General Hawley's Politically Incorrect Message:

This Air Force General's comments surely represent all branches of the
service and all good thinking Americans. What a magnificent and
insightful view of what this war on terrorism is actually about. Please
read and pass on as you see fit. General Hawley, is a newly retired USAF
4 star general. He commanded the Air Combat Command [our front-line
fighters and bombers] at Langley AFB, VA. He is now retired and no
longer required to be politically correct.

"Since the attack [9-11], I have seen, heard, and read thoughts of such
surpassing stupidity that they must be addressed. You've heard them
too.

Here they are:

1) "We're not good, they're not evil, everything is relative." Listen
carefully: We're good, they're evil, nothing is relative. Say it with me
now and free yourselves. You see, folks, saying "We're good" doesn't
mean, "We're perfect." Okay? The only perfect being is the bearded guy
on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The plain fact is that our country
has, with all our mistakes and blunders, always been and always will be
the greatest beacon of freedom, charity, opportunity, and affection in
history. If you need proof, open all the borders on Earth and see what
happens.

2) "Violence only leads to more violence." This one is so stupid you
usually have to be the president of an Ivy League university to say it.
Here's the truth, which you know in your heads and hearts already:
Ineffective, unfocused violence leads to more violence. Limp, panicky,
half measures lead to more violence. However, complete, fully thought
through, professional, well executed violence never leads to more
violence because, you see, afterwards, the other guys are all dead.

That's right, dead. Not "on trial," not "reeducated," not "nurtured
back into the bosom of love." Dead.

3) "The CIA and the rest of our intelligence community have failed us."
For 25 years we have chained our spies like dogs to a stake in the
ground, and now that the house has been robbed, we yell at them for not
protecting us. Starting in the late seventies, under Carter appointee
Stansfield Turner,  the giant brains who get these giant ideas decided
that the best way to gather international intelligence was to use spy
satellites. "After all, (they reasoned,) you can see a license plate
from 200 miles away." This is very helpful if you've been attacked by a
license plate. Unfortunately, we were attacked by humans. Finding humans
is not possible with satellites. You have to use other humans. When we
bought all our satellites, we fired all our humans, and here's the
really stupid part. It takes years, decades to infiltrate new humans
into the worst places of the world. You can't just have a guy who looks
like Gary Busey in a Spring Break '93 sweatshirt plop himself down in a
coffee shop in Kabul and say

"Hiya, boys. Gee, I sure would like to meet that bin Laden fella.
"Well, you can, but all you'd be doing is giving the bad guys a story
they'll be telling for years.

4) "These people are poor and helpless, and that's why they're angry at
us." Uh-huh, and Jeffrey Dahmer's frozen head collection was just a
desperate cry for help. The terrorists and their backers are richer than
Elton John and, ironically, a good deal less annoying. The poor helpless
people, you see, are the villagers they tortured and murdered to stay in
power. Mohammed Atta, one of the evil scum bags who steered those planes
into the killing grounds is the son of a Cairo surgeon. But you knew
this, too. In the sixties and seventies, all the pinheads marching
against the war were upper-middle-class college kids who grabbed any
cause they could think of to get out of their final papers and spend
more time drinking. It's the same today.

5) "Any profiling is racial profiling." Who's killing us here, the
Norwegians? Just days after the attack, the New York Times had an
article saying dozens of extended members of the gazillionaire bin Laden
family living in America were afraid of reprisals and left in a huff,
never to return to studying at Harvard and using too much Drakkar. I'm
crushed. Please come back. Let's all stop singing "We Are the World" for
a minute and think practically. I don't want to be sitting on the floor
in the back of a plane four seconds away from hitting Mt.Rushmore and
turn, grinning, to the guy next to me to say, "Well, at least we didn't
offend them"

SO HERE'S what I resolve for the New Year: Never to forget our murdered
brothers and sisters. Never to let the relativists get away with their
immoral thinking. After all, no matter what your daughter's political
science professor says, we didn't start this. Have you seen that bumper
sticker that says, "No More Hiroshimas"? I wish I had one that says, "No
More Pearl Harbors."