Remember September 11, 2001?  I do.  Many seem to have forgotten. 

We live in a post 9/11 world so let's be direct.  The grave reality is that right now thousands of radical Islamic terrorists fully intend, and are very specifically preparing to kill you, your spouse, your children, and everyone that you know and love. 

It's a grim certainty that if left unchallenged, these same terrorists will gain possession of the materials necessary to manufacture a dirty bomb, and/or — God forbid — a nuclear weapon — either of which they will joyfully, and most certainly deploy against American men, women and children.     

Alarmist scare—tactics, right?

Damn right!  

You should be alarmed, and you should be scared.  Fear rooted in fact, stemming from danger is not only healthy — it's central to survival. 
 
However, we mustn't let fear be the precursor to paralysis.  We can't let the evil ones dictate how we live our lives.  Rather, we must take whatever action is necessary to ensure that these murderous cowards who live to kill, and long to die, achieve the latter before the former. 

Thank God we have a president with both courage of heart and clarity of mind to answer the call to action.  He's shown that he will take any step required to destroy those who would do us harm.  Notice I said destroy — not appease — not negotiate with — not try to understand — but very plainly and simply...destroy.  Our government — our military — our Commander—in—Chief has no greater calling than to protect our citizens — even those who foolishly bawl that they don't desire protection.     

Here's a fact that seems to have been forgotten by many on the left — namely, liberal Democrats.  Let's refresh their recollection:  On September 11, 2001 Muslim fundamentalist terrorists declared war on America when they murdered over three thousand of our innocent men, women and children.  

We were rocked by a spineless sucker—punch to be sure.  But, now we're taking the fight to them.  With nearly two—thirds of Al Qaeda's leadership dead or captured, we've got—em on the run. 

Make no mistake; the war in Iraq is just one battle in the larger war on terror.  America has defined the terms.  We have determined the where and the when.  We have seized the initiative and taken the fight to our enemies, a matter which impresses itself deeply on the minds of other tyrants contemplating their future. Iraq is the rattler's nest — the front—line against Al Qaeda and her many terrorist cousins.  Like roaches to a roach—motel, those who seek to kill you and your children are drawn by blind hatred for freedom.  We kill them there, so that they can't kill us here. 

Yet no campaign is foolproof, including this one, and will it be without gut—wrenching sacrifice.  Still, our very survival depends upon victory. 

Of course even now our homeland continues to be at risk.  As our President has made perfectly clear, the war on terror will take decades.  Nonetheless, as nearly four years without a homeland attack have proven, we're safer today than we were yesterday, or the day before. 

The majority of Americans are grateful beyond words for the brave men and women who defend us.  Likewise, most Iraqis are thankful for having been liberated from the tyrant Saddam Hussein — the terrorist monster who victimized them for decades. 

But regrettably, there are those in our midst, even within the halls of Congress, who seek to undermine the war on terror — who selfishly, for love of power lost, fire munitions of disingenuous rhetoric at the very troops who defend them — and furthermore, who transparently seek to undercut the momentous and overwhelming success of Iraq's free elections.

And that success was indeed mind—boggling.  The tremendous yearning of the human spirit for freedom was inspiring to behold.  Under threat of brutal murder, 60 percent of Iraqis sent a resounding message to both the terrorists, and to liberal Democrats when they boldly, and for the first time, wholly exercised their God—given right of self—determination.  They've decided who will create the government to lead a free and sovereign Iraq. 

At least 44 innocent Iraqis were murdered in cold blood by the very terrorists responsible for 9/11.  They truly became 'martyrs' for liberty, in the genuine sense of the word.  May God bless their precious souls.   

There were two principal bodies hostile to President Bush that lost big on Iraq's Election Day:  Terrorists, and nay—saying liberal Democrats.  The elections are already sowing the seeds of democracy throughout the Arab world. The liberal Democrats have clumsily arranged it to be bad news for them when the elections are good news for our nation, for democracy, for the Iraqis, and for our President. That just doesn't smell very good to a solid majority of Americans. Iraqis dance in the streets while Democrat talking heads look depressed, evasive, petty, and mean.

Already, the senior Senator from Massachusetts is looking pretty stupid. He ramped up his attempts to undermine the war effort just three days prior to Iraq's free elections. He compared the battle for Iraq to a Vietnam 'quagmire' and declared: 'The U.S. military presence has become part of the problem, not part of the solution.'  Drunk with bitterness over Democrats' sound trouncing in our own recent elections, Kennedy has lead the call for America to immediately withdraw troops from Iraq — to drive off freedom's bridge, capsize the vehicle of progress, and cowardly abandon our Iraqi passengers to drown, as it were, in three feet of hostile waters.

This is technically known as snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

In recent months, Kennedy has called the war on terror 'George Bush's Vietnam,' and a 'fraud made up in Texas.'  Of course his self—serving anti—American words fill the airwaves, delighting the terrorists, Al—Jazeera, and other enemy media outlets, making for marvelous and very useful propaganda.

So, keep it up Democrats, if you must.  Continue to sully the brave men and women of the armed forces who risk it all while you endeavor to beg, borrow and steal your way back into a position of power — continue, and the natural consequences of your actions will be a foregone conclusion. 

J. Matt Barber is a non—practicing attorney, an undefeated heavyweight professional boxer (Matt 'Bam Bam' Barber), and a jazz drummer in Chicago. His e—mail is jmattbarber@comcast.net