<p>Catherine:</p>
<p>This is in response to your earlier post. My son has signed up - he’s at West Point and it’s likely that he’ll serve in a combat area when he graduates. He made the decision, not me. He lived through WATCHING the World Trade Center collapse from a vantage point in our town overlooking Manhattan. He understood what it meant when our NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR who worked in the WTC didn’t come home that night and NEVER came home. He also had some understanding of what it meant as I received three different telephone calls telling me that three of my good friends were murdered that day in the World Trade Center and they never came home. He had a better inkling when he came to their funerals with me. </p>
<p>We live in a dangerous world today and the threats won’t be as simple to identify as they’ve been in the past. The actions we’ll have to take to protect ourselves from people who want to destroy us won’t look like WWII. What threat exactly would you have to see to stand up and do something? The Canadians marching in from Montreal or Ottawa? It won’t be that simple. And if we don’t do what we need to do now, it will be too late for all us to say “I told you so” to those who support Cindy Sheehan and think we can make nice with the people who hate us and always think it’s our own fault. Does Neville Chamberlain come to mind? Have you been following the protests in the Arab world over some cartoons in the Danish press? The Arab papers frequently print anti-Christian and anti-Jewish cartoons and diatribes - no big deal for them. But G-d forbid someone in the West does it. Get with it - this really is a clash of cultures - and maybe we can find some friends in the Muslim world who feel that Islam needs to be reformed - but it sure doesn’t look like they’re winning the battle.</p>
<p>“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence in their behalf” George Orwell</p>