Taking Back September 11th and Taking Back The Republic

I was not, obviously, alive in 1776 when the United States was born.  I couldn’t be there when the 2^nd Continental Congress was writing the Constitution.  I wasn’t part of the Union fighting to free the slaves or the troops who landed on the beaches of Normandy.  Nor was I a fireman running into the towers on September 11 or a soldier in Afghanistan routing out the people responsible for it.  But I’m here now.

There’s no way I’ll be able to accomplish in my life anything on the scale of greatness achieved by those men.  But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.  Just because one can’t aspire to be a saint doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t seek to do good works. 

We’re just a couple of weeks away from the 20^th anniversary of the September 11 attacks that changed the course of our history.  America in 2021 is seemingly a universe away from America in 2001.  In almost every way, the country is far worse off.  Americans are divided like never before.  The basic notion of the United States as a positive force in the world, a fundamentally good, if flawed, nation is under attack in our schools on our airwaves and tellingly, in our military.  Our borders are nonexistent – unless you’re Cuban – allowing literally millions of people a year to simply walk into our country unfettered. Fundamental tenants of American life, free speech, freedom of religion, private property, and the notion of innocent until proven guilty are evaporating right in front of us.

And then of course there’s Afghanistan.  On the international stage we are watching the real time collapse of American prestige, honor, influence and power.  Joe Biden and his woke cabal have turned a debatable policy of leaving Afghanistan into a military, humanitarian and political disaster of epic proportions.  Somehow, they have figured out how to not only abandon Afghanistan, but do so while providing the Taliban with potentially thousands of American hostages, betraying tens of thousands of Afghans who helped us over the last two decades and provide the enemy with tens of billions of dollars of American military equipment, ammunition and buildings. 

In a word, America circa 2021 is in decline.  And the pace of her collapse is quickening.  Things have been coming apart for a while but started in earnest when the media turned on George Bush after the war in Iraq, picked up steam with Barack Obama and the fiction that opposition equaled racism, and came to a head with the hatred of Donald Trump and reached its peak with the theft of the 2020 election. 

As a result of all of this, the United States are not so united.  The country is coming apart at the seams and the only way to keep it together is to once again give Americans confidence that their legal votes count, that their voices count and that the man or woman governing the country was legitimately elected.  Citizens who feel like their government is corrupt look for extra legal ways to solve problems, they evade taxes and regulations and eventually establish their own shadow forms of government and coercion. (See Mexico just across the nonexistent border) In the simplest form, a nation where the citizens feel like the government is corrupt will find that those citizens don’t obey laws unless there’s a gun pointed at their heads, and in the case of the United States, with a citizenry built on two centuries of freedom and liberty, that is going to take a lot of guns. 

Tens of millions of Americans are asking themselves “What can we do about this?” or “What the hell happened?” or “How the hell can we save this country?”

According to the traditional way things have always been done, nothing.  We could wait for 2022 and 2024 to go back to the polls and think “Maybe we’ll win!”  Don’t count on it.  Should we start a revolution or try to overthrow the government?  Umm… no.  Not only would such an effort be doomed to fail, but that would open a Pandora’s box of chaos from which I doubt we’d emerge as “One nation, under God” or as one nation at all.  But by the same token, by doing nothing America is rapidly becoming a fascist state run by tyrants of the far left.  So can anything be done?  I don’t know, but I’ve got a suggestion.

On the twentieth anniversary of September 11^th Americans should take back the date from the terrorists who put it on our calendar.  How? By making September 11 stand for something else.  Make September 11 the day Americans stood up and demanded their country back, stated that they would not accept their nation being stolen under the cover of night, that they would not accept that America has become a third world dictatorship where social media robber barons and corrupt officials manipulate the voting machines and install their leader of choice.  Make September 11, 2021 the modern equivalent of July 4, 1776 and declare that we will not be ruled by unjust leaders with no legitimate right to govern. 

How do patriots do that?  By showing up at the doorsteps of their state capitals on September 11^th and demanding that their legislatures lend their voices to the fight.  Those voices should demand that states with a margin of victory in the 2020 election below 3% audit those elections and decertify their electors in the event fraud is discovered.  That voice is not a request.  It’s a demand. 

