“We will write our own future, and the future will be what we want it to be.” – Barack Obama

In a quiet and seemingly innocuous gesture, President Obama has designated 9/11 as “The National Day of Service and Remembrance.” Personally, I liked the ring of “Patriot Day,” and what does “service and remembrance” mean, precisely ? The idea is to get Americans to “engage in meaningful service to create change…in four key areas”: education, health, energy/environment and community renewal. None of these seems to have anything to do with honoring 9/11, but that seems to be the point: in the Huffington Post, Muslim-American playwright Wajahat Ali wrote, “In the US, we are trying to move away from focusing on 9/11 as a day of horror, and instead make it a day to recommit ourselves to national service.” An excellent Spectator article provides a blunter translation: “Nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.” Why? ”They think it needs to be taken back from the right.”

In other words, they resent the surge of patriotism and righteous outrage stirred up by the attacks, sentiments that empower the political Right. In order to advance the leftist agenda of dismantling American exceptionalism and recasting ourselves as the villain in our history books, they need Americans to put 9/11 behind us, forget the victims, forget that our enemy danced in the streets in celebration, forget that Islamic terror plots on our very shores continue to be disrupted, and forget that our rights and freedoms are under assault by a subversive civilizational jihad.

It seems impossible to believe that that morning could be forgotten – just as it was once impossible to believe that our government could erase “jihad” and “Islamic” and “terrorism” from our national lexicon, preventing us from even naming the enemy, or that an American President could proclaim us no longer a Christian nation, but rather one of the world’s largest Muslim countries. There was a time when screenwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh’s extraordinary 2006 ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11 was going to be shown in schools across this country and be aired every 9/11 anniversary – until the Clinton administration, wanting you to forget their flaccid response to the growing threat of Islamic extremism, and fearing the show would tarnish their political legacy, pulled out all the stops to suppress it; it very nearly wasn’t aired, and today you can’t even obtain it on DVD.  (This whole story has been related fascinatingly in John Ziegler’s must-see documentary Blocking the Path to 9/11). It’s impossible to forget that morning only if we fight to keep its memory alive.

Americans can commit themselves to public service any or every other day of the year; 9/11 should be reserved for solemn remembrance and renewed commitment to preserving American security, values and sovereignty. A day of greening your neighborhood? I’m all for planting trees, but what does “green” have to do with 9/11?  Only that it’s the color of Islam. But if the President insists, allow me to suggest some service appropriate to the day: 

Education? How about this: educate yourself and your children about 9/11 and about the continuing Islamist threat – not only of overt acts of terrorism, but the insidious dangers of “stealth jihad” and “creeping sharia.”

Environment and community renewal? Okay, beautify your block by flying the Stars and Stripes. It sends a simple but unmistakable message to the enemy and their useful idiots that, unlike our post-American President and his fawning media, you are proud to be American; you believe in American exceptionalism; you believe that making this day about installing fluorescent light bulbs trivializes the memory of 9/11’s victims; and you will never let their deaths be in vain or erased from history.

Eight years ago, nineteen fanatical Muslims turned hijacked aircraft carrying hundreds of terrified passengers into missiles targeting symbols of American might. Nearly 3000 innocents died horribly that day, including hundreds of courageous, selfless first responders making a superhuman effort to rescue their fellow citizens. The hijackers are regarded by their fellow Islamists as heroes and martyrs in the cosmic war against the Great Satan America. That war is by no means over, and thus, in the Faulknerian sense, neither is 9/11. We owe it to the victims to keep this day alive in our hearts and national consciousness - and not allow the Left to bury it.

Imagine my astonishment when I discovered that “the wanted” of the show’s first two recent episodes (you can see them here; four more have been produced but are not presently scheduled) were Islamic terrorists.  This is an encouraging new development, considering that Western governments and media have increasingly made taboo any reference to a connection between Islam and acts of terror (of course, the Islamists themselves never got that memo, because they insist on quoting Islamic theology to justify their murder and mayhem). And the left-leaning entertainment industry has virtually ceased pitting heroes against the real-world threat of jihadis, falling back instead on more fashionable stock bogeymen like corporate executives, Marvel Comics supervillains, and, well, corporate executives. 

But now along comes a major network TV show that makes no apology for identifying and targeting Islamic terrorists, and its investigative team even makes unqualified reference to jihad, another taboo word and a concept that Islamist apologists have nearly indoctrinated us into believing has nothing to do with waging holy war against infidels.What’s next, the apocalypse?

