Thursday, September 27, 2001
By Bill O'Reilly
Understanding our enemies is the subject of this evening's Talking Points memo.
As you may have noticed, we are bringing you a variety of views about the war on terrorism and some of those views are infuriating. At least to me.
I try to be a logical thinker, a problem solver rather than an idealogue who blindly follows a political philosophy. Thus, when I hear foolishness, like Jerry Falwell's comments or Phil Donahue's appeasement of evil, I jump on them. Those men have a right to think whatever they want, and I don't condemn their opinions. I just can't intellectually respect them.
Those Americans who want to understand why the terrorists did what they did are irresponsible and cruel, in my opinion. There are thousands of little kids in America tonight who can't understand why Daddy and Mommy have not come home. They can't understand why their parents were there in the morning on September 11th but gone in the evening.
They can't understand the evil that killed their fathers and mothers. Yet some Americans are demanding that we should understand that evil. This is sympathy for the devil, and this is wrong.
America is not responsible for injustices in other countries. Our foreign policy is designed to keep people from killing each other. We have sent billions to Arab countries and fought a war to protect Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Misguided Americans who sympathize with terrorists are bordering on being traitors, in my opinion. We'll discuss that in detail a bit later on. But there is no question that it's cruel and unusual for any American to put a foreign cause or their own security above the grieving families who lost loved ones in the attack. I mean, how insensitive and selfish is that?
Take a look at this video from Afghanistan where Taliban stooges looted our abandoned embassy. There is no understanding these people. They are ignorant fanatics who blindly follow religious nuts, clerics who believe God wants them to murder innocent human beings.
Do you get that out there in Berkeley, California, and Harvard Square, Massachusetts? Are you taking a good look at these people you so desperately want to understand?
Osama bin Laden and his cut-throat cowards are killers, and the United States government has a responsibility -- call it a jihad -- to eliminate these people and the governments that harbor them period. It is the Bush administration's responsibility to see to it that bin Laden does not kill anybody else.
Phil Donahue and some others want to build coalitions to deal with the problem, and while Talking Points thinks coalitions are swell, our government must do its job and protect us from extremists who would kill us, coalitions or not.
It has nothing to do with diplomacy, negotiation, or understanding. That has to do with justice for all. I don't care how our government accomplishes its mandate, just that it does.
And that's the memo.
Most Ridiculous Item of the Day
Time now for the "Most Ridiculous Item of the Day.
The president of Starbucks has apologized after a Starbucks store near the World Trade Center made rescue workers pay $130 for water to treat victims. Can you believe it?
Warren Smith said it was a misunderstanding. Yeah, sure. And reimbursed the Midwood Ambulance Company in New Jersey for the money.
Of course, this is ridiculous to the Nth degree, and if you have read The O'Reilly Factor book, you know how I feel about Starbucks. There will be no misunderstanding about that feeling in The Factor book.
I don't understand
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
Imagine you are a four-year-old girl. On September 11th you kiss your daddy goodbye in the morning and wave as he leaves for work. That evening you see your mother crying and desperately watching television. You wait for daddy to come home as he always does. Except this night, and every night thereafter, he does not come home.
Adults say many things to you but you really don't understand what happened to your daddy. You want to understand, but you can't. So you lose yourself in a world of play – the only escape little kids have when tragedy taps them on the shoulder.
That is what the murderous attack on America was about – that four-year-old girl and the thousands of other little kids in her situation. Those children can't possibly understand the evil that altered their lives forever. And we should protect them from that evil. All Americans should want the evil stamped out forever.
But we all don't. Some of us want to understand the terrorists who attacked us. At California State University a professor was quoted as saying: "We should try to understand why there are people in the world that hate the United States." The attacks, the professor said, were an assault on the forces of "globalization."
That kind of foolish thinking is creeping into the national discourse now that the shock of the attacks is wearing off. But like the four-year-old girl, I don't understand the point. Who cares why the terrorists did what they did? Who cares why some people hate America? It is simply not important to explore the motives of brutal killers unless you're doing a psychology thesis or something similar.
Should I try to understand why Jeffrey Dahmer slaughtered people? Why Hitler hated the Jews? Why Mao murdered millions in China? Am I supposed to waste my time trying to ascertain the motives of monsters?
That would be a colossal mistake. Do you think General George Patten tried to understand the Germans he captured? No, he killed or imprisoned them without a second thought. He did that because they were fighting for a brutal regime. The general could not have cared less that Germany got hosed in the peace agreement after World War I.
America must now reject and scorn the voices of the appeasers and excusers. We owe the terrorists nothing but death and destruction. They have forfeited any kind of due process or consideration by attacking innocent civilians in order to please their god, who approves of mass murder.
The federal government of the United States is in place to protect the citizenry. That is its primary function. The feds let us down by failing to take national security seriously enough. Now our government must act aggressively to punish those who attacked us and discourage the maniacs who would do it again. Understanding the terrorists is only necessary in order to catch them. You can't persuade evil. You can't reason with fanatics.
I get frustrated with Americans who see the world through their own selfish prism. The Holocaust would not have happened if the nations of Europe had recognized the evil dripping from Hitler's every pore. But they wanted to understand the Third Reich, to negotiate with it in the hope of attaining peace.
It is no different today. There is an incredible evil in this world and it is not capitalism or a foreign policy that tilts toward Israel or a failure to recognize global warming. No this evil kills women and children in the name of God and rejects all humane behavior. This evil is easily understood if one looks at the face of the four-year-old girl waiting for her father to finally come home. And that's the kind of understanding America needs right now.
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