Thanks W, for making the world so much safer than it was before. Now I can fly back home without a care in the world, knowing that you have gotten that gold ole mission accomplished.
I am also so grateful to be flying with a two year old that won't be allowed to take any juice or toys on the plane. My daughter is such a joy on those 9 1\2 hour flights to begin with, and that joy will be tripled this time. I guess this will be that desperately needed bonding time for us. Who cares if now I have to have that awful nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach that maybe somehow someone is going to get through with evil intent and that there would be absolutely nothing I can do to protect her. That pales in comparison to the fun we are gonna have waiting in line and being checked and rechecked!
You may wonder why it is that I am so grateful to that tough hombre from Crawford. Well it's obvious isn't it. The war in Iraq has obviously made us so much safer than we were before. People love Americans now. You can't go anywhere without someone trying to hand you some candy and flowers. It's really been quite distracting here in Europe and in the Middle East, I bet it's out and out embarrassing. And if there's a bomb in the middle of those thank you gifts, it's just a language thing. Interestingly, "Flowers and candy" are also Pakistani, Arabic, and I think Farsi, for "explosives". So you can see how that confusion came about.
One of these days maybe we are going to figure out that we are not going to be safer by simply pounding things into submission. Terrorists are nasty and slimy creatures, when you step on them they slide away, and when you see one there are thousands more you can't see. What needs to be done is to take away their popular support. And the only way you are going to do that is to stop interfering with other people's affairs. Folks will live as they wish, not as you want them to. Forget idiotic ideas like forcing democracy on people. And for God's sake stop attacking countries that did nothing to you. Islamic militants that wish to do us harm will always hate America regardless. They are lunatics, and they should be caught and dealt with harshly. But overall, people leave you alone if you leave them alone. I know that many are going to look at this article as dismiss me as being part of the "blame America" crowd. Well. Monsters that are willing to blow up planes and kill perhaps thousands of innocent people are just that, monsters. But I really don't see why our soldiers should be in foreign countries being ordered to kill thousands, most of them innocent of anything. All for pipedreams and greed, handing those aforementioned monsters the excuse they were looking for in the first place.
