A Return

It's been a tumultuous year since last posting to this blog -- the birth of a second child has a way of limiting the amount of time that one spends navel-gazing on the web. However, with nearly a year's gap between posts we are feeling the urge to publish again. Perhaps it's the change of season, and the fact that short days and long nights will soon become the norm in the North East. Maybe, it's the fact that around this time each year, for at least the last 5, we feel the need to sound off, to make ourselves heard, regardless of how few will actually read or interact with our posting about what we consider to be the signal event of the last 50 years in the life of our country -- the attacks and murders of our fellow countrymen on September 11, 2001.

Amid all of the ratings-grubbing, maudlin, and politicized coverage that undoubtedly will mark the fifth anniversary of this attack we should look through the soft focus videography, and block out the surging violins to understand that this anniversary is the result of a cowardly and unprovoked attack. As much as defeatists and appeasers, both domestic and foreign may want to blame the U.S. these attacks and their harvest of widows, orphans and children-buried-by -parents lie squarely at the feet of fascistic Muslims who wish to dwell in the 14 Century and wish that we would do the same.

There is nothing in the normal course of international events that justifies the type of attack perpetrated on September 11, 2001. We certainly never went looking for this type of trouble; we never asked to be engaged as we are in the Middle East -- despite what the punditocracy would have you believe. We are fighting a war of ideas here, and it is a hot war. Bullets are flying, people are dying and the stakes are incredibly high -- the survival of western culture, liberty and freedom do depend on this conflict.

This is not hyperbole. The governments of Western Europe are cowed by their giant, restive Muslim populations and have completely withdrawn from this engagement. Their fear leads to their continuous denigration of U.S. efforts. This appeasement -- coupled with negative Euro birth rates -- will lead to the inevitable submersion of Western European culture beneath a Muslim sea. America really is the last redoubt of freedom and truly liberal Western thought in this world. We owe it to ourselves, to our heritage and not least of all to the victims of Muslim Terrorism to stand up to fascistic, Muslim dreams of a world wide caliphate. We need to wage this war to its end and we must fight it to win whether that victory comes five, ten or fifteen years from now.