Bob McCarty Writes

On October 30, 1938, Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast a radio drama based upon the H.G. Wells’ novel, War of the Worlds. The fictitious program’s storyline — about an alien invasion of Earth — genuinely frightened many Americans. Among the most frightened, however, were those people who had either tuned in to the broadcast after the introduction or tuned out prior to hearing the this-is-fiction disclaimer at the end.

Today, news reports carry warnings that Al-Qaeda cells — not space aliens — might be loose in the United States. But is there any sense of alarm? Not really. Instead, too many Americans are just like many of the radio listeners in 1938 — they “tuned in” too late or “tuned out” too soon on matters related to the War on Terror.

Such apathy and carelessness on the part of the masses prompted Stu Bykofsky of the Philadelphia Daily News to write a piece, To save America, we need another 9/11, published Thursday.

After receiving a flood of media attention and e-mails during the days since it was published, Bykofsky back-tracked somewhat on that call in a piece today. Nevertheless, portions of what he wrote in the initial piece hold true:

“It is not Bush and it is not Hillary and it is not Daily Kos or Bill O’Reilly or Giuliani or Barack. It is global terrorists who use Islam to justify their hideous sins, including blowing up women and children.

“Iraq has fractured the U.S. into jigsaw pieces of competing interests that encourage our enemies. We are deeply divided and division is weakness.”

Now is the time for Americans to tune in and become acutely aware of the dangers confronting this nation. It’s time to put aside our differences and deal with the clear and present danger that is Islamic terrorism so that all of us might live to bicker amongst ourselves another day.