These retired and still active senior officer’s views are pretty much mine also. I will just post the article and let these people’s words speak for themselves.
US Military Commanders Bemoan Lack of Concern About Terror Threat
While Islamic fundamentalist terrorists are seeking to destroy the Western way of life, Americans are more concerned about the life of movie stars and going out for a hamburger than issues crucial to their freedom, several senior retired American military officers said here.
“We know far more in the United States about what Britney Spears is doing than we know about the issues,” said retired U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Norman Saunders.
Speaking to a small group of reporters on the sidelines of the fifth annual Jerusalem Conference, Saunders said that the U.S. faces a “very serious challenge from the fanatical Muslim population that would seek to do away with the way of life of the Western World as we know it.”
“We listen to our presidential candidates – [in] what is probably a very critical election for our country if not the world –talk constantly about change without any definition of what that represents. What would they change? How would they confront the threats? Are there new ideas that they would bring forward?” Saunders asked.
Saunders, a former commanding officer of the U.S. Coast Guard who is responsible for a number of Homeland Defense and Security matters, said that Americans need to understand the issues.“I’d like them to take their minds off whatever it is that keeps them occupied today and pay attention to what really is going on in the world and understand that and evaluate it for themselves,” Saunders said.
Saunders said he did not believe that the media even understood the issues or reports on them.
“I’d like a fairly good assessment of what really the world situation is, what the intention of some of these forces that we see out there are with regard to our population, the size of the threat, some of the options that face us,” he said.
But Saunders is not the only senior military official that is concerned that Americans aren’t paying attention to things that really matter.
It’s not clear if Americans even understand “how serious this adversary is,” said retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Harley Davis. “I think our very freedom is at stake and our way of life.
“Too many times we have forgotten or seem to have forgotten about 9/11 and the fact that it did happen,” said Davis, who served in a number of command and staff assignments, including the 2nd Armored Division, 1st Cavalry Division, 101st Airborne Division and 5th and 10th Special Forces Groups.
“Because of sacrifices of a lot of people across the U.S. as well as overseas, I think we’ve staved off any further attacks, but you never know when it’s going to come,” Davis added.
“We go about being happy, driving our cars. We’re going to get hamburgers or whatever it is,” Davis said. The threat of terrorism is not in front of Americans all the time as it is in front of Israelis, he said.
The press could help the situation “by reporting the facts without opinions, of the liberal side,” Davis said.
“I’m perhaps a little biased in that, but I spent over 33 years in the service of our country, and it just pains me to no end to see our courageous folks giving their lives up to protect our way of life, and some people take for granted what we have,” Davis said. “There are some really bad folks that would like to take away our way of life in the U.S. and here [Israel.]
The presidential candidates are not offering any clue as to how they would lead the nation and are instead focusing on superficial issues, said retired U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Bradley M. Lott.
“Those running for president haven’t talked very much about leadership. How will they lead the nation? How will they lead the people? How will they convince people of a better way or a right way to go? Instead we talk about things that tend to be too superficial,” Lott told journalists.
Lott said he would like to see presidential candidates address issues like how would they lead the nation in a confrontation after another serious act of terrorism. He wondered if “he or she” would be willing to seek out and attack terror bases or be willing to seek out those who traffic drugs and “interrupt their lines of communication” coming into the U.S.
“Do we have the will to do that? Are we looking at a leader that has the will to do that? That’s important,” Lott said. There are issues worth going to war over, he said, and those include “any threat to our way of life.”
Unfortunatly +70% of the people in the Us only know what is forced on them about national or world events. If the facts aren’t force fed them, then they will ignore it or percieve those trying to inform them as pests. If the Mass Media of main stream news and the intertainment inductry doesn’t sactify an issue as worthy of concern, then it isn’t going to get any attention from that +70%.
Of the 30% that is informed the majority of it appears to me to be actively seeking information that supports their already held beliefs. It is a minority percentage of the minority percentage that is open and engaged and malable in their awarness and opinion of national and world events.
At least, until the next big blow comes. Then everyone will be looking for answers as to how it happened and who was asleep at the controls. But the answer is clear, America is asleep at the controls, ignoring the cries of those placed on watch and who are warning anyone who will lsten.
“information that supports their already held beliefs. It is a minority percentage of the minority percentage that is open and engaged and malable in their awarness and opinion of national and world events.”
Excellent comments, however I would like to add that it seems very difficult to determine what incoming information can be accepted at face value, and what has to be gone over with a fine tooth comb to find a grain of truth. I believe a classic example is the report from Walter Cronkite that the Tet offensive in Vietnam was a great victory for the Viet Cong. Not a single fact grain of truth in the entire story, yet millions of Americans believed it. Many of us in the military, who were there at the time or who went back there later, told anyone who would listen that it was not true. We were ignored while the lie was repeated over and over. The deaths of thousand of US soldiers, in vain: because lies from the American left were promoted as somehow being the truth.
“it seems very difficult to determine what incoming information can be accepted at face value, and what has to be gone over with a fine tooth comb to find a grain of truth.”
As the Bard said, “Ah, but there is the rub” for it is truly harder to know the truth from the favored lie. It was once a simple matter of knowing “who” to believe, so that then you would know “what” to believe. But Cronkite was a great example of the trampling of that trust. ?Now absent any singular voice of integrity and honesty we have literally hundreds and thousands of voices clamoring over each other. There are of course the dinosaurs of the Main Stream Media who still preen and pretend that from their towers they have some higher perspective and achieve a longer view of the larger picture, but that is more often than not proved to be a dimmer and more distant view of the facts on the ground.
If I were a college professor, and had not become to deluded, I would start a course of study on how to research and determine fact from opinion, truth from fiction, in the modern information age. The course would be part economics, part human social science, part mythology, and part game theory. And a hell of a lot of fun.
Bill: It has been a very long time ago, but how to determine fact, fiction and truth was taught as part of a college course I took in Sociology.
Yes Buckehe, but they don’t cover that now. And I would bet that even if they did, the dynamics have changed such that there are considerations one must include that were not present just 10 or 15 years ago.