Now of course the legislatures could refuse.  And even if they didn’t and made that demand, Congress could – and probably would – simply ignore them. And lastly, even if Congress were on board, the Supreme Court might insert itself into the mix and claim it’s unconstitutional.  We understand all of that, but none of that obviates the necessity of making a stand in the first place.  Remember, the Declaration of Independence was not the opening salvo of the conflict with England.

In 1768 there was the Massachusetts Circular Letter which declared The Townsend Act taxes were unconstitutional because Massachusetts was not represented in Parliament.  In response the British sent troops to restore “order” and the result was the Boston Massacre in 1770.  From there more taxes and more resistance, culminating in the Boston Tea Party in 1773.  This defiance brought about the Coercive Acts which sought to essentially turn Massachusetts into a police state governed by the Crown.  From there the table was set for Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress and eventually the Declaration of Independence.  All along the way the British had opportunities to avert losing what would turn out to be the golden goose, but at each step they failed to do so. Will the states, Congress and the Supreme Court make the same mistake?

The state legislatures, Congress and the Supreme Court may indeed fail the American people once again, but it is up to us to make them understand that we take our Constitution and our democratic Republic very seriously and will no longer let them obscure what happened in 2020.  September 11^th 2021 will be the first step in taking back the narrative, from the terrorists who struck at the heart of our nation 20 years ago and the country from the conspirators who struck at the heart of our Republic on the morning of November 4^th. 

None of this is intended to take away from the courage and valor of those who ran into buildings on that fateful day.  Absolutely not. Their courage and bravery stand as beacons through the dark and will for ages...

In the end we may not be able to achieve the greatness of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or the soldiers of D-Day or the men of NYFD, or the men and women who fought so bravely in Afghanistan, but we can certainly plant our flag and say “No more! We’re taking back September 11^th and taking back our Republic!”

Liberals Shouldn't Be Shocked By Donald Trump's Success In The GOP Race... He's Their Creation

Donald Trump’s call to curtail immigration of Muslims until the government can "figure out what's going on” is probably a bit unworkable. If it’s someone’s goal to kill you, you shouldn’t be surprised that they are willing to lie about it beforehand. How are we supposed to know who’s a Muslim in the first place? Are they still a Muslim if they say they found Jesus just six months before? Two weeks? On the way to the airport?

Trying to limit Muslims coming into the country by asking them is simply unworkable. And doing a background check on every single person from a Muslim majority nation would be impossible. In addition, there are lots of Muslims living in India and Germany as well.

Regardless of his specific plan’s viability, Trump is very much on to something. His lead in the GOP race has only increased since he made his comment. (Indeed, just as it did after he made his comments about Mexicans.) And of course the left is going nuts about that…

But they shouldn’t, because, at least in the political arena, Donald Trump’s success is 100% due to their actions. Americans… or at least a lot of them… are simply tired of the first response to a terrorist attack being an admonition against blaming Islam, accusations of Islamaphobia or chastisement for the targeting of Muslims for hate crimes. They are simply tired of the default reaction being “What did we do to make them hate us so much?” They are simply tired of the media and Democrats contorting themselves into pretzels each time such an incident occurs in order to find a way to blame white, Christian, Tea Party types. The reality is, a significant majority of terrorist attacks around the world and the country are perpetrated by Muslims, and even data from Barack Obama’s politicized FBI show that the vast majority of hate crimes are against Jews,not Muslims. Despite the efforts of the left and the media, Americans recognize these facts. (Don't be fooled by the left's attempt to tip the scales by equating violence by common criminals and psychotic killers with terrorism. That's no more true than their suggestion that the greatest danger to black men is police rather than other black men.) America in 2015 finally has the correct answer to the left’s constant insinuation of that famous Chico Marx line: "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" Americans have decided to believe their own eyes and Trump is benefiting from that new focus.

Most Americans believe in Freedom of Religion. It’s been part of our heritage for two centuries. It’s written in black and white in our Constitution. But that doesn’t mean that everything is acceptable however as a religion that demands human sacrifice would not be tolerated. That said, the reality is, for many Muslims that is exactly what Islam does, as can be seen by the deaths of 14 Americans enjoying a Christmas party in San Bernadino, 13 American soldiers working on Ft. Hood, or thousands of Americans simply working to support their families on 9/11. Americans recognize that in a world of 1.5 billion Muslims, hundreds of millions of them support the basic tenants of radical Islam such as Sharia law and the death penalty for leaving Islam, and many of those millions are motivated to destroy the United States and the west in their pursuit of a caliphate. Indeed, even here in the United States half of America’s two million Muslims would choose to live under Sharia law if given a chance and a quarter believe violence is an appropriate response to drawing a Mohammed cartoon as well as in pursuit of global jihad.

