Michael Ledeen on his friend Barbara Olson, who died on 9/11/01:
I have plenty of time to listen to constructive criticism of our war strategy; I have done plenty of it myself. I crave revenge, as do most Americans. But I have no time for the fools and fabricators who invert reality, who warn that the greatest threat to a decent world is a bloodthirsty America that is actively planning an invasion of Iran, when the truth is that this administration is so feckless that it will not even support the millions of freedom fighters already there.Most of the fools and fabricators are Lefties, but there are plenty on the Right, and the Republican Party has an abundance of them. Indeed, some of them sit at the right hand of the president. Karen Hughes, one of W’s closest friends and advisers, permitted herself this bit of politically correct appeasement-speak last December 19th, apologizing to our enemies on al Jazeera:
“The U.S. acknowledged [after] the events of September 11 that our policies might have created feelings of frustration and hatred, [causing those individuals] to board those airplanes, [fly them into the twin towers], and kill people. We want to change these circumstances, and this is what we are doing today…”Barbara would have no time for any of the Bidens, Hagels, Lugars, Deans, Kennedys and Murthas who tell us we are wrong to be angry, wrong to seek the destruction of our enemies, wrong to advance freedom, wrong to defend our borders, wrong to use every technological miracle to discover and divine our enemies’ intentions, wrong to lock away captured killers.
Lucianne Goldberg on Barbara Olson; 9/13/01
Ted Olson, Barbara's husband, and at the time the Solicitor General of the United States, gave this speech, the first Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture to the Federalist Society, in November, 2001. Here's a taste: (ellipsis mine)
On September 11, 2001, Barbara Olson and thousands of other Americans were murdered.There were victims from other nations that day as well, but they were accidental casualties. Barbara and her fellow Americans were the targets; selected at random to be slaughtered that day precisely because they were Americans.
And the places of their deaths were carefully chosen for what they meant to America, and to the world about Americans, and because they were unique symbols of America's vitality, prosperity and strength...
...Barbara Olson had less time, and maybe not as many resources, as the heroes on United Flight 93 that was brought down in Pennsylvania short of its target. But the moment her flight was hijacked, she began to try to save herself and her fellow passengers. She somehow managed (I think she was the only one on that flight to do so) to use a telephone in the airplane to call, not only for help from the outside, but for guidance for herself and the flight crew in the battle that she was already undertaking in her mind. She learned during those two telephone conversations that two passenger jumbo jets had already that morning been turned into instruments of mass murder at the World Trade Center. So she knew the unspeakable horror that she was facing -- and I know without the slightest doubt that she died fighting -- with her body, her brain and her heart -- and not for a moment entertaining the notion that she would not prevail. Barbara died therefore not only because she was an American, but as one more American who refused to surrender to the monstrous evil into whose eyes she and her fellow countrymen stared during those last hideous moments.
RTWT
Posted by dan at September 11, 2006 8:57 AM