Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Winners step up again

Friday, Oct. 5, 2001 | 9:08 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

SOME THINGS IN OUR SOCIETY seldom change and others change overnight. The attitudes of Americans, after watching the massacre at the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, flared with anger and then settled down to a determination that demands justice and a willingness to see it gained no matter how much time, money or suffering is the price. They won't be happy again until justice is served and action is taken to protect their own families from a repeat attack.

Like every other challenge our nation faces there are those among us who would rather talk than fight back. Large numbers of them turned out in the streets of Washington, D.C., and, of course, Berkeley, the home of the University of California. Actually I would have been a bit disappointed if there wasn't a demonstration or two in these cities and on some college campuses. I, like many Americans, have come to expect the kids shouting, hell no, I won't go! The ground forces of our country, after seeing the demonstrators, are happy they don't have to count on them in a combat situation. This time the antis didn't have the streets all to themselves as hundreds angered by the terrorists carried flags and shouted back.

I also had a feeling of comfort to again see former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark in the streets of Washington. Clark hasn't been on the winning ride of anything for so long that his mere presence made me feel good. Remember it was Clark who stuck with Saddam Hussein and several other hoodlums of the world. He also sued President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher for bombing Libya. If it is a positive American action, Clark is against it. Thank heavens he's a loser. All we need now is for Peter Arnett to begin broadcasting from Afghanistan telling us that the Taliban are really good guys. This will assure us of success because Arnett, like Clark, is a loser. Stepping out to meet the challenge have been those stalwarts we can always count upon when the going gets tough. Former Vice President Al Gore was in Iowa last week giving a Democrat Party fundraiser speech. He emphasized that George W. Bush is his president and he supports him in his fight aga! inst terrorism. Although Gore received 500,000 more votes than Bush, he recognizes him as our president and that we have only one president. It was in 1991 that then-Sen. Albert Gore, D-Tenn., was one of 10 Democrats who strongly supported Bush's father during the trying days of Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Among the other nine Democrats supporting Bush's father during the Gulf War were Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan. Reid was the first Democrat to step on the Senate floor and show his strength. He spoke of the necessity for the president to have a free hand to use all of our resources to "meet the dark forces that rule Iraq."

Reid concluded his talk by saying, "Until he shows me otherwise, I believe that George Bush, a man who has seen the face of war, will act with the utmost concern for protecting the lives of our service men and women."

Bryan entered the fray when Sen. Ted Kennedy belittled Bush for comparing Hussein with Hitler. Bryan countered, "The folly of that argument is clear. Hussein now has under arms more men than Hitler when the German army marched into the Rhineland. The Iraqi army today has more tanks than were in the panzer divisions, which crushed France in May in 1940. And, most chilling of all, Hussein is much closer today to having a nuclear weapon than Adolf Hitler ever was."

Today, joining stalwarts like Gore, Reid and Bryan are large numbers of former student protestors from the eras of Vietnam and Desert Storm. They have either matured or realized the pain they have caused in the past, or the direct attack on American soil has made them realize that enough is enough and we have no more cheeks to turn.

I am proud to see the response Americans are giving the bloody assault launched against their country in New York, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon.

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