Despite these vast numbers of Muslims both home and abroad who seek to obliterate our freedoms and use violence to accomplish that task, liberals continue to proffer the notion that Islam is the “religion of peace”. Americans know better, and Donald Trump’s popularity is a manifestation of that reality.

Liberals of all sorts have condemned Trump for his “unconstitutional” proposal, as have most members of the GOP. But the reality is, there’s nothing unconstitutional about it. No one who is not an American citizen has any “right” to come to the United States, whether they are a Muslim coming from Saudi Arabia or a Mexican swimming across the Rio Grande. As much as liberals might hate it, as a sovereign nation the United States has every right to decide who it will allow into its doors. That’s not a politically correct thing to say, but it’s true nonetheless. Donald Trump is merely pointing that out, and more and more Americans are listening.

The Speech Barack Obama Should Have Given Last Sunday... But Didn't

My fellow Americans, I’m speaking to you on the eve of the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the event that launched the United States into a war against fascists who sought to eliminate freedom and our way of life. That war was long and hard and uncertain… but we prevailed and today the United States is the greatest nation on earth.

Seventy four years later our nation is facing another fascist enemy, radical Islam. The events of San Bernardino last Wednesday, the events in Paris last month make it very clear that we are indeed at war. We may not be at war with Islam, but we are very much at war with radical Islam. In fact, the reality of this situation is that the vast majority of victims of radical Islam are actually fellow Muslims. From Pakistan to Saudi Arabia to Libya and beyond, by far the largest number of deaths has been among other Muslims. Unfortunately we cannot solve the schism that exists within Islam, that battle is not ours. If Muslim nations seek peace and prosperity for their citizens they will have to face the threats within.

What we can and will do however is utilize all of our resources to eviscerate radical Islam everywhere it may pose a threat to the United States, our allies or our interests. We will use every resource at our disposal to root out terror cells and capture or kill those who wish to do us ill.

On the domestic front we will not allow these radicals to use our freedoms against us. We will not allow a fifth column to grow and metastasize inside our body politic. I am, as of today suspending the acceptance of Syrian refugees until we have a more effective screening process. We will send resources to Turkey and Jordan and other nations to help support them, but we will not be accepting any more refugees for the immediate future. In addition, beginning tonight, persons seeking to travel to the United States who have traveled to any one of 30 different Muslim nations within the last 4 years will be subjected to extra scrutiny prior to being allowed to enter the country. This will no doubt be an inconvenience to many travelers, but it is a step we must take.

At home we are going to root out the radicals in our midst. We are not only going to be looking for terrorists, but we are going to begin a concerted effort to find the people who enable them with financing and other forms of support. In that vein I have directed the Justice Department to harness all applicable RICO statutes to find and take down whatever radical Islamist cells may be operating in the United States. That RICO order also applies to organizations that fund, harbor or otherwise support such cells. Those organizations may have foreign elements to them and if that is the case the CIA will be called in to coordinate in taking action. They may also be using mosques and charity organizations in an attempt to obscure their activities. Those attempts will not be successful. Americans and others in our country enjoy freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but they do not enjoy the freedom to plan and support those who wish to harm this country and kill the innocent. Indeed, I think it was Justice Jackson who said "The Constitution is not a suicide pact". I have directed Homeland Security make this initiative their number one priority.

On the international front, we will immediately begin bombing ISIS locations across Syria and Iraq and wherever else we find them, particularly those related to oil production. I am today having my Joint Chiefs of Staff alter the Rules of Engagement under which our military can and will operate. Currently the driving force of our ROE has been to ensure no or minimum civilian casualties. That is a luxury we no longer have. No longer will we allow terrorists to set up shop in hospitals and mosques and schools and target our aircraft with impunity. Our troops will begin targeting fighters wherever they are, which may regrettably result in greater civilian casualties.

In addition, we will begin fully supporting and arming Kurdish forces in Iraq as they seek to take back territory from ISIS.