Carstens, Ciralsky, Tyler

The aforementioned elite team consists of producer/journalist Adam Ciralsky, former Green Beret Roger Carstens, former Navy SEAL Scott Tyler, and war crimes prosecutor David Crane. In episode one, they zero in on an extremist imam in Oslo called Mullah Krekar, the founder of Ansar al-Islam, a group closely allied with al Qaeda and at the forefront of anti-coalition attacks in Iraq. Krekar is wanted for prosecution in Iraq but is being sheltered by the Norwegian government, which refuses to extradite him to a country that might mistreat or execute him. (Personally, I don’t see the problem with shipping these murdering, openly bigoted supremacists off to any country that might mete out the serious justice they deserve, but that’s why I’m not a politician).

In episode two, the team heads to Hamburg in pursuit of terrorist financier Mamoun Darkazanli, who is credited with funneling money to the 9/11 hijackers – but Germany is waiting for an official indictment from Spain before they hand him over (it’s complicated). 

Liberal critics of the show ridicule the team for “hunting down” suspects who are practically listed in the phone book, but they’re missing the point: it’s outrageous not because these evil men are hidden among us, but precisely because they’re living openly in, and being protected by, countries whose very downfall these Islamists are plotting.  Sadly, “The Wanted” doesn’t provide the satisfying closure of a “Law and Order”; in both episodes, the best the team can manage is to pressure the European governments to quit stalling and finally cooperate on legal action against the suspects.

Mullah Krekar

The show is “really about the rule of law,” Carstens says.“It’s about justice; it’s about human rights; it’s about facing those that are accused – and that’s the key word – facing those that are accused of the most egregious crimes against humanity and effect some sort of effort to get them to at least take responsibility for their actions or clear their name.”

Sounds reasonable, if unexciting.  And yet “The Wanted” seems to drive liberal entertainment bloggers into a frothy outrage.Slate’s critic derided its “frenetic pandering to base instincts” – base instincts such as the uncivilized urge to bring war criminals to justice, I presume.  Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press frets, “Is this supposed to be journalism?”  She and others worry that this show promotes vigilante journalism, the kind that led one cornered suspect to kill himself in the pedophile-hunting “To Catch a Predator” (frankly, if this show does lead to any terrorists killing themselves, then that’s a big plus in my book).  Lydia Khalil, who labels it “dangerous,” and Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik, who stretched for a hyperbolic denunciation of the show as “McCarthyism,” are apparently concerned that Ciralsky et al are targeting and smearing random innocents: “Who’s deciding who is a terrorist or war criminal?” he frets (for a show that liberals find so easy to sneeringly dismiss, it certainly inspires a lot of fretting).  Well Mr. Zurawik, it’s the State Department and other international agencies who have decided who the terrorists and war criminals are, not a rogue vigilante journalist at NBC, as you imply.

The New York Times too disapproves of “The Wanted” blurring the line between journalism and activism.  Of course, these same critics wouldn’t hesitate to give their imprimatur to the show if the suspects were Bush administration officials/torturers, whom the terrorist hunters could hold accountable for reading all our private e-mails and for callously disregarding the legal rights and cultural sensitivities of foreign Muslim fundamentalists who yearn to hack off infidel heads.  The Obama-era journalists who gleefully declared “Objectivity is passé!” suddenly feign blustery moral indignation, though, when a journalist assists a former SEAL and a Green Beret in the pursuit of the Western world’s real enemies.

If this show brings attention to “an overlooked story,” as NBC producer David Corvo calls it, then I’m all for it.  If more journalists committed themselves to shining a spotlight on, and actively taking down, such vile monsters as Mullah Krekar instead of targeting Joe the Plumber, dutifully transcribing every lie out of the mouth of Bristol Palin’s slimy ex-boyfriend, or giving us breathless updates on who gets Michael Jackson’s children, then maybe they’d earn a little more respect and trust from the public.

But liberal entertainment critics, who serve no useful function in society, are one thing; what about the people “The Wanted” represents?  One unnamed person in the Department of Defense’s special ops community said, “Everyone I’ve talked to said that it was well done, didn’t reveal a lot of our trade secrets – if you will – and left me feeling that somebody’s doing something about a problem we all know exists and, frankly, we can’t do anything about.”

The show’s critics do have legitimate complaints about some of its stylistic glitz, its forced tension (such as a lengthy car chase that fizzles out rather pointlessly), its exposition-heavy dialogue and staged conversations, and its lack of dramatic takedowns. Could “The Wanted” use a little retooling? Certainly. But it already gets its most unique, core elements right: it exposes the bureaucratic apathy of Western governments who coddle some of our most dangerous enemies, and – like “To Catch a Predator” – “The Wanted” raises viewer awareness of the monsters walking free among us.