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| Rob's Soapbox | ||
Congratulations! You have finally landed on the one page on this entire site (and on the entire internet for that matter) that is purely without bullshit... my soapbox page. There are a lot of times during our show that, whether it's because of time constraints and other obligations, I don't always get to address some issues that I feel don't get the attention they deserve. There are even more times when I just don't feel like waiting until the show the next day to get some things off my chest. Thus, I have started the "Rob's Soapbox" page. If you have clicked on this page looking for someone to coddle your fragile sense of self-esteem, or tell you what you want to hear or to reinforce your outdated world view, then exit this page right now and go somewhere else. If you are in search of the last forum for reason and common sense left in the world, then sit back, relax, and enjoy. I make only one promise with this soapbox page... if you read long enough and often enough, you will eventually be offended. So here's my latest soapbox. Listen up, 'cause you just might learn something... |
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Monday, November 16th, 2009 IT'S SEPTEMBER 10TH, 2001 Some stunningly major news broke last Friday; the kind of news that caused the 24 hour cable channels to completely revamp their days’ schedules so that a report, analysis or opinion piece on the news of the day could air every 3.4 minutes. The Headline; It’s September 10, 2001 again. Hooray. America is once again ignorantly at peace with the world, and totally unaware of and unwilling to acknowledge the abilities of people that want to do us harm on our own land. We apparently have decided to once again behave as though we are too big to be attacked, too smart to be out maneuvered, and too disaffected to ask that we all actually confront the truth. The world was a fun place on 9/10/01. Oh sure, we still had our squabbles about politics, religions and sports, but we also knew that the United States of America was the undaunted, unchallenged, impenetrable leader of the free world and the safest place on Earth. It was also, of course, totally fake, created of our own ignorance and stupidity. As a nation we just moped around arrogantly believing everything was fine. As the country always on someone’s bulls-eye, we treated terrorism as a law enforcement issue, not a military one. We sought permits and warrants and arrests rather than targeted strikes and assassinations because we were a bunch of pansies, afraid of the world’s judgments upon us and not concerned with the devastation we would be bringing upon our own citizens and their families. 9/11 was bigger than the nearly 3,000 people who died; it left in its wake countless distraught relatives and a generation of military soldiers and families who must deal with the horrors of war; and it was all preventable had we been more proactively seeking those who wanted to do us harm and preemptively taking them out. On Friday, in a stunningly juvenile, dangerous and nonsensical announcement, the word was delivered that the terrorists who masterminded the attacks of 9/11 and who remain alive and in American custody, will be tried in a court of law in the United States. Terrorism is not a crime; it’s war. Those who engage in war upon America are not arrested they are killed. Yet the Obama administration will allow people who plotted how to fly planes into our World Trade Center towers access to lawyers, a jury, evidence and their day in court. The sales pitch to support the idea is that it elevates America on the world stage in a way no other nation can. We will show the world, by using our criminal justice system that even in the ashes of the worst attacked ever perpetrated on our nation’s soil, we are still strong enough and confident enough to use our courts and judges and juries to reach a final verdict. We will not lower ourselves to the barbaric nature of the evil that lives within terrorists. It really is a wonderful sales pitch and for the non-emotional amongst us, it seems at first hard to argue with. While our justice system makes mistakes, it is still without question the most revered, envied and greatest system of justice ever invented on earth. No one has ever credibly argued that any nation has ever conceived a greater way to determine guilt in a nation founded upon individual freedoms. I admit, as a champion and fervent supporter of due process in America, I initially had a hard time piecing together why I was so intensely angry at the idea of trying terrorists in our courts. Then, five seconds later, it came rushing towards me like a tsunami. POINT 2: A trial in America demands that you be judged by a “jury of your peers.” Excuse me, but where do we find peers to non-Americans who loathe the country and belong to terrorist organizations? Are we to hold this trial in the hills of Pakistan? No one in America, that is not clinically insane, is a peer of a 9/11 terror mastermind. Is this a real trial? Clearly not and if it’s not, what is the point of the dog and pony show and allowing this nation’s greatest secrets, techniques and officers to be exposed and drug through the mud? POINT 3: The Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, the highest ranking law enforcement official in the nation, stated his confidence Friday in a guilty verdict. So which is it? Are we confident in our system to objectively try criminals or are we guaranteeing a pre-determined outcome and undermining our own nation’s credibility? Additionally, the Attorney General literally tainted a jury pool with that statement. Hello? Can anyone spell mistrial? POINT 4: Terrorists are not American citizens and therefore have no right to be given access to our criminal justice system nor our systems for the rights of the accused. POINT 5: Once allowed access to our laws and rights, the terrorists will use every sort of technicality to attempt to declare mistrials. We are giving terrorists, after the fact, the right to remain silent, even though they were waterboarded to make them talk. There’s not a judge in America that doesn’t have to immediately either taint his credibility or throw out all evidence gained during such techniques. Don’t get me wrong; I am not claiming that the terrorists will go free; even this administration isn’t that stupid. However, it is possible they will be found not guilty and then immediately arrested again, tarnishing completely our entire lame attempt to show the world how grand our justice system is. More likely is the outcome of a guilty verdict but at what cost? How many 9/11 family victims will not only have to yet again relive this horror but also receive lifetime protection for showing themselves in court to testify against a terror mastermind. And for what? The same outcome, these terror creeps being killed, could have been accomplished using long-ago established military tribunals where none of these risks to our national and emotional securities occur. America was made a much weaker nation Friday. The spectacle that will be this charade will be an embarrassment to the world and an invitation to those who wish us harm. Our country is in the hands of people who live here, yet hate the nation. There is simply no other rational explanation for this cowardly act of showmanship by this president and his administration, all announced under the cover of media darkness on a Friday afternoon while the president is halfway around the world eating sushi. America is less safe and closer to its next terrorist attack than ever before. Sleep well knowing that those who swore to protect you have no intention of doing so.
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