America will prevail

In My Humble Opinion
1

On this the anniversary of 9/11, a day that will go down in infamy I have to say that the USA will emerge from this “war” victorious.

Just as Britain did in 1940 when another country tried to bomb us into submission.

You are made of sterner stuff, you have Anglo Saxon blood in your veins and nobody shits on you and gets away with it… nobody

Yes there will be casualties, American servicemen will die as they do in every war., but remember for every American that falls many more of the enemy will also fall.

Have faith in what you believe is right, give no ground, give no concessions to the evil monsters who seek to destroy you…you are Americans, you bend the knee to nobody.

This war may take some time before the final shot is heard but that final shot will be from an American weapon, have no doubts on that.

As Arthur Harris said “They have sown the wind, now they will reap the whirlwind”
God Bless You All

2

Thanks. It was nice to read, from someone outside of the US, five years later.

3

I agree with FormerMarineGuy–it was a nice post. Thanks.

But …(warning: GD thread ahead)
Why say “America” will prevail?
It would have been more appropriate of the OP- who lives in England- to say We will prevail.
'Cause even while you dump Tony Blair, whose sin is that he too wants to prevail , you should realize that we’re all in this together.
Remember, it was a British leader in a bowler hat who’s name now stands for appeasement.

yes, America will prevail. But we’d prefer to get some help from across the pond, so we don’t have to save Europe from itself…again.

4

Thank you.

5

Am I the only one who thought the mention of Anglo-Saxon blood was a bit creepy? The terrorists might be able to beat black Americans and hispanic Americans and Jewish Americans, but not white Americans?

6

God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health through the purity . . . and essence . . . of our natural . . .

. . . fluids.

God bless you all.
*

7

America has already lost; it has done far more damage to itself than terrorists ever have.

8

Or…once again, thank you.

9

Thank you very much. A very nice thought on this day.

10

Erm, thanks…I think.

(100% American, 0% Anglo-Saxon).

11

I almost hate to do this, but what the hell.

Der Trihs has a point here. Americans are willing to give up precious freedoms all too easily in the name of “security”. Terrorism is simply not the Extinction Level Event those that practice the politics of fear would have you believe it to be. The Patriot Act, the illegal (though appeal is pending) wiretapping, the mysterious “no fly list”, the paranoid “security checks” at any airport now–put it all together and it adds up to using a sledgehammer to kill an ant.

In the last five years, more people…many many more people…have died from illness, accidents, or ordinary crime than have ever died from terrorism in this country. Your odds of dying in a terrorist attack in the U.S. are pretty slim. You may have a better chance at winning the lottery, I don’t know. For what it’s worth, here’s a link to some 2002 data on leading causes of death…

http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/death_stats.html

Yes, terrorism is a bad thing. People that do it should be punished harshly. But there is just not enough of it to justify the extreme measures taken by the current administration. The threat is not significant enough to justify the erosion of civil liberties. We’re a nation of laws. Those laws apply to everyone. Even Fake-Cowboy Presidents that consider themselves the new messiah.

12

I don’t know about the Anglo-Saxon stuff ;), but Bravo, chowder.

13

What a bunch of pathetic and racist hooey!

14

I am relieved to find that there are people who still think that America prevailing is a good outcome. I will do my all to try to live up to that faith. I fervently believe in the ideals and visions of ourselves that are fed to us, and with equal fervency I commit to the most skeptical self-examination of which I am capable, that I not accept lip service and patriotic symbolism as equivalent to genuinely living up to the ideals we set for ourselves.

Thank you for believing in us. I believe in us, too, even if sometimes I think I’m incredibly naive to do so. I want us to live up to the image we’ve put before ourselves and the world.

I am AngloSaxon by ancestry on several of a couple thousand lines we’ve traced back. My ancestral families were Scottish, in large part (Scots settled in the southern US in the 1600s) and also some English. It is with great pride that I join all the energies and traditions of my ancestral heritage to those of the Dominicans, Russian, Irish, American Indian, Mexican, Polish, Chinese, Iranian, Filipino, Estonian, etc etc Americans who find glorious echoes of the best of their own ethnic traditions in the principles and ideals to which the United States of America aspires.

It is a high standard we set for ourselves in principle — perhaps so much so that it rightfully causes some people to get disgusted with our pompous self-righteousness even when we are doing a decently good job, all things considered, of living up to it. But it means a lot to me.

