I return in this post to my managerial job at a local video store. A few nights back, a man came into the store with his two young sons. As he wrote out a check at the register, I noticed the man's pullover jacket was bearing the logo of the New York Police Department. Looking back up at the man, I mentioned to him that I had noticed the logo on his jacket and I asked him flat out, "How many people in this country do you think have already forgotten about that day six years ago?" He tore out the check, looked me straight in the eye as he handed it to me, and said, "Far too many, young man, far, far too many." I have been thinking about 9/11 in recent days, and on multiple occasions, one recurring theme has "hit me".
What if we had done nothing? People everywhere, and practically every liberal known to man, spend time over their lattes or cappuchinos in the morning discussing how poorly the war in Iraq has turned out and, of course, how stupid we were to be there in the first place. Before that, the same people were upset we went to Afghanistan. If that isn't enough, don't even bring George Bush into the conversation.
While I may be as naive as the next person at times, I'm not naive enough to think that everything in Iraq is as good as it could be or that our President has always managed this War against Terror as effectively as he could have. Yet, even with that said, I will never ever ascribe to the belief that we should not be on the offensive in this War on Terror. Quite frankly, I remember so very vividly how I felt six years ago, sitting in a high school classroom unable to pay attention to the lesson at hand becuase of the images being unveiled from New York City on a television muted in the corner of the room. I deliberated a long time as I graduated from high school about whether I would join the Army as my father once did many years ago or if I would do as I always had wanted to and enter college and hopefully become a teacher. I wanted to do what was best for my country, and with the immediate emotions of 9/11 subsiding somewhat over time, I decided I could better be of better service by teaching. While I would gladly stand alongside any man or woman in our military and defend my freedoms and my way of life, I today stand on the front lines of another battle...the fight over curriculum in our public schools.
Every year that I am allowed to teach future generations of Americans, I will pause on September 11th and ask each and every one of my students, "What if We Had Done Nothing?" There will never be a year that goes by where I won't show the television footage as it unfolded that morning six years ago. While anyone that knows me at a professional level knows I would never attempt to push my values on students or indoctrinate them with my beliefs, I am of the opinion that simply showing the horrors of 9/11 to future generations just as they unfolded for us that fateful day will help students see what the War on Terror is about for themselves. I want students to answer carefully and authentically, after they consider multiple perspectives and critically engage a variety of sources, (of which undoubtedly will be textbook accounts that are somewhat unfair to the Bush Administration and American foreign policy this decade) "What if We Had Done Nothing?"
Even as this War on Terror has drug on, I have not forgotten why it began. I will never forget that day. I will never forget my fellow citizens jumping out of office buildings and plumetting to horrific ends. I will never forget the way it felt to see a flag draped over the side of a charred Pentagon. I will never forget the bravery that had to have occurred on a plane over a Pennsylvania field. That, all of that, is why I will teach future generations about 9/11 and show them, regardless of how others want to paint it, that we simply did not have the option to do nothing. The issue at hand, the real lesson for students, is not truly about Afghanistan, Iraq, Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Bin Laden, or even the United States. The lesson is about human beings and core human values. We had no option but to act after 9/11 not because we were the most powerful nation in the world, not because of fear tactics that superficial liberals suppose all conservatives now live by, not because George Bush was an imperialistic oil barron, but instead becuase our shared humanness demanded it. People will debate the outcomes all they want and history will see this decade painted in many different lights, but wtching the footage from that sad day makes it ever so clear, we simply could not have done nothing.
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You are correct will, after the attacks we had to hit someone, and that was Bin Laden in Afghanistan, a job which we left incomplete. Bin Laden was allowed to escape, and the "War on Anywhere I want to go" continues. You give me one reason or show me one example of Iraq being an imminent national security threat. They have enough problems getting a SCUD to land where they want in Israel. For someone to claim that Iraq somehow was training the next wave of terrorists is absurd. If 9/11 did one thing, it gave America a massive boost in the world view. Foreign countries cheered us going into Afghanistan, because most sane people could understand why we went. But 6 years later here we are with Afghanistan on the back burner, you want to talk about core values, what about finishing what you started?
it also occurs to me that by you saying "I was better helping America by teaching youth...", you are also saying that those people fighting are better off over there than here. That you are more valuable as a U.S. Citizen because there jobs (Doctor, mechanic, dentist, STUDENT) are not as important as yours.
Every September, I recall that is more than half a century (62 years) since I landed at Nagasaki with the 2nd Marine Division in the original occupation of Japan following World War II. This time every year, I have watched and listened to the light-hearted "peaceniks" and their light-headed symbolism-without-substance of ringing bells, flying pigeons, floating candles, and sonorous chanting and I recall again that "Peace is not a cause - it is an effect."
In July, 1945, my fellow 8th RCT Marines [I was a BARman] and I returned to Saipan following the successful conclusion of the Battle of Okinawa. We were issued new equipment and replacements joined each outfit in preparation for our coming amphibious assault on the home islands of Japan.
B-29 bombing had leveled the major cities of Japan, including Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama, Yokosuka, and Tokyo.
We were informed we would land three Marine divisions and six Army divisions, perhaps abreast, with large reserves following us in. It was estimated that it would cost half a million casualties to subdue the Japanese homeland.
In August, the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima but the Japanese government refused to surrender. Three days later a second A-bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. The Imperial Japanese government finally surrendered.