I have also directed the Joint Chiefs to present me with a plan for putting up to 10,000 US troops in Iraq with the objective of training and supporting genuine anti ISIS forces fighting in both Iraq and Syria. Within that number will be special forces who have a list of the top 25 ISIS leaders and enablers. Their objective is to find and eliminate every person on that list. And let me be clear… not all of those enablers are fighters, nor are they all men... and some of them may be hiding far from the battlefield. None of those things will protect them.  When that list is done we will compile a new top 25 list of the next most valuable targets. In addition, we will be imposing no fly zones and no travel zones in various areas of both Syria and Iraq in order to stop fighters from targeting areas that have been freed from the grip of ISIS and stop shipments of oil that the group is using to fund its operations.

There are of course additional measures being considered that I will not go into.

Let me wrap up by saying this: From September 11 to the bombings of London, Madrid, Paris and countless attacks in between, it is now clear that we are very much at war with a strain of fascist, radical Islam and they seek nothing less than the destruction of our way of life, our freedoms, our liberty and our prosperity. Just as the United States did not let fascists prevail 70 years ago, we will not let these new fascists win today. We will not let them manipulate our freedoms to attack us at home and we will not let them hide behind religion and civilians elsewhere. As of today we are no longer fighting a defensive battle. We are at war with the cancer of fascist radical Islam, and we will be taking the battle to them, whether they are hiding here at home or killing innocent Christians, Jews or Muslims on the sands of Syria or Iraq. We may have made some missteps in the past, and we will undoubtedly make some in the future, but let me be clear… this is a war we will not lose. The United States and the world of freedom we helped shape will not acquiesce to those who hate what we and our forefathers have fought so hard for and worked so hard to build.

Thank you and good night, and God bless America.

San Bernardino - As Usual the Left Gets it Wrong on Guns and Christians

As usual, with the terrorist attack in San Bernardino the left gets it wrong on pretty much everything. Of course their first response was to call for gun regulation because… that’s what they do. Then when it became clear that it wasn’t a couple of white Christian Tea Party types who were responsible, they doubled down on gun regulation to try and distract from the fact that it was Islamic terror.

Whether it’s the focus on guns or the meme that it’s racist white Tea Party Christians who perpetrate most of these crimes, they are simply wrong.

Let’s take the latter first. Of the 21 mass shootings since 1990 that have taken the lives of 8 or more people, white men have been the killers in 10 of them, while minorities and or immigrants have committed the other 11. Of those 10, exactly one had anything to do with Christianity, politics or race, and that was in last year’s Charleston church murders. (See list here)

So in the worst of the worst shootings over the last quarter century, despite the left’s focus on white, conservative, Christian perpetrators, the killers actually fit the bill less than 5% of the time. But that doesn’t stop Democrats and their lefty media from seeking to further their agenda by pushing the white racist Tea Party Christian meme every time one of these events occurs.

Which brings us back to guns and the left’s goal on eviscerating the 2nd Amendment. As we’ve seen, they are not above seeking to exploit any tragedy to further their agenda, regardless of how wrong their narrative is. Despite the fact that California already has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, they claim that we need more gun legislation. Their narrative is that if we could just get Americans to give up their guns – or take them if necessary – then the US would suddenly become a peaceful place.

They are simply wrong, America is already a pretty peaceful place – or at least most of it is. There are over 300 million guns in the United States. Each year 299 million of them are not involved with murders or crimes of any sort. The problem isn’t gun ownership… the problem is criminals on the street. According to a study by the Milwaukee Sherriff’s Dept., 97% of the suspects – and 85% of the victims – in non fatal shootings had criminal records. In homicides the numbers weren’t much different: For all homicides in 2011 -- those involving guns and those that didn’t -- 57 percent of the 72 suspects and 62 percent of the 66 homicide victims had at least six prior arrests. Six arrests! Baltimore has similar numbers and one would expect that they would be reflected in the rest of the country as well. So the problem is not guns, but rather criminals. And to put a fine point on the fallacy of the gun control reduces violence narrative, in Chicago, crime increased after guns were regulated… and dropped when the city was forced to begin issuing concealed carry permits.  Keep the criminals in jail and the crime rate would drop... but that would deprive Democrats of voters.