So much so that I find it absolutely infuriating that I consider the current government administration to be in massive betrayal of that. But were the goal set lower, would I judge so harshly? I am not fine with what we are doing and have done recently, but it bothers me because there is a standard, and I am emotionally compelled to say “We can do better”. And although this too may seem silly and naive, I have faith that a substantial portion of those who disagree with me, those who think the current government is doing a good job, accord to me the belief that I am trying to make America the best America it can be even while they think I am foolishly deluded about what that might best be constituted of. Reciprocally, I think that of them as well.

“That governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” — TJ

15

Maybe this isn’t how chowder meant it, but I didn’t take the “anglo-saxon blood” thing literally. I thought it was more of a metaphor about where our country was birthed from, and the national character that arose from that.

And thank you, chowder, for the sentiment. It is nice to know that there are people in other places around the globe who still see the good in our concept of what a society should be…even if we aren’t always the best at actualizing it.

16

You’re not the only melting-pot country. How about Australia? And Britain, for that matter? And you’re not the most welcoming to immigrants either. I believe Denmark, among others, lets more people in per capita than the US.

17

Count it among the other ideals we hold for ourselves but don’t necessarily live up to. The current America is rife with dissent about whether or not we should string barbed wire along our borders and otherwise decrease the permeability (political-prodedural and physical alike) to KEEP THEM OUT.

I think there was a time when we aspired to being the ones with the lamp at the golden door, saying “Give me…the wretched refuse from your teeming shores”, the one place people could go and not be turned away. I don’t think we’ve always lived up to that and I don’t think we’re doing so now.

Those of you who have as a country and as a people welcomed immigrants and welcomed the diverse multiculturalism that their arrival has brought you, you have my admiration.

Similarly, those of you who aspire towards the most democratic government possible, empowering and allowing participation to your citizens with the least restrictions, you too I admire.

We who have so loudly proclaimed ourselves leaders and trendsetters in such endeavors probably annoy you to no end. We aspire to lots of things we don’t necessarily attain, or continue to attain over the long haul, and I think we have a nasty habit of giving ourselves credit for what we aspire to without noticing when we no longer live up to our billing nor do as well at it as other countries with similar goals, ideals, and pride.

Please forgive us our egos and wish for us that we live up to what we claim for ourselves.

18

Sure.

Have another drink.

(?)

19

You payin’?

::suspicious:: What are we drinking to?

::scowls:: Would you be mocking me? Making fun of me? I don’t appreciate that, sir. Whoever you are. I am shooting my mouth off, and you’d be quite right that I’ve hoisted a few in salute to the nominal events. I am open to being upbraided for the content of what I post, but I think it insulting that you would mock me. It’s a solemn occasion and worthy of contemplative thought and the rhetoric that it inspires.

::totally codger mode::

Were you there to see those buildings go down? I stood on 6th Avenue, the first had collapsed, and I went downstairs and stood upon the sidewalk and with mine own eye saw this puff of smoky cloud and it took me a moment to realize that as the cloud had appeared, the remaining tower had disappeared. Gone. Both of 'em, gone. Not that I hadn’t called them ugly modern regtangular urban mostrositires, but damn. They were our ugly modern urban monstrosities. And damned if I don’t appreciate them more and more and miss 'em, becasue there were people in 'em, people who died just because that was where their office was at, but also, astonisingly enough, becasue umm well, they weren’t that ugly, not really, kinda cool on the horizon and all, and it was my horizon to look at and I miss seeing them. Damn.

Now…you got something to say about what I said about America’s reputation, it’s standard that it set for itself, it’s claims to idealistic visions (silly tho’ they may be), and its governments, successful and pathetic as measured against those ideals? Say it.

But don’t be tossing off the ad hominems based on what intoxicants I might be consuming. I’ll bloody well toast Michael Moore in one shotglass and Condi Rice in the second and drink you under the table while singing songs about what we aspired and continue to aspire to.

20

That’s what I thought too. Poor choice of words, but I think it was referencing a particular type of rule of law and type of society. The whole stiff upper lip thing. Not a racial slur, and many black Americans or Asian Englishmen would feel an affinity with it.

Good luck America. I hope you do prevail. You’re flawed and imperfect, but kinda okay too.