They Don't Get It . . . Until They Get It

Reality to Earth . . . Bear with me folks, this takes time to explain . . .

They don’t get it. They never do. And why is that? Cause and effect have been displayed for them over and over again; the people who think this nation, in its quest for peace, won’t hit back when hit first.

Even if war came with a bit of an assist from the mainstream media, as represented by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, the incident involving the USS Maine put us into a war with Spain over their treatment of Cuba during the revolt in the island nation. President McKinley didn’t want us involved there and the final cause of the shipboard explosion, even after a century, has never been fully confirmed, but the effect was clear after the death of over 250 American sailors in a Cuban harbor . . . We did go to war with Spain and came away with most of their colonial land in the process.

The Lusitania was the domino at the front of the line in World War I. The interception of a German diplomatic attempt to put the war in our backyard through Mexico’s entry into a war of distraction with us was the final domino sending us into the fray. We were perfectly happy to stay out of the European playground, full of mustard gas and the sort of cannon fodder infantry which inhabited the trenches Erich Maria Remarque described in “All Quiet on The Western Front”. Germany proved they not only couldn’t understand the Napoleonic lessons about not fighting a two front war, but why it’s unwise inviting players who don’t want to play the game. They didn’t get it until they got it.

One of our enemies, who seemed to get it before the end (If too late) was Admiral Yamamoto of the Japanese Fleet. After December 7th, 1941 and Pearl Harbor he'd been quoted apocryphally as saying “I feel we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.” (This is not believed to be the actual quote. Similar words were attributed to him before his plane was shot down near a former Australian outpost in 1943.) It leads people to believe he fully understood the consequences of his actions before the final curtain rang down at the behest of a cluster of US naval air warriors.

Other wars had followed these, with all of the causes and effects we've grown weary of, but then we come another day in our history; a day which the mention of can only bring one image to mind for anyone in this country . . . Huge piles of debris where giants once stood.

Almost ten years have passed, with the lesson served in the manner in which we’ve come to expect it, with war and bloody retribution. The number one target we had in mind through all the battles fought took time, but the message was finally delivered by Seal Team 6 in two helicopters on May 1st, at one in the morning local time, deposited directly over a fuzzy left eyebrow.

10 years of waiting. The methods of gathering intelligence and the practice of war honed to a razor edge in the mean time and implemented. One dead murderer delivered to the gates of hell.

What do they not get? Every time this nation is prodded out of peacetime and into a warlike stance, we get progressively better at it. The modern American soldier currently has at his disposal the greatest weapons tech the world has ever seen, some of which thirty years ago might have well been considered science fiction. (Can you say laser guided smart bombs and remote-controlled Predator drones, boys and girls?)

And one thing the Osama Bin Laden’s of this world recognize least seems to be the lesson of cause and effect. Pre 9/11, I would have never believed my eyes if there had been such an outpouring of emotion celebrating the death of a villain on the streets of this country. Sure you would have heard a lot of individual statements of this, but not a spontaneous group display, such as you might see in the nations which found our discomforts a reason to celebrate.

The reality of the situation is this . . . By the spilling of innocent blood, the cause; we are a harder people now, vigilant to the point of paranoia and somewhat irritable about the situation. You don’t always see it in us, but the evidence is out there. That is directly opposite of the effect our late friend from Al-Qaeda wished to see, and it’s the brightest signal I could possibly point out to all of you boys and girls with bad intentions that it is time to stop now. We cursed the man and today he’s gone. If you don’t get a hold of a history book and read through it, you’ll follow the wrong example into history yourself, and I guarantee you’ll be cursing him for not realizing what he’s done to you.