Another Old Column From Last Spring

On Sept 11 2001 some of the world's evil people tried to take down this great nation. Don't quite understand what their beef was, but we were a big target, and big targets are always easy to blame, and easy to hit. And they hit us pretty hard. Like most reasonable folks, we hit back. We have the ability to hurt the people who try to hurt us, and we elected to express that ability. We've put a dent in their leadership, and are working on the rest. And although some among us think that self defense is silly and impolite, more rational folks are still in charge, and thus we still have a country. It is a country worth defending, and I thank those who have and are defending it.

Sentient people know that we are still a big target, and that we will always be vulnerable to terrorist attack, because cowards and terrorists like to go after the gentle and un-defended, and that's how lucky we are, cause most of us are gentle and un-defended. Our life is so wonderful that most of us can be this way. If evil people want to hurt us, we present oh so many easy targets. 

Sure, we work to inconvenience the terrorists. We have finally started to keep track of the worst of them, and we make an effort to keep them out of our country. We endure those security lines at the airports, and we gladly get groped so we can board an airplane, because as soon as we stop doing that those evil ones will strike us again, as they once did. We are a soft people, spoiled by our success, but we have enough among us with the right stuff that we have held the storm at the gates. And we are finding the ways to live our lives and still not make too easy a target for the evil in the world.

I don't know about you, but after 911 I looked around my neighborhood to see where the best targets might be, just in case. The professionals did the same, and they keep an eye on some places we really don't want to loose. I suppose the Golden Gate Bridge is no longer well guarded, cause it is too close to the softest among us, and to those who root for our enemies. But I had to open the lid on the bed of my pickup truck last year before the guards let me drive over the Hoover Dam, and I didn't mind. I hadn't hidden a bomb in there. The Hoover Dam is not only very important, but it is also kinda neat. Would be a shame if the bastards tried to destroy that one.

This year we will drive over the new bridge at Black Canyon. Now commercial traffic won't be stopped from driving over Hoover Dam, but instead they can use the new bridge to bypass the dam. And if the scum want to get that dam to hurt us, they will have to find another way.

A thousand feet long and 900 feet above the broiling river, the cement arch bridge is a wonder of engineering achievement. I cannot wait to see it. The bridge has been needed since before 911, but we erected it as a consequence of that threat, and the builders did a wonderful job. Evil set us down, but we got up fighting, and now our genius is showing us the way to our future. I plan on celebrating when I cross that bridge.

Mike O' Gallaghan was once Arizona's governor and a Korean War veteran. Pat Tillman stared in the NFL and then died fighting for us against the evil that brought 911. They named the bridge after these two. I'll tip a glass to them, too.