Something Democrats never mention is that in many countries with more restrictive gun laws than we have, crime rates are in fact actually much higher. Nor are they spared mass killings either. There was of course the attack in Paris last month, and the Smithsonian Magazine writes in a piece titled Outside the Americas, Knives Are Often the Weapon of Choice in Homicides:

In Japan, in 2001 a janitor wielding a kitchen knife killed eight children at an Osaka school where he worked, while a man in Tokyo went on a random stabbing spree with a dagger in 2008, killing four people. In South Korea, a disgruntled man killed eight people in a stabbing spree at his apartment complex in 2008. In Germany, a drunk 16-year-old stabbed 41 people at the opening ceremony of a Berlin train station. And last year, anti-knife campaigns ramped up in the U.K after a 13-year-old girl was stabbed to death.

In addition, in Israel today Jews are being stabbed and run over by cars on a regular basis… and there they have lots of guns. The problem isn’t guns, it’s people with bad intentions.  Get rid of the guns and they will still find knives, cars, bombs, poison or countless other ways to kill people.

Despite the facts, the left continues peddle gun laws as the solution to the problem of crime and a culture of violence they have fostered. Similarly contrary to facts, they continue to blame white conservative Christians for the massacres we see all too often see on our TVs and in our communities. We shouldn’t be surprised however as the Democrats and their media lackeys have a long tradition of manipulating and obscuring facts in order to hide from the failures of their progressive agenda. No doubt when the doors are closed lefties can be heard saying "Hmmm... If there was only a way to take the guns out of the hands of citizens the the government could simply start it implementing the social programs that would eliminate all this crime and racism and inequality and hurt feelings and..."

The founding fathers may not have been able to conceive of the notions of television or the Internet, but they sure understand human nature and the dark side of government.  Thank God - and James Madison & friends - for the 2nd Amendment.

Barack Obama And Iran - A Love Story: How Far Will One Man Go To Validate His Nobel Peace Prize? And What Price Will The World Pay?

Thirty two years ago Ronald Reagan introduced his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to the world with this quote: “We maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression.” Derided by the left as being scientifically impossible and having the potential of reigniting the arms race with the Soviets, “Star Wars” as they called it, became a sufficient worry for the Soviets that it actually hastened their demise.

Later that year in one of my Political Science classes we discussed peace treaties in general and those with the Soviets in particular. Given the history of failed treaties from Munich to Moscow, the professor asked a simple question: “If it’s someone’s goal to kill you, to destroy you, is it unreasonable to expect them to lie about it in the first place?” The obvious answer was no, it’s not unreasonable at all.

That apparently is not a concept Barack Obama has ever picked up on. Today when it seems that we are but days or weeks away from an agreement with the Iranians – not to be confused with a treaty –the obviousness of that reality is crystal clear. In seeking to garner support for his “agreement” with Tehran, President Obama said this: "Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons, and President Rouhani has said that Iran would never develop a nuclear weapon,"

As these words came off of the President’s lips, he had never sounded more like Neville Chamberlain, who on September 30, 1938 told the world: “This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you: ' ... We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.” Less than one year later Hitler invaded Poland… not surprisingly, in concert with the Soviets.

Apparently, in Barack Obama’s world, we’re supposed to believe what the leaders of a terrorist state say… but only sometimes. When they endorse an EMP attack against the United States that would leave half the country in a blackout for months… not so much. When they suggest Israel, our strongest ally and the only liberal democracy in the region should be annihilated…nah.  When they boast about cheating on the last nuclear agreement they entered into with the West… obviously not.

Of course we all know that Iran has a checkered past… the taking of American hostages in 1979, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, their longtime financial support for Hezbollah and Hamas, the US embassy attacks in 1998 and of course their active support for those fighting the US in Iraq for much of the last decade. But maybe they’ve changed over the last few years. (Or maybe in the last few hours as apparently just yesterday Supreme leader Ali Khamenei called for “Death to America".) Maybe they’ve seen the error of their ways, washed their hands of their terrorist proxies and turned over a new leaf… No, not really. At least not according to the governments of Israel in 2012, Peru in 2013 and Uruguay just last month.

One has to ask, how is it even remotely possible that President Obama would consider an agreement with a country with more than three decades of duplicity and active support for terrorism against the United States and its allies? Why would he want to make life easier for a serial terrorist regime by pushing to drop sanctions against them?  How is it even possible he would consider an agreement that would facilitate the world’s most dangerous regime maintaining its nuclear capabilities and beginning a nuclear arms race in the world’s most volatile neighborhood? How is it possible that a Harvard trained lawyer would think that a fig leaf of an international “agreement” would somehow keep a duplicitous regime – that boasts of cheating on just such agreements – from actually developing a nuclear weapon?

