Bringing one man to 'justice' over the 9-11 attacks seeming an inadequate atonement, our government has pledged an all-out military 'campaign' [remember - it's not officially a war,] against terrorism. After all, what national satisfaction would it bring to have one bewhiskered lunatic rotting in a cell for six or eight years - until the feds get enough guts to finally inject two bucks worth of rat poison into his veins. Somehow there just doesn't seem to be enough punishment inflicted in exchange for 6,000 lives, with the capture and execution of only one man - or even with 50 henchmen thrown in for good measure. It just isn't enough.

So - we seek out and attack the governments that helped bin Laden carry out his heinous acts. When they are reduced to smoldering ash, are we done? Signs all point to 'no' as the answer. The enemy is not so easy to define - or confine.

The real enemy is cultural. There is a culture out there that simply despises us and everything we stand for. They hate all of us equally: White, Black, Chicano, Southron, Yankee, Western Ranchers, Hawaiians, all. This is why divisions between sectional interests have melted together in solemn unity. Lately, no one cares who's a Democrat or who's a Republican [though there are a few 'treasonous muckspouts,' as Michael Bates would say,] trying to make some partisan noise. In the old days, we'd take them outside the city walls and stone them to death. Today, their punishment is to be overwhelmingly ignored.

Once we've reduced Afghanistan's rubble to pebbles - and maybe even Iraq, just to clean up unfinished business [it's rough having to pick up after your dad when your dad was leader of the free world too,] - what really needs to change is how we look at individuals. Our immigration policy needs to focus on not only where someone is from, but also why he wants to be here.

Here's a sample scene from an immigration checkpoint in the future:

Perhaps the assertion is wrong, but it seems that there was a day when to enter this country, you needed a reason to be here. Yes, there was a time when America was young, expanding, and needed lots of fresh faces to do the hard work of building this country up. The late 19th century saw mass immigration in the hundreds of thousands, yet this type of influx was limited to peoples of Christian nations who could assimilate into our society easier. Today, no assimilation is expected, as government agencies in most states publish booklets and forms in more than one language. Our gutless Congress can't even manage to make English the official language of the United States. As time goes by, to do so becomes more of a stretch of logic, since fewer and fewer people speak it fluently enough to matter.

Such a change in immigration policy will take time to enact, but it is logical and necessary that we do so as quickly as possible. Even more urgent is the 'forbidden question,' that being "why are non-citizens from Islamic nations still here?" Certainly we don't want to make the same mistake we did in WWII, locking up all US Citizens with Japanese surnames living on the West coast. That was stupid and unproductive. Just as there were patriotic Americans of German and Japanese descent during WWII, there are also Muslims in this country that are citizens, and mean it.

What would not be unproductive at this point is to immediately deport all foreigners visiting from any nation which the State Department deems likely a terrorist breeding ground [I don't think they have a classification exactly like that, but whatever is close.] We shouldn't have to constantly look over our shoulders and subject ourselves to the loss of rights for which our forefathers died protecting. We - the Americans - should not have to suffer a whit more than we have already.

Let them who have not earned the privilege of being counted countrymen pay a little inconvenience for once. All these politicians babbling about safety and security - they could give it to us in a week, if they were serious.

Send them back.

Now.

[By boat!]