically changed the nature of war.  It spawned "weapons of mass destruction," weapons designed to kill with indiscriminate brutality.   America launched the first nuclear war as a final act to end the war.  Unfortunately, the ultimate victims were innocent men, women and children who burned to death in the intense heat and blast, or, later by the effects of nuclear radiation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, targets of the atomic bomb.    
      Our new Pearl Harbor—Iraq—threatens to release more horrible destruction than Nagasaki or Hiroshima.   Weapons of mass destruction, including biochemical agents, can rage throughout the world once unleashed by intent or accident as warriors fight for their last scrap of dignity.  One or more warriors may  decide to “take out the world” as they make their journey to Paradise.  World War III is not a distant cousin to the Iraqi scenario.  It may be the child born from the assault.
       Just the other evening at a seminar my wife and I attended at New York City College, Walter Cronkite, the famed CBS anchorman spoke on current issues.  The 86-year-old newsman and veteran combat reporter of six decades, warned that the impending attack on Iraq could lead to World War III.
       But I believe we're already in the throes of World War III. 
       It was launched at 8:45 a.m., September 11, 2001 when the first Terrorist plane hit the World Trade Center.  I can still hear the plane's engines screaming overhead as it dove toward its target.
       This was, in my history book,  America's first "Day of Infamy" for the 21st Century. 
       It may not be its last.

      In reality, President Bush declared war on Terrorism that day.  He vowed to hunt down the Terrorists and all their buddies and pals.  He refuted the right for Terrorists to be shielded by national borders or boundaries, and vowed to break through all doors to rout out the Beast of Terror and all his Children of Terror.  No one argued with him that day, just as they wouldn't argue with a father who had just witnessed the horrible and senseless murder of his children before his very eyes..
       September 11 was more than a Pearl Harbor for America.   Pearl Harbor was a military target, struck by military forces by an established nation.
       Nine Eleven, however, was a sneak attack upon the mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, brothers and sisters of American society.   The attack laid open the wound that the new enemy of the 21st Century knew no borders, and sought the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children as a tool to create Fear, Intimidation and Complacency into all societies.
       It slapped Americans' faces with the reality their children were not safe from the Beast of Terror, and that the "demons of Terror War" could be anyone in a faceless, nameless haze of humanity.   It was the day America realized that even Superman or Wonder Woman couldn't keep them safe.  It was the day every citizen in America became conscripted in the War on Terrorism.

         Our 21^st Century Pearl Harbor started by hunting for Osama bin Laden.  When we exhausted ourselves trying to find him, we shifted our sights onto Saddam Hussein--leader of a nation-state whom we knew was a Terror-bound leader, a despotic leader willing to gas tens of thousands of his own people, and who was bent on developing weapons of mass destruction in the sands and basements of a nation he autocratically ruled for two decades.
       Osama's threat waned as Saddam's loomed, defiantly ejecting weapons inspectors and rushing to build arsenals that would threaten any nation from attacking him.    The Days of Infamy had been growing long before Nine Eleven.  
       But September 11 made the 100 million American householders aware that the Beast of Terror would eat their children, and their children's children.   The events of the second Tuesday in September, 2001, revealed the fangs of the Beast, and its voracious appetite to consume the innocent, the weak, the helpless who only wanted to live daily lives and raise their families.  The "infamy" of the attack was to destroy the innocence of a society, and to send shock waves to other societies that if America was vulnerable to such atrocities, so were they.
       Days of Infamy remind us that no matter how bright the sun is shining or how beautiful the birds chirp, that dark clouds block out the security of the future and, in a flash, can wash the world in a bath of crimson blood.  Days of Infamy force citizens to be prepared to kill or be killed, for they are killing to protect their children from those who, without a blink, would stack the bodies of the future generations like cords of wood just to make a political or religious point.   

