Remember the last few words of the National Anthem? "... O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave," right? Not, "... O'er the land of the free and the home of the timid." Or, "... O'er the land of the free and the home of the easily cowed," correct?
But here are our mainstream media and politicians -- up to and including the President of the United States of America himself -- wringing their hands and peddling the meme that the terrorists will "follow us home" if we leave Iraq.
"Boo! Terrorists following us home. Boo-boo-boo!"
Here's a bulletin for cable news pundits, op-ed page types, Sunday morning talking heads and inside the beltway politicians. It might even be an item for the presidential daily briefing:
Out here beyond the beltway, in the real United States of America, we don't do fear. Never have. Never will.
We do anger. We do vengeance. We do war real good. But fear? Sorry. We the people don't scare.
Sometimes that's been a good thing. Didn't we fearlessly take on the world's most powerful empire and win our independence?
Sometimes not so good. We fearlessly carved one another up for four years in the Civil War. George A. Custer fearlessly charged the biggest Lakota encampment in history. And a couple of fearless world wars and a few fearless police actions after that, George W. Bush fearlessly charged into Iraq.
Now the pundits and beltway types are quaking at Bush Administration forebodings about terrorists following us home. Now there is this wholesale stampede to surrender our civil rights.
They, the pundits and pols, not we the people, are afraid. Afraid other pundits and pols will brand them as being "weak on terror." Afraid that label will follow them home in the form of PAC money and swift boat advertising at election time.
That's the real terrorism at work here. If we pull out of Iraq, your representative might not get reelected. We've got to stay in Iraq to protect his/her phony-baloney job.
Even more damning, the pundits and pols live in terror of taking real steps that might really make us more secure. Inspecting every container coming into the country, for example. Such a regimen would genuinely make us safer, but would bottleneck international trade, hamstring corporate cash flow, and bring down more PAC wrath and swift boat havoc on your representative.
So we sit out here in the real United States of America. Day after day, night after night. Watching TV, surfing the Internet, rolling our eyes, slapping our foreheads, rending our garments and gnashing our teeth in frustration at the pundits and pols' threadbare shibboleths.
And still the pundits and pols go, "Boo. Boo-boo-boo-boo-boo."
They may be unwilling to take any real action to winch the country out of the quagmire they drove us into. They may be just as unwilling to do anything substantial to make us genuinely safer at home. They are, however, perfectly willing -- some would say poised -- to swoop in if we get hit again.
Mistaking our anger for fear, they will seize the photo opportunity and a bullhorn, climb up the latest pile of rubble, embrace the emergency worker du jour, say they told us so, and take away more of our rights.
Now there is something worth being afraid of.
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