Don’t get us wrong, we love us some Byko, the same way we love all old people, even when they’ve stopped making sense and start to smell funny. Stu is the last of a dying breed of boozy, chain-smoking ink-stained wretches, a salty old dog still shaking an angry fist out the sandbag bunker of print — and for that we salute him. Sometimes we even agree with him. But this We Need Another 9/11 column…
ONE MONTH from The Anniversary, I’m thinking another 9/11 would help America.
What kind of a sick bastard would write such a thing?
A bastard so sick of how splintered we are politically — thanks mainly to our ineptitude in Iraq — that we have forgotten who the enemy is.
It is not Bush and it is not Hillary and it is not Daily Kos or Bill O’Reilly or Giuliani or Barack. It is global terrorists who use Islam to justify their hideous sins, including blowing up women and children.
Iraq has fractured the U.S. into jigsaw pieces of competing interests that encourage our enemies. We are deeply divided and division is weakness.
Most Americans today believe Iraq was a mistake. Why?
Not because Americans are “anti-war.”
Americans have turned their backs because the war has dragged on too long and we don’t have the patience for a long slog. We’ve been in Iraq for four years, but to some it seems like a century. In contrast, Britain just pulled its soldiers out of Northern Ireland where they had been, often being shot at, almost 40 years.
That’s not the American way.
[…]
Because the war has been a botch so far, Democrats and Republicans are attacking one another, when they aren’t attacking themselves. The dialog of discord echoes across America.
Turn back to 9/11.
Remember the community of outrage and national resolve? America had not been so united since the first Day of Infamy — 12/7/41.
We knew who the enemy was then.
We knew who the enemy was shortly after 9/11.
…Is so clueless on EVERY level, we almost feel bad for him — surely an editor should have caught this and said ‘Do over, Stu. You sound like Rip Van Winkle who just woke up after falling asleep on September 12th. You sound like a fool with a paper ass.’ Stu, before you think about sticking your nose into topics you apparently know NOTHING about, you might wanna bone up with a few books. Might we recommend The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, Fiasco By Thomas E. Ricks, Imperial Hubris by Mark Scheuer or Frank Rich’s The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline And Fall of Truth In Bush’s America. Otherwise, stick to writing about the hot tub exploits of Harry J. Katz, your comedy night and Ed Rendell’s dead dog. The stakes are too high. And while we ‘get’ your misbegotten attempt at being outrageous to make a larger point — we do it all the time — it basically comes down to this: America needs another 9/11 like Germany needs another Holocaust. End of discussion.