Is his need to validate his unwarranted Nobel Peace Prize so strong that he will put the world at risk? Does he so feel the need for a foreign policy “victory” of some sort that he will put the security of the United States in peril? Is his narcissism so great and his belief in his ability to bend the world to his will so absolute that he need not bother to actually pay attention to reality? Is he a Manchurian plant?  Or has the marijuana and cocaine he did in school finally caught up with him and started to impair his brain function?

Whatever the explanation, Barack Obama’s willingness to ignore reality that virtually everyone else on the planet can see and plunge the nation and the world into a universe where a messianic regime preparing for the “end of times” is on the road to nuclear weapons is the ultimate betrayal of his office. If he goes ahead with his agreement with Iran he will not only be seen as the anti-Ronald Reagan, he will rightly go down in history as the 21st century’s Neville Chamberlain.  Hopefully the cost of Obama's folly won't be nearly as high as that paid for Chamberlain's appeasement.  That might really tarnish his Nobel Prize.

UPDATE:  Of all the options I think the Nobel Prize option has risen to the top.  It seems clear now what is happening.  The Nobel Prize is only the first step.  Now that Barack Obama has ruled the United States for six years with impunity and little resistance, he has his sights set on bigger fish. Barack Obama now seeks to be King of the World.  And how does he do that?  By becoming the Secretary General of the United Nations.  And how does he accomplish that?  By first making himself worthy of his Nobel Prize on the world stage.  While the Middle East may be imploding, he can stand above it by making peace with the world's biggest troublemaker.  His leadership is demonstrated by his willingness to go where no one before him would go.  Even to the extent of suggesting "Death to America" doesn't really mean "Death to America".

 And of course he wants to make sure the position is as powerful as it can be once he gets there.  Given that the UN is the ultimate international organization, giving away power to lesser international organizations makes the leader of that ultimate organization that much more powerful.  Thus explains his attempt to give away control of the Internet to an international organization.  Thus explains his desire to lead from behind in... numerous places.  Thus explains the hidden push to make the fed and the Treasury Department subject to international regulation. Finally, given the fact that the UN is a democratic organization in the sense that majority rules, it makes perfect sense that an obsequious Barack Obama would bend over backwards to cater to the developed world nations in the Middle East, Africa and South America.  If he curries favor with them then he has his majority and will likely be able to implement just about anything he wants.  Sure there is an American veto on the Security Council, but with President Pocahontas in office, what are the chances that their goals will differ?

 And so it goes.  Barack Obama is a man who has conquered the single most powerful nation in the history of the world and now the Megalomaniac in Chief has his sights set on the only bigger target on this planet... an organization that runs the world.  While they are not likely to give him the title "King of the World" that won't really matter. He will be nonetheless.  Given his willingness to ignore the Constitution here in the United States, what makes anyone think that any sort of limitations might stand up to the King when he makes his desires known.  And as his administration in the UN won't have a Tea Party to try and keep it in line, the possibilities are endless.

America crossing the Rubicon: The Boston Marathon terrorists succeed far beyond their wildest dreams...

As is often the case with terrorist events, the Boston Marathon bombings had an impact far beyond the bodies of the people harmed by the delivery vehicle itself. Of course that is the very nature of terrorism, where the goal is to use the media to leverage shockingly violent attacks – but usually limited in scope – into events that shock and scare a far larger population than they could every impact directly. Whether the motivation comes from inside the head of a single person or the machinations of a disparate international movement, the goal is always the same: drive a change in behavior that they could not otherwise accomplish through peaceful, lawful means.

One of the challenges faced by President Bush after September 11th was in suggesting how Americans should react. He was pilloried by many people for suggesting that Americans “Get down to Disney World in Florida…” and that we should “Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” That may have sounded frivolous, but the reality is, he was right in suggesting that Americans not let the cowardly terrorists cow them into hiding in their homes. Their goal was to negatively impact the United States and the American way of life. President Bush suggested Americans not allow the terrorists to make such an impact.

