Two very different views on the attacks

[Aviatrr 0]

This was forwarded to me via e-mail.. I don't necessarily share all these views - I'm just passing this along as I received it..

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What's interesting about these two letters, read back-to-back, is how
differently the two authors deal with the same anger and frustration.
This, undoubtedly due to the extreme difference in their age and life's
experiences.
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The first is one hell of a read, written the night of the attack by an 18
year old from Florida.
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Nothing like the American Spirit.
By Charles Windrose, 18, So. Florida

Date: 9/11/2001 9:07p.m.
An open letter to a terrorist:
Well, you hit the World Trade Center, but you missed America. You
hit the Pentagon, but you missed America. You used helpless
American bodies, to take out other American bodies, but like a poor
marksman, you STILL missed America.
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Why? Because of something you guys will never understand.
America isn't about a building or two, not about financial centers, not
about military centers, America isn't about a place, America isn't
even about a bunch of bodies. America is about an IDEA. An idea,
that you can go someplace where you can earn as much as you can
figure out how to, live for the most part, like you envisioned living,
and pursue happiness. (No guarantees that you'll reach it, but you
can sure try!).
-
Go ahead and whine your terrorist whine, and chant your terrorist
litany: "If you can not see my point, then feel my pain." This concept
is alien to Americans. We live in a country where we don't
have to see your point. But you're free to have one. We don't
have to listen to your speech. But you're free to say one. Don't
know where you got the strange idea that everyone has to agree with
you. We don't agree with each other in this country, almost as a
matter of pride. We're a collection of guys that don't agree, called
States. We united our individual states to protect ourselves from
tyranny in the world. Another idea, we made up on the spot. You
CAN make it up as you go, when it's your country. If you're free
enough.
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Yeah, we're fat, sloppy, easy-going goofs most of the time. That's
an unfortunate image to project to the world, but it comes of
feeling free and easy about the world you live in. It's unfortunate too,
because people start to forget that when you attack Americans, they
tend to fight like a cornered badger. The first we knew of the War
of 1812, was when England burned Washington D.C. to the ground.
Didn't turn out like England thought it was going to, and it's not going
to turn out like you think, either. Sorry, but you're not the first
bully on
our shores, just the most recent.
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No Marquis of Queensbury rules for Americans, either. We were the
FIRST and so far, only country in the world to use nuclear weapons
in anger. Horrific idea, nowadays? News for you bucko, it was back
then too, but we used it anyway. Only had two of them in the whole
world and we used 'em both.
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Grandpa Jones worked on the Manhattan Project. Told me once,
that right up until they threw the switch, the physicists were still
arguing over whether the Uranium alone would fission, or whether it
would start a fissioning chain reaction that would eat everything. But
they threw the switch anyway, because we had a War to win. Does that
tell you something about American Resolve?
-
So who just declared War on us? It would be nice to point to some
real estate, like the good old days. Unfortunately, we're probably
at war with random camps, in far-flung places. Who think they're
safe. Just like the Barbary Pirates did, IIRC. Better start sleeping
with one eye open.
-
There's a spirit that tends to take over people who come to this
country, looking for opportunity, looking for liberty, looking for
freedom. Even if they misuse it. The Marielistas that Castro
emptied out of his prisons, were overjoyed to find out how much
freedom there was. First thing they did when they hit our shores,
was run out and buy guns. The ones that didn't end up dead, ended
up in prisons. It was a big PITA then (especially in south Florida), but
you're only the newest PITA, not the first.
-
You guys seem to be incapable of understanding that we don't live
in America, America lives in US! American Spirit is what it's
called. And killing a few thousand of us, or a few million of us, won't
change it. Most of the time, it's a pretty happy-go-lucky kind of
Spirit.
Until we're crossed in a cowardly manner, then it becomes an
entirely different kind of Spirit. Wait until you see what we do with
that
Spirit, this time. Sleep tight, if you can. We're coming.
Charles Brennan
=====
Proud to be an American
Land of the FREE, home of the BRAVE.
______________________________________________________
This second letter was written by Roger Sheets, a retired Navy pilot
who, among other things, led the strike that mined Haiphong Harbor during
the Vietnam war. It certainly provides a 'different' point of view to
current events.
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The World Trade Center
The Price Of Pansyhood
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A few unorganized thoughts regarding the events in New York:
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(1) We lost. Our moral posturing about our degradation is merely
embarrassing. We have been made fools of, expertly and calculatedly, in
the greatest military defeat the country has suffered since we fled from
Viet Nam. The Moslem world is laughing and dancing in the streets. The
rest of the earth, while often sympathetic, sees us as the weak and
helpless nation that we are. The casualty figures aren't in, but 10,000
dead seems reasonable, and we wring our hands and speak of grief therapy.
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(2) We cannot stop it from happening again. Thousands of aircraft