      Suicide bombers are nothing more than mini-Pearl Harbors.  Instead of being launched from aircraft carries, they board a bus of innocent women and children and yank at a detonator under some delusion that they are glorifying their cause and retaliating against an oppressor.  And they are rewarded by Terror-Mongers like Saddam Hussein who sends the families of such bombers $25,000, blood money for killing the innocent.   Terrorism puts a bounty on Terror.  It pays for its perpetuation.
       The Infamy of Terrorism is ever present.  It is like a live hand grenade thrown into the living room of a family at dinner time.  The head of the household is forced into one of two decisions-- just sit and look at it until its shards of metal rip into the family member, or  leap upon it and protect the children from the blast.  In the final analysis, Days of Infamy force a mother, father, grandparent or loved one to be prepared to die for the safety of their children, their loved ones.   Infamy removes everyone's hiding places from the Beast of Terror's wrath, and strips naked the duty and responsibility of all to become Sentinels of Vigilance.
      Infamy's definition is "an evil or criminal act that is publicly known."   Infamy, ultimately, is a crime against the children, and the children's children's children.  It's evil nature is to maim and murder the innocent.  But Infamy wears many disguises.  It isn't all about Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden.  
      A child who fears going home to abusive parents who will either physically or emotionally assault him or her, lives in a state of Infamy 365 days of the year.  Every day is Pearl Harbor day to such a child.  And his or her parents or guardians are the Saddam Hussein's and Osama bin Laden's we prefer to focus upon because they are not close to home, they are not visible in our own bathroom mirror.  
      Infamy just doesn't hide in many homes.  It can lurk around the workplace.  A worker intimidated by his or her boss and is forced to kowtow to him or her out of Fear, Intimidation or utter Complacency because he or she "needs the money," lives in the infamy of constant Pearl Harbor attacks upon their value as a human being. Such people become slaves to the Beast of Terror..
      A parent who falls Complacent to his or her rights as a Sentinel of Vigilance and allows government to pell-mell itself over his or her children's rights without protest is ultimately conspiring with the enemy, an ally of the Beast of Terrorism through complicit or implicit Complacency.  A drunk driver negotiating a three-thousand pound bomb of steel and metal down the streets, unaware he or she is about to mow down an innocent child or family, is just as big a Terrorist as Hussein or bin Laden.
      Daily, we life in "Moments of Infamy."   When we walk by someone who is speaking foul language that burns itself into the ears of our children and say nothing, we accept the evil and corrupt violation of our child's innocence.  We tacitly become Beasts of Terror through our Complacency.

      When parents seek divorce as a resolution to difference, and that decision rips a child's home into two halves, we create infamy for the child.  We destroy the child's sense of security just as the Japanese did its bombers blew our battleships to bits on December 7, 1941.
       The 2,700 daily abortions we "legally" perform in America are acts of infamy.  When we kill over a million of our children a year under the Terroristic name of "free choice" and "individual rights," we treat life as randomly and with the same insignificance that a suicide bomber does climbing aboard a bus, or a sniper shooting randomly at targets around Washington D.C.  Our selfish neglect of the value of human life transmits its iciness to our children.   We don't stop to think of the infamy we create in the minds of our society's children who watch adults kill their own children, and who in the privacy of their small, innocent minds, wonder if they will be next.   
       Infamy doesn't take a Pearl Harbor or a September 11 to earn the lips of a President puffing out his chest and boasting he will hunt "Terrorism Down."   We have enough "Days of Infamy" in our society to keep us busy hunting and battling our own Beasts of Terror without looking outside our borders.   Yet we find it easier to castigate and enflame and become righteously warlike against those who are flagrant in their acts, while accepting without alarm our own soiled sheets.
       Infamy is not without, it is within.  
       There are three major infamies--Fear, Intimidation and Complacency.   All three seek to destroy the core of human evolution.   All three are spread by the virus of Terrorism.   All three live within all human beings and either must be contained or they run rampant and rule our lives.
        Of the three, the worst of all is Complacency.   Complacency blinds one to his duty and responsibility to be a Parent of Vigilance, a Citizen of Vigilant.   It allows the individual to assume that Vigilance is the privy of a policeman, or a government leader, or a military person.   Most people don't see, or want to see, Vigilance as their sworn human duty.   They don't want to shoulder the responsibility that they must be constantly aware of the presence of the Beast of Terror within themselves and others, and be willing to throw themselves on Terror's hand grenade when it threatens the safety and security of the children, and their children's children's children..
        To assume a Vigilant role, one must muster more Courage than Fear, practice more Conviction than Intimidation, and take more Right Actions in the face of do-nothing Complacency.   It is easier to ask the government to do this.  It is easier to righteously declare how bad someone else is rather than to inventory our own lives, and hunt our own Beasts of Terror to their death before we seek to destroy those outside our grasp.
        Days of Infamy can only be counterbalanced by Days of Vigilance.

       There is hope.  There is always hope.  But it does not exist without fuel, without action, without duty.
        When Americans and other citizens of the world band together as a Family of Vigilance, we can stop the Pearl Harbor and the September 11 attacks with the Shield of Vigilance.  Once we admit to the presence of the Beast Within as well as Without, we can also barricade our homes from Terrorism's Fear, Intimidation and Complacency and stop it from slithering under our family's front door.   Facing the Beast of Terror with Courage, Conviction and Right Actions, we can chase it from our children's bedroom closets, and from their minds that wonder if they are loved and respected.  And, when we look in the mirror at ourselves, we can capture the Beast of Terror who sees a "loser," a "failure," a "bad person," a "sad person," and call upon the Sentinels of Vigilance to thrust forward their Shield of Vigilance, and, if necessary, sink the Sword of Vigilance in the belly of the beast.
        We can do all this only if we are willing to take the first step--the one toward becoming Citizens of Vigilance.  This step is simple.  It requires we download the Pledge of Vigilance, read it, and sign it.
        We can put the Beast of Terror in his place, or, we can just sit back and wait for the next Pearl Harbor.
        Don't wait for the next Pearl Harbor.  Take the Pledge of Vigilance today.  (Click for FREE printable version of Pledge)