September 11, 2003

WAR AND HUMAN NATURE: 9/11 REMEMBERED

        9-11-03: Horsefeathers turned on the TV last night and almost drowned in bathos. The media is in full “sensitive and caring” mode. The anniversary of the terrorist attacks gives our highly coiffed pundits an opportunity for heartstring tugging displays of self absorption. There is no feeling they will not share with us---except, of course, anger. The Judy Woodruffs, Diane Sawyers and Katie Courics with anxious, choked voices share their grief and empathic concern, dabbing at tears, biting their lips-and then turning to the next story, preferably about the heartlessness of the President. The male pundits, like Tom Brokaw, crack their voices and display their ‘sensitive’ side. In our soft and squishy therapeutic age, anger is the one unacceptable emotion, something to “get beyond”, to “resolve”, replace with “acceptance”. If we hold fast to our anger we are “sick” and in need of the benign ministrations of the caring professions.

        And then, amazingly, and in the midst of the navel gazing, Horsefeathers heard Rudolph Giuliani on Don Imus’s radio show. When asked by Imus what he felt, Giuliani instantly replied, “anger”, then went on to elaborate on why he felt the same cold fury today that he felt 2 years ago. He didn’t parade his sensitivity, merely mentioned that he had lost many good friends, losses which fueled and directed his anger at the Islamo-Nazis with whom we are at war. No wonder he was a leader in the Churchill tradition; he had, as Churchill did, unashamed access to a cold and determined anger. It was elevating.

        The famous theorist of war, Karl Von Clausewitz, observed that "There is only one decisive victory: the last". In order to fight on to that decisive victory we must resist the cant of the caring, professional empathizers whose shallow view of human nature threatens to undo us. Instead, Horsefeathers counsels rereading Patton, Churchill, John Stuart Mill and Shakespeare. We are at war. Our brief vacation from history during the 1990’s following the fall of Communism is over. We must destroy those who would destroy us. Here are a few excerpts from some Horsefeathers favorites to help keep our balance and strengthen our will.

"...We ask no favours of the enemy. We seek from them no compunction. On the contrary, if tonight our people were asked to cast their vote whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of cities, the overwhelming majority would cry, "No, we will mete out to them the measure, and more than the measure, that they have meted out to us." The people with one voice would say: "You have committed every crime under the sun. Where you have been the least resisted there you have been the most brutal. It was you who began the indiscriminate bombing. We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst - and we will do our best." Perhaps it may be our turn soon; perhaps it may be our turn now..."
--Winston Churchill

"...The real hero is the man who fights even though he's scared. Some get over their fright in a minute, under fire; others take an hour; for some it takes days; but a real man will never let the fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty, to his country and to his manhood...
--George Patton

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill

And finally, from the writer who knew a bit more about human nature than Larry King and Barbara Walters:

“In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger: Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. “
--William Shakespeare King Henry V