constantly use O'Hare, a few minutes flying time from the Sears
Tower.
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(3) Our politicians and talking heads speak of "a cowardly act of
terrorism." It was neither cowardly nor, I think, terrorism.
Hijacking an aircraft and driving it into a building isn't cowardly.
Would you do it? It requires great courage and dedication -- which
our enemies have, and we do not. One may mince words, but to me the attack
looked like an act of war. Not having bombing craft of their
own, they used ours. When we bombed Hanoi and Hamburg, was that terrorism?
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(4) The attack was beautifully conceived and executed. These guys are
good. They were clearly looking to inflict the maximum humiliation on the
United States, in the most visible way possible, and they did. The sight
of those two towers collapsing will leave nobody's mind. If we do nothing
of importance in return, and it is my guess that we won't, the entire
earth will see that we are a nation of epicenes. Silly cruise-missile
attacks on Afghanistan will just heighten the indignity.
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(5) In watching the coverage, I was struck by the tone of passive
acquiescence. Not once, in hours of listening, did I hear anyone
express anger. No one said, coldly but in deadly seriousness, "People are
going to die for this, a whole lot of people." There was talk of tracking
down Bin Laden and bringing him to justice. "Terrorism experts" spoke of
months of investigation to find who was responsible, which means we will
do nothing. Blonde bimbos babbled of coping strategies and counseling and
how our children needed support. There was no talk of retaliation.
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(6) The Israelis, when hit, hit back. They hit back hard. But Israel
is run by men. We are run by women. Perhaps two-thirds of the
newscasters were blonde drones who spoke of the attack over and over as a
tragedy, as though it had been an unusually bad storm --
unfortunate, but inevitable, and now we must get on with our lives.
The experts and politicians, nominally male, were effeminate and soft
little things. When a feminized society runs up against male enemies --
and Bin Laden, whatever else he is, is a man -- it loses. We have.
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(7) We haven't conceded that the Moslem world is our enemy, nor that we
are at war. We see each defeat and humiliation in isolation, as a unique
incident unrelated to anything else. The 241 Marines killed by the truck
bomb in Beirut, the extended humiliation of the hostages taken by Iran,
the war with Iraq, the bombing of the Cole, the destruction of the
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the devastation of the Starke, the Saudi
barracks, the dropping of airliner after airliner -- these we see as
anecdotes, like pileups of cars on a snowy road. They see these things as
war. We face an enemy more intelligent than we are.
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(8) We think we are a superpower. Actually we are not, except in the
useless sense of having nuclear weapons. We could win an air war with
almost anyone, yes, or a naval war in mid-Pacific. Few Americans realize
how small our forces are today, how demoralized and weakened by social
experimentation. If we had to fight a ground war in terrain with cover, a
war in which we would take casualties, we would lose.
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(9) I have heard some grrr-woofwoofery about how we should invade
Afghanistan and teach those ragheads a lesson. Has anyone noticed
where Afghanistan is? How would we get there? Across Pakistan, a
Moslem country? Or through India? Do we suppose Iran would give us
overflight rights to bomb another Moslem country? Or will our supply lines
go across Russia through Turkmenistan? Do we imagine that we have the
airlift or sealift? What effect do we think bombing might have on
Afghanistan, a country that is essentially rubble to begin with? We backed
out of Somalia, a Moslem country, when a couple of GIs got killed and
dragged through the streets on TV. Afghans are not pansies. They whipped
the Russians. Our sensitive and socially conscious troops would curl up in
a ball.
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(10) To win against a more powerful enemy, one forces him to fight a
kind of war for which he isn't prepared. Iraq lost the Gulf War
because it fought exactly the kind of war in which American forces
are unbeatable: Hussein played to his weaknesses and our strengths. The
Vietnamese did the opposite. They defeated us by fighting a guerrilla war
that didn't give us anything to hit. They understood us. We didn't
understand them. The Moslem world is doing the same thing. Because their
troops, or terrorists as we call them, are not sponsored by a country, we
don't know who to hit. Note that Yasser Arafat, Bin Laden, and the Taliban
are all denying any part in the destruction of New York. At best, we
might, with our creaky intelligence apparatus, find Bin Laden and kill
him. It's not worth doing. Not only would he have defeated America as
nobody ever has, but he would then be a martyr. The Arabs are smarter than
we are.
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(11) We are militarily weak because we have done what we usually do, If no
enemy is immediately in sight, we cut our forces to the bone, stop most
R&D, and focus chiefly on sensitivity training about homosexuals. When we
need a military, we don't have one. Then we are unutterably surprised.
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(12) The only way we could save any dignity and respect in the world
be to hit back so hard as to make teeth rattle around the world. A good
approach would be to have NSA fabricate intercepts proving that
Libya was responsible, mobilize nationally, invade, and make Libya
permanently a US colony. Most Arab countries are militarily helpless,
and that is the only kind our forces could defeat. Doing this, doing
anything other than whimpering, would require that ancient military
virtue known as "balls." Does Katie Couric have them?

