10-23-01
It was first called "Tragic Tuesday," but now it's just "Nine/Eleven" in reference to that attack on NYC's World Trade Center and Washington's Pentagon. So 9/11 has made a lot of financial bailouts necessary.First was federal aid to victim's families, then to the airline industry and now even the insurance industry needs some help, along with those billions to stimulate our sagging economy. Days of a national surplus seem long gone now as we also add the cost of this War on Terrorism, which may last for some time.
I saw a giant banner across Manhattan island saying "We Will Never Forget" and it makes me think of Israel's national motto, "Never Again;" which pertains to the fortress called Masada atop an elongated butte just west of the Dead Sea, where Jewish survivors of the Rome's destructive attack on Jerusalem in 70 A.D. had escaped and held out against Caesar's legions, but they built a ramp for their soldiers to go up and capture some thousand Jews who wouldn't surrender; then all but a handful committed suicide before the Roman army could climb up that gigantic dirt stairway that's still in place today. So the Israeli's motto for the state they recreated in 1948 remembers Masada (their national shrine) in the words NEVER AGAIN will Israel fall.
I heard their former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressing his sympathy to us and his agreement that we should seek bin Laden's death any way possible. "That's just the same as we are now doing to Palestinian terrorists,” he said. Since Arafat won't hand them over to us, it's better to assassinate each, than make an attack harming other innocent Palestinians. That's how we feel toward the Taliban isn't it? Now Israel has suffered the assassination of their minister of tourism and is enraged. I heard one of our military leaders say that it violates International Law to kill someone who has thrown down his or her weapon and put up their hands. He also said assassination fell in that same category. Yet it's been too bad for us that only after 9/11 was an executive order formerly issued by Gerald Ford, at the end of his presidency, forbidding such action, was finally reversed by President Bush.
In this wicked world, we've seen too many good guys finish last. And we'd have much preferred to shoot Laden and his special guard than take on the whole Taliban. Yet now their forces are deserting more every day; though new, outside volunteers keep slipping in from surrounding states to join bin Laden's jihad.
Back home we've got more and more anthrax to cope with. I heard mayor Giulliani say that "we need to keep calm and use our common sense." And I listen when he speaks. So I'll just say "calmmon sense" to mean, "cool" (which has been worn out in our American vernacular). Calmmon also carries a sense of the sacred. I sense that our nation has returned to it's ground of being. I saw on a sign yesterday: "In God We Trust," then beneath "United We Stand". Together they really made calmmon sense to me. The calm amid the storm is from above and the common sense is for here in the hassle and wrangle on earth. Even though I claim that humans are inherently religious, such has to be balanced with some secular awareness. We have both as a nation: in our Declaration of Independence (religious) and The Constitution (no mention of God).
And that's why the radical Muslims despise us. They want theocracy instead of democracy the way Muhammad ruled from Medina in the seventh century. Islamic law, I've learned, is loaded with duties to Allah. Maybe it compares to how the Torah was toward Yahweh in ancient Israel. Thus, Jerusalem was the capitol of a theocracy when kings Saul, David, and Solomon ruled the Twelve Tribes. But it broke down. And we Christians tried again during the Middle Ages when "Christendom" had kings ruling various peoples by divine right (plus papal blessing). Protestants tried once more under John Calvin in Switzerland and Oliver Cromwell in England. Neither effort lasted because too much religion was oppressive, even when it's the Bible.
So today we have a voluntary theocracy as the Kingdom of Heaven among believers. And I'm sure that many of us lament America's lax sexual standards, high divorce rate, great alcohol consumption, increasing gambling craze, and general money madness. Islam severely condemns us from it's stricter code of conduct. And though we do repent to our God, He knows that we treat women much kinder and have never glorified suicide, though we have far too much. It just occurs to me that having some of our society left in the secular realm acknowledges that we can't be so absolute about things. And that's humility.
I see Operation Enduring Freedom as the cause of divine righteousness and as seeking that "liberty and justice for all" which ends our pledge of allegiance, that we make to our flag. How good it's been, to see so many displaying it lately. In WW there's even one on the chest of our giant Halloween scarecrow this year. Right after 9/11 there was one big enough to cover the north side of the Bits and Pieces three story building downtown. It was a whopper of a flag, bigger than the scarecrow! But it's gone now, as are so many that were flying. Yet I feel again, that sense of my teen years when we were in WW II. Could this be a prelude to WW III? (only if Osama bin Laden has hold of any nuclear weapons, which he'd surely have used against us by now). Al-Qaeda is surely behind the anthrax attack on us. "O Lord, come" (maranatha) l Cor.16:22.
I mentioned Critter last week but forgot to report that she's doing well and behaving like a very nice dog; doesn't try to escape nor dig in the garden, nor bark too much, and still does lick everyone that comes to visit us, and runs in wide circles when excited; whether in or outside the Pinkhouse. Also forgot to mention that this column began as a "Daily Dogalogue." I'd looked at so many catalogs that I felt a dog's life could break the monotony. Back then I claim that this whole two story dwelling was her doghouse. Now she isn't even a dog, but "Queen of the Pinkhouse." (Just don't tell Niece)
With Halloween right at hand, I'm recalling that fatal plunge of EgyptAir flight 990 just two years ago to the day. It got only sixty miles out from NYC's Kennedy airport and up to 33,000 feet aloft. Our national transportation safety board finally determined that it was caused by an alternate pilot who got hold of the controls, said a prayer to Allah, and held it in` the downfall despite efforts of other crew members to stop him. That would have been a prelude terrorist suicide to 11/7, in my opinion. But because Egypt was so adamant about the finding, we backed off making it official. Now we see that all the 19 terrorists in the attack on our WTC were Egyptian in origin. When that prince came to visit ground zero and then gave mayor Guilliani a check for ten million, he went away to say something to the press critical of our US position toward Saudi Arabia. So the mayor refused his gift, a socking rebuke. It sort of signalled to me the suspicions Guilliani must have toward any Egyptians. That Wahhabi sect of Islam began there in the 18th century and is now seen as the root to all this terrorism. When Saudi Arabia helped us in the Gulf War, it surely was in spite of the Wahhabis who are now seeking retaliation for our troops being left there this past decade. The Arab boys trained in Wahhabi schools are old enough to become volunteers going to Afghanastan now and join ObL's jihad based there and reaching around the globe through the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Of course they're all eager to die for Allah.