REVISITING "CANDLES FOR PEACE"

Two days after The Attack on 9/11, I wrote this letter to my daughter, Jennifer, who'd asked that I participate in a nationwide vigil...lighting a "Candle for Peace."

I responded with this letter, which began a website on the war that followed, documenting what was going on, what I was thinking, and what my friends thoughts were. I maintained that site for a while, and left it. This blog is a descendent. Nobody reads it, but it makes me feel better to get this stuff off my chest.

The letter is reproduced below , and anyone who reads it is asked for comments...particularly how things look now, what's changed, and what should be our actions now?

Jen...I'll light up my candle tonight, as you suggest, not for peace for there is no peace, but for Remembrance...Remembrance of a Civilization under siege, and a world where Governments undertook to protect their citizens as their primary, some would say their only, reason for existence. The thousands of our citizens and others...of all colors, accents, and nationalities...who were slaughtered this week were owed, by their Government, that protection.

For at least the last 8 years, and for some time before, the U.S. has been under attack around the world. Bin Laden is under indictment in the US with evidence secured for court proceedings, for killing others of us, multiple times, and has not been pursued. A couple of missiles into an aspirin factory or into some Afgan mud huts could not have been thought by our, then-Government to be effective, only "a message." Such acts of false resolve emboldened our enemies, the killers of our citizens, into creating the scenes we now endure. Symbolism is not the stuff of effective action.

The network of these fanatics extends throughout the entire world, including the U.S., as evidence was presented to the US Congress a year and a half ago. It took me no more than 5 minutes to find it on the Internet. Our Government all along has known of these facts and of these people, and our failure to deal with them, along with the Government's unwillingness/refusal to pursue Bin Laden, or to stop Iraqi weapon production and a multitude of other things that should have been done, constitutes malfeasance of the highest order. For that, we mourn those dead in NYC. How can we thank God for the safety of Patti and Ivan...how we can see the pitiful tears of those folks on TV at night and not be outraged? Peace? This enemy knows no pity, and intends no Peace. Bin Laden is only one of them, and if we're to save ourselves, there must be War, not Peace.

There will be talk of "not being like them" and of "legal protections" and of caution to not hurt anyone else. Such comments assume an obscene equivalence between Civilization as we know it, including the teachings of the Koran and the persons of true Islamic faith, and these pitiless killers of innocents. There is no moral equivalence, and it is not civilized to fail to defend Civilization against them. I don't want to talk of Peace...yet...till we have protected ourselves and others...and that means War, not Peace. No euphemisms....no "neutralization" or "bringing to Justice" or other unclear thinking. They must be hunted down and killed. Bloody, terrible, costly, horrible acts...but they must be killed, as they themselves have established the rule by which this War must be fought.

We cannot fight these people successfully in our own house. There are too many sites in a free country for them to attack us, and not enough of us to guard them all. We must kill them where THEY live, and that will be an ugly sight indeed.

The failure to stop equivalent brutes in the 1930s led to tens of millions of deaths and untold misery in one of the bloodiest Centuries of all history. The guilt of that failure led directly to giving away, to its victims, the land of others who were then displaced and who have fought back ever since. In a very real way, some of the roots, not all, but some of the roots of the current killings lie in a previous generation's unwillingness to fight for itself before The Holocaust.

This may be our Civilization's last chance. Failure may plunge the world back into another Dark Ages. Don't think that's an overstatement. If these killers have their way, the Taliban Way will be Your Way, too.
So tonight, I'll light my candle for Remembrance, and for hopes of a world where my Darling Daughter can live her life of freedom, in what is truly "the last best hope for Mankind on Earth," ... America.

But don't speak to me of Peace.

Love, Dad