Here’s a column by Dave Barry that (unusually) is not very funny.

It’s, instead, very moving. It also demonstrates once again (as did Mark Twain, and does James Lileks) that you can’t be a great humorist without also being a great writer. If you don’t read anything else today, I recommend this.

On This Week this morning (which was Sam and Cokie’s last show–I don’t know if I’ll be able to stomach an hour of Stephanopolous), a couple questions were asked. One was, what changed on September 11 that suddenly made Iraq more dangerous?

The answer is, of course, nothing. Saddam was just as dangerous on September 10 as he was on September 12.

The difference was not in the actual danger but in our perception of it. We now understand that we are no longer safely cocooned across vast oceans from our enemies–they can come here and attack us on our soil, and they are among us today. We now know that when people say they want to kill us, we should take them at their word.

But something else happened on September 11. While our perception of the danger increased dramatically, the actual danger decreased. I personally felt safer flying on September 12 than on September 10, not because of the Patriot Act, or because we made airline security workers federal employees with spiffy new uniforms, and not because I could fly secure in the knowledge that my seatmate didn’t have breast milk in a bottle, or a nose-hair trimmer.

No, I felt safer because I knew the danger, and I knew that my fellow citizens now knew the danger as well, and the brave, ordinary people on Flight 93 proved that never again would murderous madmen hold innocent lives hostage to evil, wretched goals.

As George Will said this morning, Americans are watching now. Even if the mindless bureaucracy of Norm Mineta refuses to racially profile, Americans are smart enough to know that the danger comes from young men (and perhaps women) from the Middle East, not little old ladies from Fargo.

Someone (perhaps Mark Steyn), said earlier this week that September 11 was like rolling Pearl Harbor and Jimmy Doolittle’s Tokyo raid into a single day. We were attacked without warning, and within an hour, we were fighting back, and struck a blow against the enemy.

The memorial – the word seems grandiose, when you see it – is a gravel parking area, two portable toilets, two flagpoles and a fence. The fence was erected to give people a place to hang things. Many visitors leave behind something – a cross, a hat, a medal, a patch, a T-shirt, an angel, a toy airplane, a plaque – symbols, tokens, gifts for the heroes in the ground. There are messages for the heroes, too, thousands of letters, notes, graffiti scrawls, expressing sorrow, and love, and anger, and, most often, gratitude, sometimes in yearbookish prose:

“Thanx 4 everything to the heroes of Flight 93!!”

Visitors read the messages, look at the stuff on the fence, take pictures. But mostly they stare silently across the field, toward the place where Flight 93 went down. They look like people you see at Gettysburg, staring down the sloping field where Pickett’s charge was stopped, and the tide of war changed, in a few minutes of unthinkable carnage. There is nothing, really, to see on either field now, but you find it hard to pull your eyes away, knowing, imagining, what happened there…

…we need to remember this: The heroes of Flight 93 were people on a plane. Their glory is being paid for, day after day, by grief. Tom Burnett does not belong to the nation. He is, first and foremost, Deena Burnett’s husband, and the father of their three daughters. Any effort we make to claim him as ours is an affront to those who loved him, those he loved.

He is not ours.

And yet …

… and yet he is a hero to us, he and the other people on Flight 93. We want to honor them, just as we want to honor the firefighters, police officers and civilians at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon who risked, and sometimes gave, their lives to try to rescue others. We want to honor them for what they did, and for reminding us that this nation is nowhere near as soft and selfish as we had come to believe.

We want to honor them.

Years will pass, and more people will come here, and more, people who were not yet born when Flight 93 went down, coming to see this famous place.

And so in a few years, when grass grows once again over the place where Flight 93 hit the ground, when the “X”s have faded from the hemlocks, there will be a memorial here, an official, permanent memorial to the heroes of Flight 93. It will be dedicated in a somber and dignified ceremony, and people will make speeches. Somebody – bet on it – will quote the Gettysburg Address, the part about giving the last full measure of devotion. The speeches will be moving, but they will also prove Lincoln’s point, that the words of the living can add nothing to the deeds of the dead.

The Canadian Forces web site has a message board where you can post messages to the troops. They might appreciate some additional condolences from the Yanks for the tragic accident last week in which Canadian solders were killed by a U.S. bomb.

[Thanks to Damian Penny]

Three Armenian priests in the Church of the Nativity, (you know, the ones who “weren’t hostages”?), escaped last night.

The priests told of “shocking sights” inside the church, including the beating by terrorists of some Christian clergy last night.

Nawwww, no hostages there. Just a little friendly S&M.

