THIS ADDRESSES ALL THE SUMBAGS WHO SAY THE WORLD HATES AMERICA.  THAT WE DESERVED THE ATROCITY OF 9/11. 
America is the most decent, honorable and generous society that has ever existed on the  face of the Earth.  I am so sick of hearing about our "terrorist" actions in Vietnam, Cambodia, Central America or wherever.

All of the wars we fought were against tyranny and for freedom.  We may have killed some civilians, and we may have supported some bad people along the way.  But, humans make war, it is part of being human, and civilian deaths are part of war and always have been.  There has never been a country in the history of the world that has been more concerned with civilian deaths than America.  There has never been a country that has taken better care of our prisoners of war than America.  Once you accept that there is evil in the world and that war is inevitable, you must accept that no nation in history has waged it more humanely than America.  One example: When a village was wiped out in Vietnam, (MyLai), the perpetrators were put on trial in their own country.  When Communist countries murdered 100 million of their own citizens in the 20th century, no one said a thing.

When America was forced to decimate countries in its own defense, we helped those countries to rebuild and within a generation they became world economic powers.  When, in the history of the world has such forgiveness ever been shown to former enemies?  This country sends billions of dollars out to help less fortunate nations and its citizens send millions more.

Read this tribute to America from Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator:

This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.  Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there....I saw it!

When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes.  Nobody helped.

The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, war-mongering Americans.  I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them?

Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon?

You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not once, but several times - and safely home again.  You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.  When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose.  Both are still broke.

I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those.

Gordon Sinclair

So, when you come face to face with the sympathizers, the explainers, the appeasers, the pacifists, the collaborators, look them right in the eye and say, "you are WRONG!  The whole civilized world loves and respects this country.  America is the symbol of what every human being since the beginning of time has aspired to - freedom and liberty!  Tell them to go GET FUCKED!

Doug

Dear Doug:  Just read your email at midnight.  The Sinclair letter was heart warming;  it's true.  Sometimes America reminds me of my Dad.  A mixed bag.Neither all good or all bad.  Generous, successful, hard-working,  responsible and dutiful to an extreme.  And, capable of being hard-assed,  insensitive, judgemental to an extreme as well. Intelligent, but not always wise, and surprisingly unkind at times.

 I guess I'm one of those pacifists that believes that there is something  wonderfully worthwhile that goes beyond nationalism and it has something to  do with the belief that we actually are all one. The planet is too small now  for us to be merely Americans.  We are citizens of the Earth and have to  find the secret to living in harmony.  Peace is possible.

 Just because I'm a pacifist doesn't mean I don't love my country; it just  means I don't love it to the exclusion of anything else. Christ, Buddha, Lao  Tsu are my heros.  It is a great country that we can all have a different  versions of reality, huh?  Love, Wendy

Hi Wendy,
Thanks for your note.  I find some phrases you used enlightening regarding the pathology of pacifism.  Stuff like, "merely Americans", and "version of reality."   Likewise, your description of America. 

When you consider the history of mankind and its governments,  attributes  like, "hard-assed", "insensitive", "judgmental", "not always wise", and "unkind" are high praise!  For these to be the worst faults of a government, 225 years old, composed and designed by humans, with all of their greed, ambitions, hatreds, lust for power, and general lack of godlike qualities is nothing short of astounding!!!  Most governments have been brutal, butcherous, murderous despotic tyrannies who slaughtered all within and without their borders with efficiency and glee.

I suppose to the perfumed pollyannas who have lived all their lives in the sheltered embrace of late 20th century America, it is easy to be ignorant of the undreamed of blessings of freedom to which being a "mere American" entitles them.  While you and I have grown up in peace, health and prosperity, 165 million human beings have been slaughtered by their own governments in the 20th century alone.  They have been gassed, starved, hung and disemboweled, burned alive, had their babies ripped from their bellies, or seen them thrown into the air to land on upraised bayonets.  They have been beheaded, buried alive, beaten to death, and tortured in every imaginative way conceivable.  Men, women, and children have been used for medical experiments like lab rats.  They have been herded to the killing fields like cattle.  All of this has been done by your fellow human beings while laughing, counting, and reporting back proudly to their kings, emperors, premiers and sultans. Rulers have built palaces of skulls of their fellow countrymen while their nations starved.  The ONLY thing that has sheltered us from this horror is the blood and lives shed by American soldiers for the American ideals of law and liberty enshrined in our founding principles.  That is the only thing.  It is not luck.  It is not divine intervention.  It is not a change in human nature.  It is not modernity, and it is not someone sitting on a matt and chanting, "Ommmmmmm."  It is the fear of our enemies for our military might and our willingness to use it when threatened.  

Do you think that freedom can exist unmolested in a world of such evil  without war and bloodshed to defend it?  Do you think that Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin and Mao are the exception?  In the human experience, they are the rule.  Are these the people who will willingly join you in your one world of love?  Will your feelings change their hearts and intentions?  Do you believe that, had we sat back and contemplated our collective navel, that they would have left us alone?  Even if there was only one, single, evil human being in the entire world, your philosophy would doom all of us to live under terror and oppression.

You are correct in that we are all entitled to our version of reality.  The insane asylums are full of people, each with his own.  The pacifist version of reality is equal to any of them.  It flourishes in a fantasy world based on a human race and a nature that has never existed and never will.  It is a foolish, infantile escapism of the worst kind.

There is unimaginable evil in this world.  If good men don't go to war and exterminate its emissaries, it will win.  The battle between good and evil exists in every individual, in every government, and in the world.  All religions acknowledge it.  It is the duty of all good people to fight it, in themselves, in their governments and in the world.  To shun this duty is to shun your humanity. 

Death and bloodshed are abhorrent to all decent people.  The temptation to rise above these things and to condemn them, even when used in the protection of the good, is seductive indeed.   I'm sure it makes you feel pure and separate from the nasty dealings of mankind.  But, it is a turning away from the reality of the universe.  Perhaps you think you fight evil by ignoring it or by not supporting violence; that to meet violence with violence is to give in to evil.  I believe that our major purpose on this Earth is to take sides in the vicious battle between good and evil.  If you sit on the sidelines, you are on the wrong side.   You have only to look at the way people live in America and the way they live in Communist and Islamic nations to know, beyond a doubt which side is the good. 

So, please, as you sit in your tiny, fragile bubble of liberty that allows you the time and the luxury to think these pure thoughts;  a bubble that represents the epitome of human thought and striving;  a place and a time of comfort and safety infinitesimal in the history of human experience; a place and a time which brave, principled men fought bled, and died to create and defend; as you dream your delusional dreams of a world united in peace and love, at least, stay out of the way of the hard, bloody work that must be done to maintain your little fantasy world in a place called America.  Try not to sneak up on our defenders as they stand at the walls.  Do not needle them, and poke them, distract, discourage or undermine them.  Know,  at least in some deep hidden part of your consciousness,  that those who scramble and die on the distant mountains, deserts and jungles of  the world, hunting and killing those who have invaded our nation to destroy freedom and civilization for the pure hatred of it, are the only ones who stand between you and yours being led off in chains, forced to dig your own graves, and receive the rewards of the unfortunate subjects of cowards and pacifist dreamers since the beginning of time; piles of black, stinking corpses, subjugation, slavery, rape, mutilation, and a bullet in the back of the head.

With all affection,

Doug