Mike

[DZBone 0]

Whoa, someone needs to cut back the dosage on his testosterone injections.

[freeflir29 0]

I hate to tell you DZ but many of the things listed are reasons I got out of the military after 9 and a half years. He has many very good points. I just hope Bush can motivate the country to do what is necessary to fix the problem instead of just making us look like jackasses like the Clinton administration did full time for 8 years.
"and behold, a pale horse, and he who sat on it, his name was death"-Revelations
Clay

[billvon 3,102]

> He has many very good points. I just hope Bush can motivate the country to do
> what is necessary to fix the problem instead of just making us look like
> jackasses like the Clinton administration did full time for 8 years.
I hope we can learn from history. Two of our most recent large conflicts were with the Communist-supported Viet Cong in Vietnam and the Communists of the USSR. Which "war" did we win? How many Viet Cong did we kill, and how many Soviets did we kill? How many bombs did we drop on the respective countries? Which story do we want to repeat?
As the previous poster points out, invading Afghanistan would be playing to our weaknesses and the Taliban's strengths. We would simultaneously fail and give our generation its Vietnam. I hope we have leaders who will not ignore the lessons of our own recent history.
-bill von

[freeflir29 0]

Bill, there's one big reason "Vietnam" wont happen this time. Let's look for a minute at the two big defeats of the previous world powers. Vietnam-US, Afghanistan-Russia. These two conflicts played out the way they did because of the Cold War. These were both "proxy wars" as the phrase has been coined. Both were small countries, very motivated because they were fighting for their homeland. Dedictaed soldiers make good soldiers. The war was not going very well for the Afghani's until America gave them a nice present. I don't know if you have ever seen A Russian Hind helicopter in flight hunting you but I can tell you it's pretty damned intimidating. Those things are basically a flying tank. They are very effective against ground targets. Enter the stinger missle. On the introduction of this one weapon the war changed dramatically. Suddenly, deprived of their primary Close Air Support weapon (and the SU-25 frogfoot) and experiencing high losses the Russian's world changed. They weren't supported at home. Their troops moral sucked. Their war went just as ours had in Vietnam but only because of massive support by the US. We would easily have one Vietnam without the unending support lent by Russia and China. The same thing happened to us in Korea. So I guess it's 2 to 1 in the Communist's favor.
Afghanistan wont have that kind of support this time. Sure they may be able to fight for a week or a month but the beans and bullets will run out. The only weapon they will have left is terrorism. That we do have to look forward to.
"and behold, a pale horse, and he who sat on it, his name was death"-Revelations
Clay

[billvon 3,102]