Of the many instances of one-sided reporting in this war, this particular incident is one that I find the most inexplicable. I’m still having trouble finding anyone who will criticize the Palestinians for taking over the church–all the blame for the standoff still seems to be levied on the Israelis.

“Demolishing the homes of Arab civilians… Shooting handcuffed prisoners… Forcing local Arabs to test areas where mines may have been planted…”

These sound like the sort of accusations made by British and other European officials concerning Israel’s recent actions in Jenin. In fact, they are descriptions from official British documents concerning the methods used by the British authorities to combat Palestinian Arab terrorism in Jenin and elsewhere in 1938.

That’s the fascinating beginning of an article in the Jerusalem Post, that describes how there are no new things under the sun.

An aircraft has hit the Pirelli Tire building in Milan. It’s been characterized as a terrorist attack. Apparently it was a Piper with explosives on board. Unless they’re simply mistaking the fuel tank exploding for a deliberate one.

That’s too bad. Italy was already on our side. I didn’t want this to occur anywhere, but it if it had happened in Paris or Brussels, it might have had a more salutory effect on some of the idiotic attitudes there.

Fox is now saying that there is a report that the pilot sent an SOS, so it’s still a confused situation.

[Update at 9:35AM PDT]

Now they’re saying that it’s looking less like terrorism, because of the multiple SOS signals. It’s still bizarre though, that it would accidentally hit the tallest building in Milan, and probably the closest thing to a symbol of capitalism they have there. Of course, the timing is not optimal to maximize casualties (early evening in Italy, when many have presumably gone home). It may indeed be just a weird accident.

I just heard Bridget Quinn on Fox News use the phrase “homicide bomber” rather than “suicide bomber.” I wonder if they have a new style guide, or she did it on her own.

For people who agree with Kathy Kinsley’s proposal that the Afghan scientists who hid the radioactive material from Al Qaeda deserve a Peace Prize, there’s now an on-line petition available.

I’ve signed it. (Thanks to Dan Hartung for setting it up)

[Update at 10:45AM PDT]

When I signed early this morning, I was number four. Now there are twenty seven. I know that Kathy and I have both publicized it, but don’t know if anyone else has picked it up on their blogs yet. We’ll know that Instantman has when it starts jumping by orders of magnitude. Did all those signatures come from my and Kathy’s site?

[1:11PM PDT Update]

Now there are thirty seven signatures, and I see that Bill Quick has linked to it.

Let’s see how fast we can spread this meme.

I just heard an infuriating broadcast on Morning All Things Considered (a program that was particularly woefully mistitled this morning–it should have been One Side Considered) on the situation in Israel and the West Bank. It was shockingly blatant anti-Israeli propaganda, even for them.

First, they give a run down of the news–Israel is still ignoring the U.S. calls to withdraw, except for a couple villages (which are not really part of a withdrawal, but just going through the motions to try to assuage world opinion). They are still holding the major cities, and “claiming” to have found rockets close to Jerusalem.

But the worst part was when they reported that there was a firefight on the Church of the Nativity. The reportage is that the Israelis have fired on it. The Israeli’s “claimed” to have been fired on first (but who can believe those lying Jews, I suppose one is to infer from the way they say it). They report anger from the Holy See, with a quote from some representative, who describes the attack as “barbaric,” and there is “no excuse.”

Absolutely no mention is made of the fact that armed Palestinian terrorists have been holed up there for days, possibly with hostages. Not just no criticism–no mention. If one only heard the report, and had no other knowledge, one would assume that the Israelis simply attacked one of the holiest Christian sites, with no true provocation.

Where is the condemnation, where is the outrage, at the Palestinians for taking over the Church in the first place? I’ve heard absolutely none, including from the Holy See.

Then, after the “news,” they of course have the obligatory, unbalanced interview with Peter Jennings’ ex-girlfriend, Hanan Ashrawi. They pitch a bunch of softballs at her, asking how terrible it is, expressing sympathy, asking if it’s true that she’s depressed and without hope, as she goes through her litany about Israeli “terrorism” and “war crimes,” how the Palestinian Authority is being dismantled and how the world simply stands by while Israel is not held accountable.

They don’t, of course, sully the moment by asking any unpleasant questions concerning Palestinian, or Palestinian Authority accountability for murders of Israeli civilians, or about the weapons caches being found. Again, if one heard only this broadcast, one would never know that prior to the incursion, Israel had been plagued by waves of murder bombers. No, it’s just the innocent Palestinian people being oppressed by the Evil Jews.

Disgusting.

In an article in the Journal today, Fred Kagan warns that the U.S. military lacks resources for the war.

