Stardate 20020130.0603

(On Screen): I never watch political speeches. I haven't been able to watch a speech by any politician in my life for more than thirty seconds without the urge to throw something at the TV screen, and I gave up trying twenty years ago. The art of public speaking died with Churchill.

So I wait and read about them the next day. And it's interesting to read the reactions of other people to them. I gather that Bush's State of the Union speech last night was relatively stirring, as such things go. It contained a certain amount of material that was less than inspired, as would be expected. (Does Bush really think that he's going to convince every American to devote two years of life to good deeds? Yeah, right.)

The most important message in yesterday's speech is that the war isn't over. On the contrary, it's hardly begun. We have mostly won the first major battle of the war, but there is much left to do, and this will last a long time. Bush also tried to point out that it's going to take us to a lot of other places. Inevitably, all the nations he mentioned reacted negatively to that.

There are nations in the world where the rule of law is less firm. They are not really anarchies, but it is not the case that law is applied with the same kind of fervor that it is here, either through lack of will or lack of capability, and large and powerful groups operate in those nations with impunity. Some of those groups are opposed to the US, and they use these safe havens to do their planning and training and organizing. al Qaeda was one such, and they gave us the September attack (and several others before that).

Until recently, the US government has turned a blind eye to such activities. But it is now clear that we can't, and Bush said so yesterday. It is apparent that we have to actively hunt down and destroy these groups; we cannot passively wait for them to attack us, even though some of these groups operate in nations whose central governments are overtly friendly to us. One of the ones he named was the Philippines.

"It's clear in my mind that one president of a friendly country does not threaten another friendly country," Justice Secretary Hernando Perez said. "We do seek assistance from them in case of need, but that doesn't mean they will run the foreign policy of our country."

I suppose that kind of bluster is unavoidable. National pride requires it. But does Perez really think that after September 11 the US is going to sit back and give groups like the ones who operate in the Philippines a pass just because they are operating in a friendly nation?

There are several answers to his comments. One would be that a nation which permits groups like this to operate within its borders and plan attacks against the US isn't actually friendly, no matter what they say publicly. Another would be that we're not trying to run their foreign policy with this. What we're engaged in is vermin-removal.

Yet another would be that "friends" would understand the changed circumstances, and make allowances.

But those are side issues. This is the real point.

Yesterday, Elaine Duch was released from the hospital in New York. She had been on the 88th floor of Tower 1 when it was hit, and was caught in the fireball. She suffered second and third degree burns over 77% of her body, but managed to get out of the building before it collapsed. A priest on the spot gave her last rites before she was taken away -- but she survived.

You don't really recover from burns that serious. We take skin for granted, but it's one of the most important organs we have, and the scar tissue that we regrow is not the same. It doesn't stretch; it's not soft. She will suffer serious pain for the rest of her life. She is permanently disfigured.

She is but one out of tens of thousands of people whose lives were changed forever by the attack in September. And three thousand, one hundred and twenty-two lives ended that day. We don't want that kind of thing to happen again.

The next attack might be far worse. For us to stand idly by and wait for it, without doing everything we can to prevent it, would be the height of idiocy.

And that is far more important than worrying about bruising the egos of "friendly countries". We were stupid once, but we're not going to be stupid twice.