>Afghanistan wont have that kind of support this time. Sure they may be able to
> fight for a week or a month but the beans and bullets will run out. The only
> weapon they will have left is terrorism. That we do have to look forward to.
So let's say we go over there and invade. We lose one Anerican to every 10 we kill, and on average, we have to wipe out 10% of an area before we can claim we "won" (due to local surrender, running out of bullets or beans, whatever.)
Now, Afghanistan currently has no central government, so we'll have to do this in each town, village, camp, and clump of bushes in the country - there isn't even a government to announce a surrender. So let's say we do that. It takes 30 years, tens of millions of troops and trillions of dollars, but as Bush said, we have lots of resolve.
When all's said and done, we've lost 2.5 million American soldiers, and have 22 million defeated Afghanis in prison camps. Now what? Do we kill them all? We'd make Hitler look like a fumbling beginner at genocide. Do we take them all to the US and build prison camps? Say, take the state of Maine and make it one big prison? Because the one thing you absolutely can't do is let them go. Think they're fanatic now? Most of them have never met an American - but now they have met one, and he has killed their brother/mother/father/son. They will become the world's most determined terrorists if we do let them go.
Or we could stay there and keep them in prison there. Figure that would take about 3 million Americans (to guard the prisons and maintain the infrastructure) and about 150 billion dollars a year.
As a reference, we spent about $300 billion on all of World War II and saw 300,000 US soldiers killed in battle, out of 16 million mobilized.
It's tempting to just go in guns a-blazin and try to "punish those responsible." If we do that and make things ten times worse, we haven't gained much.
-bill von

[freeflir29 0]

"Now, Afghanistan currently has no central government"
No but there is a group that controls about 30-40% of the country right now that is foaming at the mouth for US help to crush the Taliban. We put them in power and then just give them some cash and a little assistance now and again. Unfortunately, the Taliban managed to assasinate Masood last week. Oh well....another will take his place.
"and behold, a pale horse, and he who sat on it, his name was death"-Revelations
Clay

[iamcolin 0]

Hmmm..
My opinions on the articles.
Well. I think in the first one the kid rationalizes everything in order to make it sound like the US is at a win win situation pretty much whatever the case. Which... isn't that at all. Both countries will end up losing badly in the end. Nothing good comes from violence.
The second one by the older guy seems a little immature for his age. If you really think about it this whole situation it is just gang type stuff on another level. How can you justify retaliation between countries when everybody is against gangs doing the same thing within a country. Yeah that analogy may be a bit different but essentially its the same thing. What is so different between gangs and a nation? The only thing I kind of see is that a gang is within a nation but on a much smaller level. They also don't try and make themselves look smarter and justify the extremely stupid actions they make. I think the consensus can come to an agreement that gang violence is stupid. How can one say then that it is right for countries to fight one another? It's like a city with gangs... An earth with countries. Wow. It's not so hard to see here. Gangs have their colors, pride, territory, own little markets... Each city has its own gangs as the earth has it's nations. Gangs seem to be just imitating the big guns but are NOT ALLOWED TO DO THAT. Hey I'm not all crusading for gangs here but I'm just saying each are equally stupid.
Or maybe that didn't make any sense at all.
Colin

[freeflir29 0]

"Or maybe that didn't make any sense at all."
I'm with ya there!
Seriously, on some level you are right. It is innate to human beings to belong to a group. The more specialized and "elite" the group the more one wants to belong. What this really has to do with the current situation I'm not really sure. Yes, people fight and kill fellow humans for many reasons. I personally don't care WHY someone is trying to kill me. Just the fact that they are is plenty enough reason for me to terminate their existance on this planet.
"and behold, a pale horse, and he who sat on it, his name was death"-Revelations
Clay

[wildblue 7]

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We put them in power and then just give them some cash and a little assistance now and again.

Ha! Anyone want to crack open a history book and count the number of times this hasn't worked?
Then, I saw these two guys swoopin across the pond, and I was like 'weeeeeee!!!!'

[PhreeZone 20]

I can count at least 3 times where this money was actually used to bite the had that gave it to them...... Hmmmm think twice would have tought us a lesson.
Be safe, be smooth, be fast..... and most importantly.... be phree

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[skyhawk 2]

i think the whole world has got a f^cked up view of this war. It shouldnt be fought with ground troops in the traditional style everyone is saying this is a new type of warfare but they want to fight it in the old way it would be like fighting an air war from the trenches. These ppl live in a terrien that offers a high and strong defence that while easy enough for them to navigate for ppl from other places is just a death trap. You want to beat these ppl do terrorist attacks on them (not the surrounding ppl) destroy there way of life get ploacews that are dear to them destroy there moral but dont send hundreds of troops in for certain ambush