Following the 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese admiral said, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant..." Indeed, they had. Not surprisingly, the atomic bomb was produced by a free people functioning in a free environment. Not surprisingly because the creative process is a natural human choice-making process and inventiveness occurs most readily where choice-making opportunities abound. America!
Tamper with a giant, indeed! Tyrants, beware: Free men are nature's pit bulls of Liberty! The Japanese learned the hard way what tyrants of any generation should know: Never start a war with a free people - you never know what they may invent!
As a newly assigned member of a U.S. Marine intelligence section, I had a unique opportunity to visit many major cities of Japan, including Tokyo and Hiroshima, within weeks of their destruction. For a full year I observed the beaches, weapons, and troops we would have assaulted had the A-bombs not been dropped. Yes, it would have been very destructive for all, but especially for the people of Japan.
When we landed in Japan, for what came to be the finest and most humane occupation of a defeated enemy in recorded history, it was with great appreciation, thanksgiving, and praise for the atomic bomb team, including the aircrew of the Enola Gay. A half million American homes had been spared the Gold Star flag, including, I'm sure, my own.
Whenever I hear the apologists expressing guilt and shame for A-bombing and ending the war Japan had started (they ignore the cause-effect relation between Pearl Harbor and Nagasaki), I have noted that neither the effete critics nor the puff-adder politicians are among us in the assault landing-craft or the stinking rice paddies of their suggested alternative, "conventional" warfare. Stammering reluctance is obvious and continuous, but they do love to pontificate about the Rights that others, and the Bomb, have bought and preserved for them.
The vanities of ignorance and camouflaged cowardice abound as license for the assertion of virtuous "rights" purchased by the blood of others - those others who have borne the burden and physical expense of Rights whining apologists so casually and self-righteously claim.
At best, these fakers manifest a profound and cryptic ignorance of causal relations, myopic perception, and dull I.Q. At worst, there is a word and description in The Constitution defining those who love the enemy more than they love their own countrymen and their own posterity. Every Yankee Doodle Dandy knows what that word is.
In 1945, America was the only nation in the world with the Bomb and it behaved responsibly and respectfully. It remained so until two among us betrayed it to the Kremlin. Still, this American weapon system has been the prime deterrent to earth's latest model world- tyranny: Seventy years of Soviet collectivist definition, coercion, and domination of individual human beings.
The message is this: Trust Freedom. Remember, tyrants never learn. The restriction of Freedom is the limitation of human choice, and choice is the fulcrum-point of the creative process in human affairs. As earth's choicemaker, it is our human identity on nature's beautiful blue planet and the natural premise of man's free institutions, environments, and respectful relations with one another. Made in the image of our Creator, free men choose, create, and progress - or die.
Free men should not fear the moon-god-crowd oppressor nor choose any of his ways. Recall with a confident Job and a victorious David, "Know ye not you are in league with the stones of the field?"
Semper Fidelis
Jim Baxter
Sgt. USMC
WW II and Korean War
Job 5:23 Proverbs 3:31 I Samuel 17:40
http://www.choicemaker.net/
VOTE HUCK ! He's m'man! jfb
It is always refreshing and invigorating to hear from people who have given so very much to this country. Thank you, Sgt. Baxter. My late father was a Lt. Col. in the Philippines late in the war, so while I do not know from being there myself, I somewhat understand in a sense what tremendous courage and bravery it took for men like yourself to defend our country. I hold veterans in this country in the highest regard and I will make it my unyielding conviction to see to it that future generations of Americans understand exactly why I do.
To Turk, I appreciate the response, again. However, this circular political rhetoric is baseless. It is making an argument just to make one, for all practical purposes, because it is overly easy to say that we should just be in Afghanistan entirely still today. If we had found any level of immediate success in Iraq, you may have been among those who supported us being there, but because we didn't, again it is easy to condemn. We'll stick with Afghanistan, however. Please, please, before you reply to me about being there anymore and what we are accomplishing, take a minute or two, use Wikipedia for all I care, and study Afghan history and then study Afghanistan within the realm of modern international world system. I would suggest, if you really want to unearth some things, look to Barnett Rubin, he is one of the very best, if not the best, scholar/s on Afghanistan we have. You will only then begin to understand the challegnes the United States would face in Afghanistan. That theatre is regarded as the Soviet version of Vietnam for a good number of reasons, many of which bear a striking resemblence to what we should have known when we invaded Iraq. All I ask, not to discourage your opinion at all, is just that you delve deeper into this. I understand the Afghanistan argument, but that becomes a much more difficult argument to make when you understand the complexities present within Afghan politics and society throughout history and presently.
To the post by anonymous, which I believe is actually my roommate, I will just simply say that you had better believe I see my future job as the most important one out there. Teaching, truly educating future generations, is, in my mind, the single most important thing we have to accomplish in this world. I would not recount from that for a second.
Additionally, to say that a teacher in America is not part of this war on terror is absurd. It is a shame that more do not see themselves as part of it. What we are doing as teachers is preparing future Americans to be productive members of a viable workforce and innovative population that, through our freedom of choice to pursue what we will, will continually allow this country to remain economically and politically strong in the future. It is that, as much as anything tangible on the ground somewhere, that this war is really about. We have to fight all of the fronts of this war, and at some level, maybe facetious at times, I feel I am doing that. Let it be known, however, when the day comes that I have to leave my post in the classroom to take up arms, if I am called to, I am pefectly willing, and more willing than many around me, to do just that.
Interesting to know.
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