Have you ever seen a dog’s reaction when it feels threatened? It’s fur stands up straight, and it’s muscles tense up. It starts to show it’s teeth and growl at whatever it’s afraid of. Then the dog has a decision to make. It can either back away from whatever is threatening it, or it can attack it.I had a dog that died last September. He was an English Bulldog, who was lazier than any other dog I have ever met. He’d seriously get tired from eating, that’s how bad he was. But the one thing that he always found energy for was reacting to things that he felt threatened by. One thing in particular that always spooked him was the vacuum cleaner. As soon as it would come out of the closet, no matter what he was doing (even if he was sleeping), he would get up and bark ferociously at the vacuum. On the rare occasion he would run away from it, and other times he would attack it (and by no means was this a vicious dog). But his response wasn’t surprising. It seems only natural that if a dog (or anyone for that matter) is threatened, it will react to the situation as it sees fit.
So what am I getting at? Well the point I’m trying to make is that the basic instinct that my dog had – that any dog has – is an instinct of survival. One of the first things any species of animal learns, not just dogs is how to ensure their survival. This is an instinct that gets passed on to future generations to help the species evolve.
On September 11th, Al Qaeda attacked American soil, threatening not only the citizens of New York City, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania, but all citizens of the United States and the rest of the free world. Millions of years ago President Bush had an ancestor who learned how to identify and react to threats. Today, evolution has given us a leader who is willing to stand up and defend the country that he has been put in charge of. As the “King of the Jungle”, President Bush declared to the world that if you are a country that harbors or aids terrorists, you will be treated as an enemy. As far as I can tell, the war on terrorism began as an instinctive reaction to an immediate threat to the United States. In essence, what President Bush did is analogous to my dog when he barked at the vacuum. He announced his intention to attack any and all threats to the United States unless they surrendered. When they did not surrender, President Bush sent troops into Afghanistan and Iraq, quickly toppling the terror-aiding governments. In my eyes, if President Bush did anything less given the circumstances, I would have been upset with his actions (or lack thereof).
To give you another analogy, imagine you and I are facing each other, having a conversation, when suddenly I yell to you that someone is about to whack you over the head with a bat. Even if there really wasn’t someone there, if you were to do anything other than turn around and attempt to defend yourself, I would have to wonder how your family survived millions of years of evolution. The threat in this case was identified before it struck. It only seems natural that you would react to that threat.
Just think about what would have happened if President Bush didn’t respond to the threats in Afghanistan and Iraq that faced this nation. Well actually you don’t have to think too hard about it, because President Clinton failed to adequately react to the first WTC attack back in the ’90s. The end result of that was a future terrorist attack on our military and citizens. Since President Bush reacted, our country is a safer place. Need proof? Just ask yourself, how many more acts of terror have there been on American soil since 9/11?
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