This is London!

In this dangerous new world and deadly new war we’re in, people have a great interest in America’s reaction to previous crises, especially as it relates to those in our midst suspected of treacherous behavior.

Quite by chance, I’ve been studying such matters for many years. I must make the disclaimer that I am not a true scholar of such events and movements but rather an avid amateur reader. Long before 9/11, I was taken by the Sacco and Vanzetti case and wrote a novel about it. There can be no doubt that during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that a significant number of immigrants and citizens were smitten by the philosophy of anarchy. Most people take anarchy to be the absence of government and a chaotic state in society. But in its long life in America and Europe, anarchy was and is a well thought out – if silly – philosophy. In it man was an innocent and good creature until the forces of materialism corrupted men who used the levers of power to enslave the masses to the forces of materialism.

My bottom line with regard to Sacco and Vanzetti was that they were clearly committed anarchists. Whether they were guilty of the two murders for which they were executed has kept far more experienced scholars than Wild Bill in fodder for going on a century. When I began my review of the case, I thought that they were innocent. After much reading I tend to think the Morelli gang of Providence did the bank job for which their lives were taken by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1927. But Sacco and Vanzetti may indeed have done it. My true complaints about the case were about the way they were abused by the legal system. In this, I have not changed my mind even a slight bit.

After America’s experience with anarchy from the mid nineteenth century until the end of the Soviet experiment just over a decade ago, you might think that socialism, anarchism, communism and related approaches to governance and economic organization would have taken a long holiday, but it is clear from the reaction of at least a sub set of the protesters against globalism that anarchy is alive and kicking as are many other philosophies of redistribution of wealth.

The anarchists in America were indeed violent. There were many incidents of terror attributed to them, and I suppose that a good number of them were actually committed by these people. In the aftermath of World War I, President Wilson’s government worked hard to eradicate these cells of law breakers – to the point that the civil liberties of all were threatened. Many people attribute the Sacco and Vanzetti case to this overreaction. At least as it goes to their treatment under the law, I agree.

Since it is known by many that I’ve been working on a novel about the Japanese Internment during World War II, people, especially those who pride themselves on open mindedness concerning the aftermath of 9/11, continually assert that we must not allow what happened to America’s Japanese immigrants and American citizens of Japanese descent in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor to be visited upon America’s resident Muslims. I completely agree.

But there are significant differences between what happened in the days leading up to and following Pearl Harbor and those surrounding 9/11. The attack on Pearl Harbor was perpetrated by the Japanese government and military. So far as I have been able to determine, not a single resident alien or citizen of Japanese ethnic stock was ever arrested or convicted for an act of supplying strategic information to the Japanese government or for an act of sabotage against this country. Yet some 110,000 ethnic Japanese were removed from the Western parts of the country and deprived of their freedom – some for more than four years, simply because of their race and ethnicity.

The situation today is far different. The nation and its leaders, including President Bush have gone out of their way to differentiate between Muslims of many ethnic groupings and the terrorists who carried out the attacks of 9/11. But the great differences in the events of 1941 and 2001 is that the former were carried out by a nation state with no proven assistance from within the nation while the latter was conducted by agents of al Qaeda operating within our midst.

It appears to me that our government, an imperfect institution of laws and men, did not respond as well as it might have in either instance. In World War II under circumstances described by many historians and novelists, we gathered the Japanese together and exiled them internally until the threat receded. In the aftermath of 9/11, the government lashed out in a preventive war against Iraq. The reasons given for the war have proven to be incorrect, but we are caught up in that war and in the larger war against those who attacked us in September 2001. Iraq is now clearly part of that war and we must muddle through it as best we can in the fight against terror.

But what are we to make of the potential terrorists in our midst. Wild Bill an absolute opponent of the War in Iraq does not dispute that there are jihadists among us who would kill and maim our citizens as they killed and wounded innocents in Madrid last year and as they did today in London. How should we react? Certainly not by rounding up our Muslim friends and neighbors and putting them in concentration camps.

But we are demanding that our government protect us from these evil people. What should the government do? For starters they better examine our position in Iraq to see how we can get off this tiger’s back. When we turned on Saddam, we committed resources that might well have been better used in Afghanistan, a nation whose government was harboring our adversaries and which thus became our enemy. The Taliban remains elusive and has not been eradicated and remains capable of attacking our small force in the country. Al Qaeda, clearly wounded and on the run, still commands the allegiance of cells of terrorists around the world who would destroy us. But our forces are tied up in Iraq where al Qaeda operatives have made common cause with domestic insurgents with different goals – even probably toward the United States and its allies.

Is our country truly at war? The president says we are, but those of us who lived through World War II find day to day life significantly different in these two wars, as we might expect. But the one great resource that focuses our attention on the states of the Middle East, oil, is of greater concern nearly three years into the conflict than at the beginning. The latest version of a national energy policy does almost nothing to reduce our dependency on this commodity for many years to come. It would be one thing if our citizens were consuming this resource in spite of the policies of our government, but that just isn’t the case. Our national policy encourages us to travel, drive, and enjoy our gas guzzling cars. There is no hint of sacrifice. The policy is that technology will ultimately save us from the rapacious nations now tormenting us with their oil policy.

Well Wild Bill has digressed from the subject of terrorists in our midst to national energy policy, a common error among the outraged. The true bottom line is that if we’re at war let’s put the nation on a war footing. First, let’s get the troops needed to support the new Iraqi government over there and let’s get them the arms and armaments needed to do the job. Let’s then be truly committed to get out of Iraq and to get the requisite resources to Afghanistan where they’re needed. Clearly that situation is becoming a problem again.

Let’s spend the money necessary to defend us against internal terror. We are not committed to doing the job. For example, the budget authority is for 10,000 new border patrol agents, yet the president has asked for only two percent of that figure.

The hollow talk that we’re fighting in Iraq to engage the terrorists there before they can come here must cease. With the carnage that occurred in London today the war is here as far as I’m concerned. Let’s get statements of support from all of the major Islamic institutions that they do not support the terrorists and let’s square away the problems identified in the intelligence and law enforcement agencies, pronto. Four years after we’re attacked is too long. The president is passing out Medals of Freedom to any number of people who did not do what was required of officials in their positions. Working hard 24/7 is not enough.

This is a bad day. What happened in London should be common cause for all Americans. Let’s start sacrificing. Let’s cut the B.S. and start doing the right thing.

Blog on!

Wild Bill