Not long ago the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, John Boehner of Ohio, said some Democrats were more concerned with protecting terrorists than protecting Americans. “Wow,” I thought. “That’s terrible. I didn’t know that. I wonder who they are?”
Then, just last night (September 20) right here on the Morehead campus, there was a discussion about the Bill of Rights, where I learned another startling fact----this time from a young man in the audience: Half of the people in the United States hate the country!
I never realized this, and it upset me that so many Americans hate our country. But then, in a moment of horror and self-loathing, I knew: I was one of those terrorist-protecting Democrats. I, who have always thought of myself as a loyal if contrarian citizen, hated my country. I was precisely the kind of person Rep. Boehner and the young man in the audience were referring to. You see, I did not admit----as we all must---that we have to be ready to torture suspected terrorists in our custody. I would not admit they must face secret charges based on secret evidence from secret informants and be secretly interrogated and secretly imprisoned or executed by secret tribunals if we are to preserve our freedom. Moreover, for too long I questioned President Bush’s claim that the war in Iraq is the central front in the most crucial war of the century (fortune telling is an inherent executive power), the defining conflict in the struggle between good and evil, the place where the forces of enlightenment must conquer the forces of darkness. I also questioned his belief that if we do not fight them there, we’ll have to fight them here.
For some nagging reason—traitor that I was-- it always seemed to me that the invasion of Iraq was a witless distraction from the hunt for the masterminds of 9/11, that it was a calculating, voluntary, imperial war for which Ms. Rice and Messrs. Cheney, Kristol, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bush, et. al. had long sought a catalytic element to justify---and, joila! 9/11 gave it to them. But now I am redeemed, and see that all my mad suspicion was only the latent hatred I had for my country. And I have an idea that I believe will bring all the other America-hating Americans fully back into the embrace of the mother country: Let’s do fight them here! Right here, on our own turf!
If we fight them here, everyone will drop all doubts and step forward to defend their homes and families. All that the national mobilization will require is that we withdraw U. S. regular forces and National Guard troops from Iraq and bring them home to train every able-bodied citizen in small-arms and artillery fire, air assaults, hand-to-hand combat, IED deployment, and body-bag (oops, sorry----“transport tube”) stuffing. By the time the millions and millions and millions of insane terrorists have overrun the Middle East, East Asia, the Mediterranean region, Iberia, and Europe to establish their Islamofascist Caliphate—six months, tops-- we will be battle ready when they invade the homeland. We will conscript everyone into a seamless network of neighborhood, village, rural, urban, and national militias to fight them on familiar streets and take advantage of their ignorance of our terrain, language, religious customs, and traditional culture. When 100,000 crazed mullahs and suiciders careen into Morehead to pillage and murder, by God we will fight them! In the Student Union! On the lawn! In the gym! In the library! At the Bell Tower-----we will fight them everywhere. It may take years for us to beat back the invasion of the massive terrorist armies, but we’ll have a unified force of constant patriots and ex-America- haters like me standing shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm, in full-throated battle cry to send them to Allah if they dare come down our street. Those we don’t kill we will wear down, since this time, they will be the ones who don’t understand what the war is all about.
The logistics are in our favor. We won’t have to worry about supply lines being cut off----supply lines will be all over the place! We won’t have to worry about giving in, forgoing the mission, or cutting and running---where would we cut and run to? The mission would be here! Casualties? Hell, we have over ten times the population of Iraq, and the Iraqis have only been dying at the rate of about three thousand civilians a month---we can take way, way more hits than that. What’s a couple hundred thousand dead kids if it saves our way of life, like the president says?
Everyone will serve in some way. Mr. Cheney, who missed out on the Vietnam fun like I did, has a bad heart, so he could clean latrines or something and I’m sure he would donate his Halliburton stock to the cause. Mr. Bush can strap on his flight suit and be a for real war leader, swearing and spitting like Patton, visiting the front lines like Lincoln, exhorting the citizen militia like Churchill, awarding Silver Stars to Jenna and Barbara----oh, man, what a photo op---, who will undoubtedly rush to volunteer for the most perilous duty. Rush Limbaugh can lead a brigade of his most fervent dittoheads, pharmacologically fortified, into the fray.
Oh, the majesty of it----farmers, nurses, teachers, miners, preachers, steelworkers, computer specialists, students, the liberal media, Grandpa and Grandma, everyone welded into one white hot mass of ruthless passion for liberty. No dissent, no pesky whining about civil liberties, no deferments, and an armored Humvee in every garage.
The Great Defense of Civilization will cost a lot of dough. Naturally the patriotic benefactors of President Bush’s tax cuts will voluntarily increase their income tax rates from the current 28% to 94%. That was the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans during World War II----and the Cold War rate was about 65%. That’s the kind of sacrifice it took to whip Hitler and Hirohito and the Reds, and by God we all know the rich will gladly cough it up now.
I feel purified already. Bring ‘em on.
John Hennen is
Associate Professor of History at
Morehead State University in Kentucky.
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