Without passing comment on his general thesis, I have to take exception to this comment:

“…the importance of our missions in Bosnia and Kosovo should be allowed to slip from view, either. One of the purposes our forces serve there is to protect Muslims from Serbian attack. A pullout would mean that Slavs would again begin harming Muslims. Considering the precipitous rise in tensions between the U.S. and the Muslim world, is this the time to run that particular risk?

What risk? They’ve shown no gratitude, or even recognition of what we’ve done for Muslims in the Balkans. If we need the troops to fight where there’s actually a threat to us, pull ’em out of there. Let the Europeans spend some of that money they’ve had to build welfare states because we’ve been defending them for sixty years, to clean up the mess in their own back yard.

[Monday 1:25PM PDT update]

Reader “Pouncer” suggests:

If, in fact, the US is short resources to fight a major war, the “first domino” to kick over among Axis of Evil adversaries should be–North Korea.

We keep some 30,000 troops tied up there enforcing a cease fire at the DMZ. We’ve done so for 50 years. A very strong ally with major strategic interest in keeping the North Koreans under control is trained, rested, and ready to act under U.S. guidance. (That would be, unlike Northern Alliance or Kurdis irregulars, the actual ARMY of the nation of South Korea.)

The army is often charged with making plans “to fight the last war.” To the extent that’s true, there must be libraries full of plans to topple North Korea–hundreds of scenarios already wargamed out. Picking one may be a challenge, but any of the best ten of a hundred is likely to be okay.

Kick over North Korea, free up 29,700 U.S. fighting men (assuming about 1% casuality rates). Demonstrate resolve. Take the spotlight off the Middle East. Show Mainland China that we can be serious when the mood strikes us…

Then move the focus back on Iraq. If, that is, such a place still exists by the time the Israelis get through.

That’s not a bad idea, except that they’re probably worried about China’s reaction. The last time we tried that, we ended up facing Chinese troops, and it’s not unthinkable that the same could happen again. Of course, the difference is that China is not as enamored with NK as it used to be, and Russia has very little love for it, so we might be able to pull it off.

It’s too bad that we’ve kept Japan toothless for so long–it would be a lot easier to let them do the job, as their contribution to the war. But I suspect that would reopen too many old wounds from the last time they invaded Korea, with less benign intent.

Like Reuters, The Muslim nations are having a problem coming up with a common definition for terrorism.

The countries agreed to form a 13-member committee to “work toward an internationally agreed definition of terrorism” under a U.N. convention to “formulate a joint organized response of the international community to terrorism in all its forms and manifestation.”

Well, I’m so relieved. I’ll sleep much better at night knowing that there’s a thirteen-member committee of Islamic nations working toward a definition of terrorism. Based on the following, though, one suspects that they may have some difficulty squaring the circle.

The declaration said the countries reject “any attempts to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian people” to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

“We reject any attempt to associate Islamic states or Palestinian and Lebanese resistance with terrorism,” the draft said.

They then proceed to make just such a link.

The roots of terrorism, including “foreign occupation, injustice and exclusion” should be addressed, it said.

While they’re coming up with the definition, maybe one of them can explain to me how “foreign occupation, injustice and exclusion” are roots of terrorism, but that the supposed victims of these evils aren’t engaging in terrorism.

To say that there are gray areas is not an excuse to avoid making calls on acts that are clearly black. There is a region between earth’s atmosphere and space that is neither air nor space. That doesn’t prevent us from saying that a Cessna 120 flies in the atmosphere, and that the Cassini probe to Saturn was in space.

There may be some acts that are open to interpretation by reasonable people as to whether they are terrorist acts or not, but they’re not the ones that have been dominating the news for the last half year.

Hey guys, let me help you out here–it’s clear that you’re confused.

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, if you strap TNT to yourself and detonate it in a crowded pizza parlor, you might be a terrorist.

If you walk into a wedding party and start spraying it with AK-47 rounds, you might be a terrorist.

If you drive a rental truck full of high explosives into the basement of a skyscraper and blow it up, you might be a terrorist.

If you purchase airplane tickets, then slit the throats of flight attendants and commandeer the aircraft, and fly it into the side of that same skyscraper, you might be a terrorist.

And if you obfuscate the definition of terrorism, use illogical and inconsistent statements to defend the above behaviors, change the subject whenever anyone calls you on it, pretend that there’s any justification whatsoever for them, ship weapons to those carrying them out, and provide large amounts of funding to the widows and family of the perps, you just might be a terrorist yourself.

In which case, you might want to at least consider recusing yourself from any committee dedicated to “defining terrorism.”