Hold 'er Steady, Eric

My beloved country was attacked on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 by international terrorists. I happened to be on my way to the airport in Calgary, Alberta, Canada – another country I hold very close to my heart. My traveling companions and I did not make it out of Calgary that day; nor did we make it out for the next five days. The good news for us is that we were in a friendly and accommodating country and provisions were made for a hospitable sojourn during a very difficult time. Most of us had families in the States and the separation – during such an emotional and anxious time – was almost unbearable. But we were among the fortunate ones. We were not instantly incinerated, left to die under millions of pounds of rubble or tortured by the decision to breathe smoldering fire into our lungs or jump from a 70th story window. We were not expected to climb 90 flights of stairs with 100 pounds of equipment on our backs or commanded to dig down deeply into hot steel, crumbled concrete dust and jagged glass. We were the fortunate ones.

In the ensuing months I watched images on television of strange and foreign men carrying weapons, faces hidden under cowards’ veils, digging trenches, climbing into caves, stabbing at straw cadavers and saluting Osama Bin Laden who was armed, tall, limping, crazy and dangerous. I saw him sharing a cup of coffee with his comrades in some dark and dank crevice carved into this earth by Satan Himself, laughing and rejoicing at how well The Towers had collapsed. These people are my enemies and I am to pray for them. I have not done a good job.

Eight years later we are about to try a few brave American citizens who were ordered to interrogate these enemies with the goal of gathering any data that would assist us in tracking down these lethal and vial human beings. I have no idea what they did within those dark cells of interrogation. Water boarding gets the headlines but I suspect things got far beyond pales of water up the nose. I am steadfastly on the side of the CIA. They were patriots following orders. Those orders were set in place to protect my beloved country from further acts of insanity.

It has been stated that these efforts produced very little valuable intelligence information. Tonight I am sitting in my home in Nashville, TN. The world is, indeed, still on edge, much more fragile because of these events. But I am reasonably confident that Bin Laden’s mob of evil is not on the verge of another attack on my beloved country. The main reason for this is that we hunted them down like the dogs that they are, asked them some tough questions under dire circumstances and made them do a little human repentance for their actions. Osama, on the other hand, is probably still in a damp cave swatting at bats, brushing away scorpions, talking with his dipshit friends and drinking that bitter coffee they strain through their socks.

I am a fortunate one. Mr. Holder, I urge you to be wise…and sensible.