Remembering means we never forget

Do you all remember where you were four years ago today? I'm sure you do. I was in Astrakhan, Russia, as I wrote about here.

Do you remember how you felt that day, and in the days to follow? Did you feel rage? I did. Do you still feel rage? I do.

When I read Mark Steyn, I usually feel like throwing away my keyboard, as he always says things so much better, but in his column today, he said what I've often said, that 9/11 wasn't a "tragedy". It was an act of war. People planned to commit those acts of murder. Steyn writes:

It wasn't a "tragic event" or even one of a series of unfortunate events. It was an "attack," an "act of war." I sat at the lunch counter with a guy who'd tuned out the same station on the grounds that "I never heard my grampa talk about 'the tragedy of Pearl Harbor.' " But, consciously or otherwise, a serious effort was under way to transform the nature of the event, to soften it into a touchy-feely, huggy-weepy one-off. As I wrote last year: "The president believes there's a war on. The Dems think 9/11 is like the 1998 ice storm or a Florida hurricane -- just one of those things."

In the Strib today, an article on the 9/11 remembrances was headlined "It's beginning to feel like Sept 10 again". Well, we can thank the media for a lot of that sentiment. They haven't gone out of their way to remind us of the horrors, nor talked with us about the proper response to such acts.

Read Michelle Malkin's post, and see if you remember seeing anything like that in the mainstream media. Do we recall what was lost that day? The families that would never again be whole? Do we forget that evil men plotted to come to this country, and force someone's loved one to make a choice between burning to death, or leaping 100 stories to their death? How can our response to that be anything other than annihilation of those who are still seeking to do the same to us again?

Currently, the mechanics for Northwest Airlines are on strike. It is an acrimonious strike, as such things usually are. Northwest is trying to save huge amounts of money in labor costs, and understandably, the mechanics want money to grow on trees, and their attitude is that if they were going to lose their jobs anyway, they will try to hurt Northwest Airlines as much as they can.

Dennis Sutton, vice president of AMFA Local 5 in Detroit, is quoted in this article as saying:

"We'd rather just keep picketing against Northwest Airlines," said Sutton, who represents 450 mechanics and cleaners who work at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Northwest's largest hub. "All we can do is try to make their lives half as miserable as ours are."

In this article, Mylo Mitzel, a Northwest mechanic for 26 years, is quoted as saying:

"They can have their scab operation, and go to hell, rot in hell. That's what they deserve," Mitzel said.

This is not much different than the attitude the hateful Left has for President Gush and his conservative policies for the response to 9/11. They are so far gone in their hatred, that they would rather see President Bush, and the country, suffer the consequences for a feeble response to terrorism, rather than see President Bush succeed in his policies. It has come to that.

In Genesis 18, Abraham asked God to spare Sodom if only ten righteous people were found there. I know more than ten people can be found in this country who are aware of the importance, the need to chase these terrorists to the ends of the Earth and strangle them where they lie if necessary. Yet, it feels as if too many hold tight to their gumdrops and lollipops way of looking at the world, and hope that drippy talks of peace are enough to hold back our enemies. Wasn't 9/11 enough to tell us that is sheer folly? What more do we need to suffer?

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Blogs for Bush has a roundup.
Captain's Quarters has a good remembrance.
Hugh Hewitt remembers the cost of resisting evil.
Betsy Newmark also urges us to never forget.
Mr. Snitch has a link to a very poignant remembrance of those who were lost.