That doesn’t mean that there should not have been a reaction to the attacks. On the contrary. Security lapses, which would be comical if they were not so deadly, had to be addressed. From plane boarding to procedures governing the communication between government agencies, many things had to be changed and improved. While the TSA may be an utterly dysfunctional agency with inept procedures where inefficiency seems to reign supreme, it’s at least an attempt to address the procedures that allowed September 11 to occur. Other changes were put in place as well, from the creation of the Department of Homeland Security to the greater sharing of information among government agencies, both between different agencies of the federal government as well as between local, state and federal agencies.  Again, no perfect solutions – not the least of which is the excessive militarization of local police forces – but at least they attempt to address obvious problems.

There also remains much to do to improve security, particularly as it relates to borders, visa control and ports, but the reality is, and the Boston Marathon bombings demonstrated this clearly: there is simply no way to be 100% secure from terrorism. In a real life game of cat and mouse, each time government ups the ante on one aspect of security, the terrorists try and find another softer target and when something occurs the process starts all over again.

While a dozen years on the United States as a whole seems to have gone on relatively unscathed from September 11 – not to discount the life altering sacrifices made by the brave military and intelligence personnel – with Boston America may have crossed the Rubicon, and indeed, just as in Rome, the citizens of the Republic should be concerned.

On Friday April 19th America awoke to the warnings that the city of Boston was in virtual lockdown. Government organizations of every kind, from elementary schools to universities to every form of public transportation were closed. In Boston and its western suburbs citizens were “advised” to “shelter in place”. The 10th largest metropolitan area in the United States, the home of 4 million Americans was brought to a standstill by two misfits - one of whom was already dead - who had killed 4 people. In addition, remember, although these two men were indeed dangerous, this was almost a week after the bombings, the remaining suspect was on the run and there was little belief that he was in any position to inflict mass casualties on the citizenry of the Boston metro area.

So what we had were local and federal authorities searching for one man, and they essentially imposed martial law on an entire American city in order to find him. Indeed, men, women and children in Watertown were forced out of their homes at the point of a gun, simply because of where they lived. Millions of Americans were literally prisoners in their own homes in the pursuit of one man – albeit a dangerous one – but one man nonetheless, and one who was by all accounts on the run and likely wounded.

In this case the “shelter in place” orders lasted only one night because Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding in a boat. (The order was lifted an hour before he was found.) But what if he had not been found on Friday and the search stretched into Saturday and Sunday and the Governor decided not to lift the order? Would people have been forced to stay home for two or three days? What if Tsarnaev had instead hidden and died in a storm drain and was never found. How long would the lockdown have remained in place?

Today a Mirandized Dzhokhar Tsarnaev can sit back and see that with two pressure cookers, he and his brother were able to effect an impact far beyond anything they might have imagined in their wildest dreams. Which brings us back full circle to the goal of terrorism in the first place: Have an outsized impact by the strategic use of violence. What kind of a message does it send to Al Quaeda affiliates around the world or terrorist wannabes across the country? Had the brothers Tsarnaev had similarly inclined friends in Washington, New York and LA would 10% of the American population have been locked in their homes, bringing the financial and government sections of the United States to their knees? What if there was one bomb followed by coordinated bomb threats in 50 cities across the country. How many of those cities would have ended up in lockdown? 2? 10? 25? How many is OK? How long might those situations last?

A few notes to remember: The Tsarnaev brothers were first identified because of images captured by the Lord & Taylor department store security cameras – not by a government asset. Although authorities quickly distributed their photographs, it took the duo carjacking someone and robbing a convenience store before they popped up on the radar. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found by a civilian who noticed a loose tarp and blood on his boat rather than by any government agents or assets. The point is, the Boston Marathon terrorists were found because of good old fashioned detective work and the empowerment of the citizenry, not because of the imposition of a city wide lockdown and SWAT teams pulling families out of their homes at the point of a gun.

Unfortunately, humans being what they are, terrorism will likely not be going away anytime soon. Relatively free nations like the United States will always make appealing targets for cowards who cannot win their battles in the realm of ideas. The Boston Marathon terrorist attack was indeed a tragedy, and for thousands of people their lives will feel the shockwaves for years to come. It should not however be the catalyst that sets Americans cowering in corners and letting themselves be locked inside their homes. It’s bad enough that the round the clock hysteria & error filled media coverage communicates to the terrorists a fiction that they have destroyed the American way of life and have the American people shaking in their boots. We should not allow “shelter in place” and military styled assaults on innocent civilians to become the standard by which we deal with such events, lest America become a police state and that fiction becomes our reality.