9/14/01
I received this letter today from Mike Kent, a good friend and a fellow football (American) coach from Cornwall England. I thought you'd like to read it, and the article he sent me.
Hugh
Just to let you know we all feel extremely angered and saddened by the horrific events of Tuesday. Public opinion on this side of the pond is totally behind America and whatever action you may take, indeed our Prime Minister has pledged that we will stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends (let us hope that when things get dirty he won't lose his bottle as our "friends" in Europe tend to do)
Below is an article from our most popular daily paper,The Sun (this is the paper that real working people read and therefore is scorned by the intelligentsia)
Bye for now
Your friend Mike
God Bless America
God Save The Queen
We're all Americans now
by Richard Littlejohn
THE movie comparisons came thick and fast. Deep Impact, Armageddon, Airport, Air Force One, Die Hard, Con Air.
Only this time there was no Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis or Nicolas Cage to save the day in the last reel.
This was The Day The Earth Caught Fire.
It is inevitable that we tend to define America through a Hollywood lens.
Hollywood brought America to us and it brought us to America.
We are all Americans now.
If this really was a war and I was 20 years younger, I'd fly to the US tomorrow and volunteer.
These are our people.
Our only response should be: Whatever you want, whatever it takes.
It's make your mind up time. Which side are you on, boy, which side are you on?
I despise the virulent anti-Americanism of the fascist Left in this country and their allies in Europe and the Middle East.
Disgracefully, there have been attempts this week to ladle the blame for the holocaust in New York and Washington on to the US itself.
Somehow, we are told, this is all because America supports Israel.
I'm not going to bang the drum for some of the excesses of Israel. But it's the only proper democracy in the Middle East and the only country in the region which conforms to our notion of justice and human rights.
America is absolutely right to stand four-square behind Israel.
Funny how the most passionate "anti-racists" seem so keen to condone anti-Semitism in all its vile manifestations.
America isn't perfect. But it's the best we've got. And what it gets wrong, it tends to get wrong for all the right reasons.
For all his own faults and shortcomings, Tony Blair does at least seem to understand that the gut instinct of the British people is to side with the Americans, wherever, whenever.
His actions may not match his fine words about fighting terrorism.
Blair gives the impression that he's never met a terrorist he doesn't like.
You rather imagine that if it was down to him, he'd find out who was behind the attack on the World Trade Center and make him minister of education for New York State.
Blair has a shameful record of appeasing terrorists and racists, from Northern Ireland to Zimbabwe.
If he's so horrified by the attack on New York, if he thinks it's a declaration of war on America and the free world, can he please explain why he doesn't think Birmingham, Brighton, Warrington, Enniskillen, Harrods and Canary Wharf were declarations of war on Britain?
If he believes that the perpetrators of the attacks on Washington and the World Trade Center should be hunted down and punished, why does he think it would be "unhelpful" to prosecute the Omagh bombers?
What's the difference between Osama bin Laden and the butchers of Omagh?
Blair is the man who emptied the prisons of convicted psychopaths and murderers in the name of peace.
So his posturing about standing firm against terrorism rings as hollow as the Dome.
But, for now, we're lumbered with him.
There is to be an emergency debate in Parliament today on the security crisis.
What we don't need from Blair is trembling lower-lip, People's Princess nonsense. We'll take that as read, son.
The only thing we want to hear, the only thing the world wants to hear, is three words from London to Washington.
You got it.
Forget about multi-lateral consultations with European leaders. The Americans aren't going to let the French in the loop - they'd be straight on the phone to Baghdad, Kabul, Tripoli, or wherever the terrorists happen to be hiding this week.
When push comes to shove, the only people we can trust and rely on are the Americans, the Canadians, the Kiwis and the Aussies.
And that should apply vice-versa.
What do we all have in common? Tolerance, an uninterrupted history of democracy and a love of freedom.
Those are the very weapons now being turned against us. There's not a lot of "multi-culturalism" in the Middle East.
I absolutely endorse this newspaper's defence of the vast majority of Muslims in this country. Islam is not an evil religion just because a large minority of lunatics use it to justify their own warped world view, any more than Christianity is to blame for the bestiality in Ireland.
But the Muslim community in Britain does harbour fanatical anti-Semites and terrorists, who use pulpits in this country to peddle their hatred and filth.
Yet the government is too gutless, self-loathing, brimful of post-colonial guilt and in thrall to the professional "anti-racism" brigade to act against them.
Our innate tolerance is abused and thrown in our faces. We are the architects of our own destruction.
That also seems to have happened in the USA. It would appear that the mass murderers who carried out this week's attacks had been living freely in America and even learned to fly in Florida.
How can we be certain that some of the able-bodied, young "asylum seekers" flooding in from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are not agents of terrorist regimes ready to wreak similar havoc in London?
What checks are there? None, apparently. It may be too late already.
We still don't know what the American response will be.
But toasting a bunch of barbarians in a tent in Afghanistan isn't the answer.
International terrorism is a Hydra, a multi-headed monster, with a trail which stretches from Dublin to North Korea, via Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
If Gaddafi, Saddam and the mad mullahs weren't behind this latest outrage, it's only because they weren't given the opportunity.
This week's events have been described as cowardly. Not on the part of the hijackers themselves, they weren't.
Insane, berserk, lunatic, fanatical, deranged, certainly. But not cowardly.
The real cowards in this are Arafat, Gaddafi and the Taliban, who threw their hands up in mock horror and tried to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the bombers, once they realised the magnitude of what had happened and the potential scale of the retaliation.
They are after saving their own skins. But it is they who have created the conditions in which this kind of madness festers.
They declared war on the West long ago and they should not be allowed to wash their hands of the consequences.
If Dubya is seeking inspiration he should look to Hollywood.
Michael Corleone would know how to handle it.
Reprinted by permission from Richard Littlejohn
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