No, do more than remember. Never forget.

Someone on another board I visit posted this article. Suck it all in because it speaks the truth.

Tony Parsons: Shame on You American-Hating Liberals, Daily Mirror: September 11, 2002

One year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting: the mass murder of thousands, live on television. As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race, September 11 was up there with Pol Pot\'s Mountain of Skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi concentration camps.

An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated and so utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on one thing - nobody deserves this fate. Surely there could be consensus: The victims were truly innocent, the perpetrators truly evil.

But to the world\'s eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly seen as America\'s comeuppance. Incredibly, anti-Americanism has increased over the last year. There has always been a simmering resentment to the USA in this country; too loud, too rich, too full of themselves, and so much happier than
Europeans - but it has become an epidemic. And it seems incredible to me. More than that, it turns my stomach.

America is this country\'s greatest friend and our staunchest ally. We are bonded to the US by culture, language and blood. A little over half a century ago, around half a million Americans died for our freedoms, as well as their own. Have we forgotten so soon? And exactly a year ago, thousands of ordinary men, women and children - not just Americans, but from dozens of countries, were butchered by a small group of religious fanatics. Are we so quick to betray them?

What touched the heart about those who died in the Twin Towers and on the planes, was that we recognized them. Young fathers and mothers, somebody\'s son and somebody\'s daughter, husbands, wives, and children, some unborn.

And these people brought it on themselves? Their nation is to blame for their meticulously planned slaughter?

These days you don\'t have to be some dust-encrusted nut job in Kabul or Karachi or Finsbury Park to see America as the Great Satan. The anti-American alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who blame the Americans for every ill in the Third World, and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter that the world\'s only superpower can do what it likes without having to ask permission.

The truth is that America has behaved with enormous restraint since September 11.

Remember, remember -

Remember the gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men phoning their wives to say, I love you, before they were burned alive.

Remember those people leaping to their deaths from the top of burning skyscrapers.

Remember the hundreds of firemen buried alive.

Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little girl who was on one of the planes with her mum.

Remember, remember -

And realize that America has never retaliated for 9/11 in anything like the way it could have.

So a few al-Qaeda tourists got locked without a trial in Camp X-ray? Pass the Kleenex...

So some Afghan wedding receptions were shot up after they merrily fired their semi-automatics in a sky full of American planes? A shame, but maybe next time they should stick to confetti.

AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world into a parking lot. That it didn\'t is a sign of strength. American voices are already being raised against attacking Iraq -that\'s what a democracy is for. How many in the Islamic world will have a minute\'s silence for the slaughtered innocents of
9/11? How many Islamic leaders will have the guts to say that the mass murder of 9/11 was an abomination?

When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those freedom-loving Palestinians were dancing in the street.

America watched all of that and didn\'t push the button. We should thank the stars that America is the most powerful nation in the world. I still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke all-out war. Not a war on terrorism. A real war.

The fundamentalist dudes are talking about opening the gates of hell, if America attacks Iraq. Well, America could have opened the gates of hell like you wouldn\'t believe.

The US is the most militarily powerful nation that ever strode the face of the earth. The campaign in Afghanistan may have been less than perfect and the planned war on Iraq may be misconceived. But don\'t blame America for not bringing peace and light to these wretched countries. How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world? You can count them on the fingers of one hand - assuming you haven\'t had any chopped off for minor shoplifting.

I love America, yet America is hated. I guess that makes me Bush\'s poodle. But I would rather be a dog in New York City than a Prince in Riyadh. Above all, America is hated because it is what every country wants to be rich, free, strong, open, optimistic. Not ground down by the past, or religion, or some caste system. America is the best friend this country ever had and we should start remembering that.

Or do you really think the USA is the root of all evil? Tell it to the loved ones of the men and women who leaped to their death from the burning towers.

Tell it to the nursing mothers whose husbands died on one of the hijacked planes, or were ripped apart in a collapsing skyscraper.

And tell it to the hundreds of young widows whose husbands worked for the New York Fire Department.

To our shame, George Bush gets a worse press than Saddam Hussein. Once we were told that Saddam gassed the Kurds, tortured his own people and set up rape-camps in Kuwait. Now we are told he likes Quality Street. Save me the orange center, Oh Mighty One!

Remember, remember, September 11 - One of the greatest atrocities in human history was committed against America.

No, do more than remember. Never forget.

This is a bit stoopid. My general impression of this is "give the US permission to do whatever the hell it likes, because of S11". Excuse me for not agreeing. The article says that everyone was affected by S11 and it is true in the most literal sense. This is precisely why the US shouldn\'t be given free reign to do whatever the hell it wants to do. That\'s what the terrorists were doing, the world shouldn\'t stoop to their level by allowing a single nation to act uniatilary without the support of the international community.

The war on terror should be the responsbility of the United Nations, not a single country. As such, all countries should act under the United Nations, not just by themselves.

We are the UN.

Ace

Thats exactly the kind of talk that turns people off. The United States is not the United Nations. The United States is part of the United Nations, not the other way arround. You\'d be surprised how sensitive some people can be about this, so don\'t make light of it.

I\'m not making light of it. It appears we have found out who our true allies are in this situation. The UN appears not to even give two craps about it\'s own resolutions.

Ace

Can\'t be bothered to read it. :o

Originally posted by Samwise
Can\'t be bothered to read it. :o

I\'ll help you out.

Remember, remember, September 11 - One of the greatest atrocities in human history was committed against America.

I hate reading long articles on my monitor as well.


Ace

Originally posted by Samwise
Can\'t be bothered to read it. :o

its a letter from a Pro-War "reader"

to a Anti-war paper.

[videoholic]

Over 60% of americans now agree to go to war.

I read it and I agree with it….fully!

heh, typical reaction...

Originally posted by videoholic
Over 60% of americans now agree to go to war.

Who cares about America\'s opinion. We have to wait for France, Germany and Belgium to give us the OK. :rolleyes:

Ace

Originally posted by videoholic
Over 60% of americans now agree to go to war.

The war may or may not be right..but with,

70% of Brits are Against

and with the Scottish Elections in March.. looks like Hapless  Scottish New Labour will be out on their @rse.

WOOT


New Labour

Failed on Health
Failed on Transport
Failed on Crime
Failed on Cutting down sleze
Failed on cutting jobless figures

Roll on March  

New Labour membership is falling day by day:laughing:

Originally posted by Avatarr
heh, typical reaction...

Thanks!

Better to stand for the rights of a free people than to lay prostrate before a tyrannical dictator.

If you wanna depose a dictator, there\'s a cummunist leader in North Korea that adopts Stalinist Communism, mis-using international aide and starving his people to bolster his armed forces.

If u want Iraq\'s oil, at least bloody wait for the Security Council of the United Nations.  (they should add "of Earth" at the end of that as a reminder to some people)