The Conservative Soldier

What is the “take away”, as they say, when I encounter this?

Picture a staid, lovely suburban Chicago residence. The manicured front yard is graced by a sign supporting the insane proposition that an inexperienced, anti-American Illinois Senator named Obama would become President of the United States.

But there’s more. As a backdrop, the yard is cluttered with expensive yet gaudy Halloween props – tombstones, horrifying skeletons, skulls bearing ghastly expressions of utter despair, and a preponderance of cobwebs.

Is this a preview of our world under Obama? The thought howled, in keeping with the season, between my ears as I drove past.

Surely, this has got to be the one Halloween when the Obama sign is spooky enough. It boggles the mind how his hapless supporters – those who seek change without regard for the consequences – fail to grasp that the juxtaposition of Halloween’s creepiness with their political Messiah sends the very message that the rest of us have long warned about: that the nightmares begin on Nov. 5, and for many Halloweens to come, unless voters wake up and make the right choice.

The obvious choice is to vote for the American hero whose scars are not hyped, cosmetic enhancements intended to trivialize pain and suffering, which is the essence of Halloween decorating in modern suburbia. Senator McCain’s are the scars earned in service to his country, in a prison far from home, in a world where Sen. Obama would not last for even one day.

As my 11-year-old daughter was falling off to sleep on the eve of Sept. 11, 2008, I mentioned that today was an important one for all Americans. She recently entered sixth grade. I wondered aloud if an observance was planned at the local middle school. Her puzzled expression got my attention.

My kid has little recollection of 09/11/2001 and, apparently, no understanding of why 09/11 matters.

That’s not her fault. It’s mine and, to a degree, the fault of local public schools.

Parents well remember the dilemma we faced in the hours and days after the attacks of 09/11 seven years ago. What do you tell a four year old? Do you let her watch the endless television images? Surely not. How can we allow him to be potentially haunted by the World Trade Center jumpers on that tragic morning, or scenes of the collapsing towers, the billows of dust and smoke, the smoldering Pentagon? They haunt me still. What might they have done to the fragile psyche of a child?

It was too much for a child below a certain age — and we didn’t know what age, exactly — to comprehend words like “terrorist”, “hijacker”, or “attack”. How do you tell your precious son or daughter that the United States had been attacked this beautiful September day, not by an army or another country, but by an ideology rooted in violence and ruthless, large scale killing of innocents? How do you explain that people simply going to work died for no reason? That flight attendants and passengers on commercial jets had become front line soldiers in the new war on Islamic Radicalism?

We did not want to try to explain it then. I fear that as the years have gone by we have continued our silence. We make passing remarks about the post-09/11 world, or the “damn terrorists”, or the indignities of airport security checkpoints and bans on hair gel. We fly our flags on Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day without pausing to remind our kids what these capital-D days are all about. Why would we bother with explicit narratives about The Day That Changed America?

We should end the silence. Today is a good day to start. Isn’t it sadly ironic that so many adults deplore the notion of leaving our kids an environmentally damaged, or energy challenged, planet, yet seem to think nothing of passing along a nation, and a way of life, that is viewed by Islamic Jihadists as one great big bulls-eye?

The numbers of educated parents and professional educators who view 09/11 as a fluke, an aberration, are incomprehensible. And there are legions who also believe that somehow the U.S “had it coming”. How dare we impose democracy or freedom on the world beyond our shores.

Our innocent sons and daughters are seven years older. I wish I could be certain they are seven years safer. I wish I could guarantee that they will never awaken on a September morning to TV images of next-generation terrorism, to mass destruction of America’s energy infrastructure. I pray they’ll never see another towering symbol of America’s promise blown off the face of the earth.

But I do know that silence about the events of 09/11/2001 is not an option. We should arm our children with a deep and somber understanding of how the attacks were orchestrated, how the victims died, how the airplanes-turned-missiles not only ended nearly 3,000 lives but shattered the lives of thousands and thousands more, and why 20 suicidal warriors were so motivated to wreak unthinkable terror on American soil.

Our children need to become intimately acquainted with the heroes of 09/11, too. There are countless heroes. The law enforcement and fire department crews that ran toward the World Trade Center even as hundreds ran the other way. The passengers aboard United 93 who charged the cockpit to avert the plane’s mission to destroy the U.S. Capitol or the White House. They never were going to save themselves but think how many hundreds they chose to save in that darkest hour?

If 09/11/2001 does not become a capital-D holiday, a day of solemn observance and remembrance, then it should at the very least become a day on which time is set aside in our schools and homes to repeat two powerful words: Never Forget.

If our memories of this day fade so, too, do our hopes that it will not happen again.

Here they come.

Hurricane Obama in Denver this week. Hurricane Gustav in the Gulf of Mexico next week.

