By Tom Adkins

I woke up to bright sunshine, made a nice breakfast, then went off to work. I made a few phone calls, shuffled some papers, and took a client to lunch. More phone calls, more papers shuffling, then drove home and had a nice dinner with my wife. Later, I got together with a bunch of friends and played basketball. Just another day. The date? Thursday, September 11, 2003.

Have I forgotten what day it was? September 11th? The anniversary of the single greatest terrorist attack in world history, where three thousand Americans were slaughtered? Is my heart so cold that it doesn't matter?

It's been two years. Two years since the world changed. For some, those changes have been devastating. For others, eye-opening. But for some of us, 9-11 is an affirmation. The shoe that finally dropped. We aren't psychic. We just pay attention to the world. We knew.

As I watched the towers burn on September 11th 2001, I instantly knew the following: We were in a war that my grandchildren will know, we will fight it almost alone, and our greatest test will be national resolve.

It is apparent that human nature is generally dominated by callous jealousy, manifesting itself within envy-based collectivist governments. That is fertile grounds for nasty wars, but also unreliable allies, who join or oppose us depending on whether they will benefit directly from our fortunes. That's why they phone the White House if the heathens are at their front gate, but help the heathens who are at our front gate. They are ungrateful, selfish snobs, with vision that extends somewhere between the end of their noses and the edge of their borders. They are the neighbor who always borrows your tools and never returns them, whose dog craps on your lawn and he doesn't clean it up, and whose loser son is always trying to get into your daughter's skirt.

We have our own cycle of cynicism and stupidity in America. Our sheep blindly follow the path of smooth, seductive soundbytes. Of course, the sheep have been led by viciously cynical wolves disguised as shepherds, trying to leverage the travails of a difficult war into partisan political victory.

Why do people hate us? We brought this on ourselves. We were misled into the war. We didn't know the cost. I thought the war was over. People are dying over there! We can't be the world's policeman. Why do our allies disagree?

The wolves feed blather to the sheep, then lead them off to slaughter. The challenge is to wake enough sheep to keep the wolves at bay. As usual, that falls to a dedicated and attentive few.

If you'll pardon my French, c'est nous!

The battle of Democrats vs. Republicans and liberals vs. conservatives can be defined as the battle between arrogance and wisdom. Liberal arrogance got us into our current mess, emboldening terrorists by ignoring 10 years of attacks. Amazingly, liberals keep making the same "ignore it and it will go away" argument to defeat terrorism, perpetually ready to sacrifice lives in naïve or heinous political experiments for their own power and self-aggrandizement. And for Neville Chamberlain-like promises of peace, the sheepish dolts who follow them march to their own funeral.

From Mao to Stalin, from Clinton to Kerry, defeating such cretins requires commitment and awareness. While my life hasn't changed much, my attitude towards those who would bring harm to my nation and my people has changed. Once, that battle was fought with pithy words and wry comments. Now, it has boiled down to winning and losing. There is more at stake. Because freedom is an expensive commodity. And I refuse to give it up.

When I stepped though the door the evening of 9-11, my wife was watching a documentary, replaying the awful tragedy and the heroic rescues in New York, Washington and a field in Pennsylvania. She wept, "They should show this a lot more often, just to remind people of what it's all about!!!" For the sheep, that is true. For the cynical wolves, it won't matter. But for those who already know what's at stake, and those who are already fighting the battle, one at a time, piece by piece, inch by inch"we don't need videotapes. We are haunted by something far worse than visions of tumbling skyscrapers and exploding jetplanes. We see enemies within. I think of them every single day.

Send article to a Friend Print article