Post Nine Eleven

So Long, Mom
Hello, Soldier: [Expiating the empty-headedness of an anti-war past...]

Tom Lehrer's So Long, Mom, I'm Off To Drop The Bomb was considered a "smart" anti-war song during the early 60's. This brief excerpt from the lyrics also reflects the "duck and cower" mentality of the late 60's.

Little Johnnie Jones was a U.S. pilot,
no shrinking violet was he.
He was mighty proud
when world war three was declared
He wasn't scared, no siree.
And this is what he said on
his way to Armageddon:

So long, mom,
I'm off to drop the bomb,
so don't wait up for me,
But though I may roam,
I'll come back to my home,
Although it may be
a pile of debris....
(Copyright Tom Lehrer)

It took 9/11 for many of us to realize that during the decades that we stored that song away, hundreds of thousands of those "little Johnnie Jones," those young American men (and women) were all that stood in the way of the 5 million-man, ready-for-primetime-pogrom-making, Soviet armed forces, forces that were geared up to destroy America and our allies.

And that's not counting the million-plus armies from East Germany, N. Korea, Communist China and N. Vietnam that brave, American troops stared down and/or faced off against.

Now it's the children and grand children of those same American patriots, some of them then, and all of them now volunteers who have left their families and homes, to go and fight and stand up to, (according to conservative estimates) 100 million jihadists.

Instead of the "commies", the "islamis" took less than an hour and a half to turn 4 commercial airliners, 4 buildings and a field into "piles of debris", and to kill 3000 of our neighbors, friends and family.

Mea culpa, our fine brush-cut sons and daughters of liberty; thank you for getting up every day and putting your lives on the line, so that some Americans can look back on how we made idiots out of ourselves, while your fathers put their lives on the line for us.

Forgive us, and thank you for not making us too ashamed of our youthful foolishness; thank you for your patience as we finally grew up, as it took some of us until middle age to finally understand.

To understand that the enemies you fought against then, and those that you fight against now, that those enemies routinely imprison, or even behead anyone who criticizes them.

Thank you for doing this for me and mine, even though we once may not have deserved it.

You, and your mothers and fathers have our gratitude.

And your sacrifices, and your families' sacrifices will never be forgotten.