The winds of blame are swirling, gaining force, creating the vortex of fear and resentment beloved by liberal politicians.

The question for John McCain and his millions of supporters: Which hurricane is more threatening?

And the bigger question for the Obama camp: How freely do we exploit hurricane fallout, human suffering, even death?

A hurricane named Gustav is charting its menacing course in the Caribbean. Experts believe it will roll into the vast Gulf and head toward the United States. With memories of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 quite fresh, federal government brass are descending on New Orleans even now, even though it is too early to know if New Orleans will be in Gustav’s path.

President Bush and his Homeland Security and FEMA heads know they were blamed for every misstep after Katrina, blamed for decades of neglect by state and city government leaders and their failure to upgrade the city’s infrastructure to make it ready for a major hurricane. And Bush was blamed for delays in the arrival of federal aid and relief coordination, even as New Orleans police and rescue departments choked under pressure, unprepared and, perhaps, unconcerned.

That terrible hurricane exactly three years ago this week peeled back layers of largely invisible poverty in New Orleans, revealing thousands of people living in dwellings that would barely have stood up to a routine severe weather event and certainly never had a chance to withstand Katrina’s wrath.

All of the devastation was laid at the feet of the Bush Administration. Bush doesn’t care about the poor people of New Orleans who have lost everything, the thinking went. To rational observers it was so absurd that we were left to wonder if these instant historians suspected Bush of ordering Katrina to the shores of Louisiana and Mississippi.

And now? Obama gets his coronation Thursday night in Denver, but the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign already are in planning mode, playing out scenarios for next week under which the Republican Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul would be impacted by Gustav. If the storm hits as scheduled, would Republicans gathered for their convention hundreds of miles to the north become (unjustly) ridiculed as “insulated, out-of-touch white folk”, partying away while citizens of New Orleans and other impoverished Gulf Coasters are enduring Hurricane Gustav?

And would Team Obama exploit this scenario? Of course. Count on it.

Hurricanes are among nature’s most feared weather events. They are unpredictable and unrelenting. But they can be avoided, and it is not up to the federal government, and certainly not up to the President of the United States, to force citizens to face up to the threat posed by these hurricanes (especially amid predictions of active hurricane seasons for years to come). Let us consider the facts:

- No one is forced to live in coastal regions of the country where hurricanes are most likely to arrive every few years or more.

- No one who stays in his home despite orders to evacuate as a hurricane approaches can complain if he loses everything in a matter of a few hours. Evacuees tends to find themselves uninjured with drinking water, food, clothing and at least one automobile still intact when they obey authorities.

- A lot of New Orleans residents insisted the city would never experience a catastrophic hurricane and, even as Katrina was roaring to life and growing by the minute, refused to budge.

But President Bush and his administration ultimately was blamed for everything that happened thereafter, not the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi, or the mayor of New Orleans, or the individuals who chose to ride it out.

The brilliant political columnist Victor Davis Hanson addressed a similar scenario back in February. We didn’t know about Gustav then, but we were already seeing the gathering storm of a weakening economy, mortgage foreclosures and rising energy prices. And the blame game had begun even as the clouds darkened on the horizon.

Obama and other liberals were then seizing the “gloom-and-doom” narrative that said “Americans are doing almost everything right, but still are not living as well as we deserve to be.” Hanson cited examples of the many bad things Obama wants voters to believe should have been stopped by Bush:

- The Home Mortgage Meltdown, which, Hanson writes, “had nothing to do with misguided attempts … to put first-time buyers in homes through zero-down payments, interest-only loans, and subprime but adjustable mortgage rates — as part of liberal efforts to increase home ownership rates.”

- Foreclosures. “There are apparently few Americans who unwisely borrowed against their homes a second and third time …”. Bush made them do it, apparently.

- Fuel and energy price hikes. Bush forced people to own “large gas-guzzlers (for everyday driving) and big homes” even as liberals maintained an aversion to “nuclear power plants, oil drilling off the coasts and in Alaska, and conservation of resources.”

The Obamaniacs preach that American can not afford another four years of Bush-like governance and, next week, with giddiness I am sure, they will denounce a Republican Party that dares to hold a convention as a hurricane approaches.

Who knows what actually will happen. Appearing on Fox News, political observer and campaign guru Dick Morris commented today that, right or wrong, McCain and his inner circle must begin monitoring The Weather Channel around the clock when arriving for the convention in Minneapolis. If there is a hurricane that slams the Gulf coast, Morris said, “McCain needs to get on a plane and go there.”

That may be a valid point. But before he does, I hope Sen. McCain also takes a moment to remind Republicans that the U.S. economy is starting to recover from its own hurricane, that GDP rose to 3.3% in the second quarter, blowing away estimates, and that average national gas prices fell 42 days in a row through Aug. 28.

There is a lot of blame swirling around. Might as well take a little credit, too.