Not that I'm bragging or anything, but I'm doing my part in the war on terrorism. I've been to four football games, ate lots of Halloween candy, went shopping twice and bought a few shares of Delta at a garage-sale price.

        If you think that sounds lame, you don't know how I feel about shopping.

        OK, so it's not exactly the same magnitude of sacrifices the greatest generation made in World War II. They collected tinfoil, rationed gas and enlisted by the thousands to fight and die for their country.

        All the government is asking us to do is quit whining, come out from under the bed and go shopping. And if a trip to the mall sounds like more than you can endure (me too), Uncle Sam wants you to hop on a plane to Vegas or Hawaii and save our airlines and resorts.

        Tough duty. But if the craps tables are empty, the terrorists win.

        How's that for a war that fits the spoiled baby-boomer generation like a pair of pre-shrunk designer jeans on a middle-aged backside?

        All we have to do is buy lots of stuff. Just yell “charge” and deploy the sale-seeking Visa. We don't have to wade ashore at Normandy or Iwo Jima, like the guys we should honor on Veterans Day today. Our job in this war is to storm the beaches of Florida and Maui.

        During this holiday season, we need to fight our country's battles from the malls of Montezuma to the stores of Tripoli.

        But judging by all the empty seats I've seen at the “sellout” football games I've been to, a lot of us are not reporting for duty. A lot of us are big crybaby sissy wimps.

        We'd rather sit around watching the Panic Channel, for the latest breathless sighting of another spore of anthrax — interrupted by reports of the Taliban's extravagant claims of civilian casualties from U.S. bombs.

        Get a grip.

        More people have probably choked to death on corn dogs than have been killed by anthrax. This nation survived exploding Pintos and Firestone tires. Anthrax is nothing but a good excuse to throw away annoying mail.

        The Sept. 11 attacks were a roundhouse sucker punch that knocked us flat. But we know from watching John Wayne movies how America is supposed to react. It's OK to sit there long enough to shake out the cobwebs, rub our jaw and make sure our head is still attached, but then it's time to come up swinging.

        We need to stop trying to understand the whack-jobs who attacked us and hit them so hard their shadows hurt. And anyone who whines about that should take a hike to the edge of the crater that used to be the World Trade Center.

        We need to stop second-guessing every decision and trust the Bush administration and our military to do the hard, dangerous and deadly things that win a war.

        We need to ask tough questions about the worst that could happen, because confronting it is better than fearing the unknown.

        For example, President Bush has warned that we need to squash bin Laden before he gets his bloody hands on nuclear weapons. Suitcase nukes, for example.

        As far back as 1998, there were reports that bin Laden and Saddam traded heroin and cash for suitcase nukes that are missing from the former Soviet Union.

        The military term is Small Atomic Demolitions Munition, or SADMS (pronounced “say-dem,” not “saddam”). They do not vaporize entire cities in a mushroom cloud. But they are scary enough. A single suitcase nuke the size of a golf bag can deliver one kiloton, equal to 1,000 tons of TNT. And the radioactive fallout can kill as many people as the explosion.

        This is no time for weenies. In the words of that great philosopher Rocky's Trainer:

        “Get up, ya bums.”

        Contact Enquirer Associate Editor Peter Bronson at 768-8301; fax: 768-8610; e-mail: pbronson@enquirer.com.

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