It is simply appalling to see how political snipers like Senator Byrd and Representative Waxman, presidential candidates like Senator Kerry and Representative Gephart, the Council on Foreign Relations, other think tanks -- and all the bandwagon bashers and foreign policy pontificators who seek the celebrity stage to condemn, praise or analyze President Bush and his administration about the way our national security is being handled.

Indeed, it is particularly egregious to witness how anti-American zealots like former attorney general Ramsey Clark, academia and the likes of condescending American denigrators, Norman Mailer (Why are we at War?) and Gore Vidal (Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta) flex their atrophied literary muscles to undermine what our country really means, even while the attack on America is painfully fresh to the families of the victims, and Americans are still losing their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If America's shallow elite were not so pre-occupied with themselves, they would know that if malignant narcissist, Saddam Hussein had succeeded in taking over the oil resources of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1991, he would have controlled over 40 percent of the oil reserves and OPEC. Thus, he would have held the world's economy by the throat. Certainly, the clueless pontificators should have noticed that terrorists who want to destroy America aim to do that very thing.

Like it or not, the oil resources of Middle East are vital to our economic interests and national security, which puts our government in the uneviable position of being damned if it protects our national interests and damned if it doesn't. Hopefully, we can rid ourselves of dependency on fossil fuels and get out of the Middle East and South Asia sooner than later. To do otherwise would surely mean the end of civilization, already steeped in violent decline.