For the love of God, WE ARE AT WAR. It may not look like the war that you watch on television, it may not sound like the war in father's or grandfather's stories. But it is a war, nonetheless. And beyond the wall brave men and women are fighting and dying each day so that we may debate whether it is worth fighting and dying for.

We didn't fight back for thirty years. A pinprick here, a pinprick there, everywhere a pinprick. We did not challenge Islam. We did not challenge the nations that attacked us. Through our inaction we said, "Sure, why not, it's not like you can kill us all."

"Wastage," they called it in 1914, when on even a "quiet" day in the trenches a thousand men would perish merely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Munich, Tehran, Beirut, Rome, Berlin, Lockerbie, Khobar, Dar-es-Salaam, Nairobi, and countless others. Shootings on the sidewalk. Stabbings in alleys. Car bombings in the capitals of Europe. Simply the price of doing business, "acceptable losses" to all but the families who lost their loved ones forever.

Now. Today. Fight. Not everyone, not everywhere, but there is hope, hope that we won't let these murderers destroy civilization, that we won't let these murderers sleep soundly in their beds any longer.

We recognize that man's decency to his fellow man, his respect for freedom, and liberty, and the dignity that comes from responbility for his own actions is all that lifts man up from the dark pit of barbarism that he has suffered so much for so long to climb out of.

We are fighters. We will not idle while murderers prepare. We will demand that nations everywhere fight with us, or against us. That to be called a nation *at all* means that you and your citizens must respect the rules upon which civilization itself is founded. That if you fail in this regard, you fail your people, and the bloody price of "peacefully coexisting" with your failures is far too high a price for us to pay any longer.

We fight. We may all die tomorrow, but what we've built-- what our fathers and mothers and soliders and scientists and lawyers and bankers and priests and rabbis and artists and architects have all together built-- all of this must go on. It is worth saving, what we have achieved. It is my children's birthright, and I'll be damned if I permit some illiterate, irrational barbarian to breach the wall in the night to steal that birthright away from them.

We fight.

Dave
Garfield Ridge

Nicely put Dave, but I think I would add one thing. True, WE are fighters, but, unfortunately, there are many among us who are NOT. If Islamic terroists did ever decide to take over a school in America, it wouldn't be out here where everyone has a shotgun hanging in the back window of their pickup (and is ready to USE IT!). It will be in the burbs of one of our largest and best known Northeastern cities because they actually NEED for their victims to be helpless appeasement monkeys who beg and plead and let them look powerfull to their constituents and future victims. Rednecks just wouldn't be any fun for them at all cause we have a tendancy to fight when anybody threatens our kids.

I have the uneasy feeling that Abdel Rahman al-Rashed is a dead man walking.

A question; do people in Russia have the right to bear arms?

Not that I'd expect parents to be carrying when they bring their kids to school; although from now on I expect they very well might.

I have the uneasy feeling that Abdel Rahman al-Rashed is a dead man walking.

To put it another way, has anyone started a fatwa watch for Mr. al-Rashed?

I'll bet Abdel Rahman al-Rashed is Salmon Rushdi's new room mate. It keeps the rent down, you know.