Republished from Chicago Sun-times July 4, 2012
“In
the midst of all these challenges, however, my single most important
responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe. It's the
first thing that I think about when I wake up in the morning. It's the
last thing that I think about when I go to sleep at night.” –President Barack Obama, speaking on
National Security, May 21, 2009
By John W. Fountain
If we can find
Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in the desert. If we can hunt down Osama bin
Laden, track him to a secret compound, slip undetected through another
country’s air space and extract him never to be seen or heard of again.
If we can thwart
terrorists worldwide, pinpoint their movement and send the message loud and
clear that they and any who protect them can run but surely can’t hide. If we
can declare war on those who have declared war on the sanctity of life in
America, and who show blatant disregard even for women and children. If we can put a
man on the moon… Why can’t we stop these homegrown thugs who amount to urban terrorists?
How
many more children must be slain in the street before we arise to end this
scourge that has transformed neighborhood streets into war zones?
How
much more bloodshed of the innocent, or sordid and sorrowful details of another
life senselessly taken must we endure before we say as a society that enough is
enough? How many more mothers have to bury their child?
As
a former crime reporter who has written over more than two decades the public
epitaphs of far more children than I can remember, I have more questions than
answers:
Where
is the “faith” community amid this ongoing slaughter? Why is the church’s
overwhelming focus on raising offerings and on building bigger sanctuaries
rather than on raising better communities and building lives? Why does the
church at large not mourn? Awaken from its slumber?
Why
don’t police round up these young thugs, seize their guns and send the message
that there will be peace in the streets, or else no peace where they sleep?
How
does a so-called gun turn-in program for cash gift cards make the streets less
volatile—safer—when no self-respecting thug is ever willingly going to lay his
weapon down? What a sham.
Where
are the fathers of these mostly young black men engaged in thuggery, debauchery
and terrorism? Why do their mother and grandmothers protect them, accept the
spoils from their drug dealing, run to their defense upon their arrest for some
heinous crime and stare into the camera and saying, “My son is a good boy.”
Stop
lying. No, he isn’t.
He’s
a thug. In some cases, he’s a killer, a menace to society, a domestic terrorist
who is as great a threat to life in America as any terrorist ever was and ever
shall be.
I
am sick and tired of writing stories about little boys having their brains
blown out while watching cartoons. Of writing about little girls being shot
while jumping rope, or being pushed by their mother in a stroller, or while
selling candy. So sick and tired.
When
will it stop?
And
after all these years, I finally know the answer. It’s simple: When we muster
the collective will—moral, ethical and political—to make it stop, by any means
necessary.
The
only question: Do we have the will?