Honolulu Lite
Terrorists may discover
new world todayBy the time you read this, the history of the world may already have been changed. Again.
The tyranny of newspaper deadlines mandates that today's news, at least today's columns, be written yesterday. So I am typing this at 11 a.m. on Sept. 10.
The trouble is, how do you write anything, whether it be uplifting, inspiring, angry, thoughtful, humorous or pure sentimental drivel, a day before the one-year anniversary of something like the terrorist attacks on our country? Because the buggers who did it, who murdered thousands of innocent people in New York and Washington D.C., are still out there. They are still just as twisted and psychotic and hateful as they were a year ago. And if they can, they will try to murder even more people than they did last year.
And by the time you read this, whatever hellish deeds these so-called people of God have inflicted on the world will have been done. Then, whatever appears in this space will be meaningless. Because the history of the world will have been changed again. And this time, the response from the United States will not be to merely throw out some whacko regime from a dusty Third World backwater country while discussing an attack on another whacko regime in an equally dusty -- though heavily armed -- backwater country.
We will, in fact, be involved in a true world war, a war to stamp out fundamentalist Islamic terror from the face of the Earth. All the hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing that had become something of an international sport by countries opposed to a U.S. attack on Iraq will be moot. There will be no courtesy calls to allies and pseudo allies to see what they think about an all-out global military response to whatever terror attacks take place today. It won't matter what the French or the Germans or the Congolese or the Djiboutis think.
The world will have changed in a day as it did a year ago. If, by the time you read this, terrorists have exploded a nuclear bomb or attacked an American city with a biological or chemical weapon, all bets are off. And so are the gloves.
Because this country simply will not tolerate being attacked. Why terrorists would make such a monumental error in judgment to assume America would sit back and not react to the mass murder of its people is unfathomable. Maybe they think that life in the U.S.A. really is like "Everybody Loves Raymond" episodes they see on satellite television. Perhaps they confuse our indulgence of the wacky politically correct segment of our population with softness. Maybe they don't understand that tolerance of anti-American speech on our own soil is not a weakness, but a strength.
Maybe they should have checked the historical record: America has never put up with anyone's crap. And if they were dumb enough to attack us in any significant way today, they are about to discover the true meaning of the "wrath of God."
But what if nothing happens today? What if the solemn memorials planned for the victims of the World Trade Center and Pentagon slaughters go off without a hitch? Will the terrorists be off the hook?
No. Because we will not tolerate living under the shadow of another major terrorist strike.
Our enemies may think Americans are willing to live in fear, but if they'd stop reading the "Collected Speeches of Osama bin Laden" and take a peak at the "Encyclopedia Britannica," they'll discover we haven't done so yet.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com