This must be how Jim Murray felt the morning he awoke to the news Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. The late, great sports columnist from Los Angeles was on assignment in Lake Tahoe. “I was going to write about fun and games today, a golf match on a sylvan lake, a track meet in a municipal amphitheater,” his piece began. “But once again America the beautiful has taken a bullet to the groin. I will be severely criticized, even ridiculed for crying out: ‘Lousy sportswriter, what does he know?’ Well, Americans who have a podium should use it today.” And, boy, did he use his, giving voice to what millions felt. “I’m sick of being told I should ‘understand’ evil. Should a canary ‘understand’ a cat? Get off your knees, America. Bare your teeth! The lion bares his teeth and the jackals slink away. A cowering animal invites attack. But America is not listening.” Murray wrote that in 1968. Now let’s consider what we woke up to this morning: Taliban gunmen killed 141 people, mostly kids, when they stormed a school in Pakistan, while three people, including the maniacal, self-styled Muslim minister who held 17 people hostage, were shot to death in Sydney, Australia. Murray was correct. What else is there to write about on such a morning as this? But it’s also yet another clarion call for us to come to our senses, to recognize evil and call it what it is. Sensitivities are fine, but should innocent people be sacrificed to them? When we apprehend barbarians, why can’t we incarcerate them at Guantanamo? When we capture savages, why can’t we extract information from them by any means necessary? It makes us less civil? Please. Is it more noble to let them kill us? We are living in a world where kindness is mistaken for weakness. Atrocities notwithstanding, there exists among us well-intended lunatics who remain persuaded that turning the other cheek might somehow appeal to the humanity of terrorists. Humanity? Monsters don’t have humanity any more than rodents do. Didn’t we learn that in World War II? Yet it seems nothing can deter the anti-Gitmo crowd from wanting to treat Muslim madmen kinder and gentler, not even the obscenity of what just took place in Australia and Pakistan. In our unwillingness to treat our toxic enemies accordingly, we have become, in Murray’s words, “a lamb defending the lion’s right to eat it.” Enough already. America, it is indeed time to bare our teeth. AP Views Devastation Inside Pakistan School AP 00:00 / 00:00
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 12:49:29 +0000
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