I'm about to make a statement that will shock, dismay and perhaps bring questions as to my sanity. Another terrorist attack on the United States would be awful, but not be a total negative. How can I make such an apparently absurd assertion? I have simply been observing the changes in this country since September 11, 2001 and I am disheartened in the extreme. From the first flush of patriotism and anger we have disintegrated into indifference and factional sniping. In an effort to regain some semblance of order in our national lives we have descended into petty bickering, political correctness and deceitful posturing. We have allowed the passage of time to dull our perception of the evil deeds because as a single set of events on a one horrific day they can be dismissed as an aberration. We don't fear the events of a single attack because we don't really believe that the terrorists are capable of hurting us again and so all we need to do is find Osama bin Laden and “bring him to justice“ and the threat will be over for the foreseeable future. Look at the attitude of the government agencies involved in prosecuting “homeland security.“ Clearly they are more interested in appearances aniding any taint of “profiling“ than in protecting the public. Many anti-terrorism proposals are apparently aimed at long-standing grievances between government and the Constitution. It also doesn't help that the new Secretary of Homeland Security is not an intelligence or military professional, but a lawyer! Travelers, (mostly airline passengers so far) are being required to spend inordinate amounts of time standing in line to be inspected by screeners, many of whom are doing that job because they are intellectually incapable of doing anything else. There is so little logic involved in the process that the Secretary of Transportation requires active screening of everyone except those who would be most likely to perpetrate another terror attack. Orders have come down from the Department of Transportation that screeners are forbidden to use ethnic, racial or cultural appearance or language in selecting those to be carefully examined, despite the fact that ALL of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks were readily identifiable as Middle-Eastern, Arabic-speaking, Muslim males. According to the DoT rules, if three people were waiting to be screened; a five-year old red-headed boy, an eighty-seven year old African-American great-grandmother and a twenty four old, bearded, Quran-toting, Arabic speaking man, the screener would risk dismissal if they made the obvious logical choice. Can it be that the Secretary of the DoT, himself a minority, has determined that avoiding the appearance of profiling is more important than preventing another tragedy? Then we have the spectacle of the federal government deciding to use taxpayers money to compensate victims or families of victims not only of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon but in a truly smarmy attempt to curry political favor, the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. But don't these folks deserve compensation for their loss? No more than “Mike“ Spann, the CIA operative murdered by Taliban prisoners, the crews of the U.S. military aircraft lost in Afghanistan or the hundreds of U. S. casualties in Iraq. And now, the Feds are being asked to provide similar payments to the victims of natural disasters like hurricanes. Hey, just fire up the printing presses, it's only money. Can we afford to pay for events like Katrina as well as deal with a war? On top of that, some of the “victims,“ far from being appreciative of the help being provided, are kvetching and complaining that they are not being given enough. And it seems that the location matters when it comes to getting government money. New Orleans looks like it will do very well compared to the rest of the Gulf Coast. Is it going to become public policy for the government to provide funds to the victims of all terrorist acts or natural disasters? Do these victims merit better treatment than the victims of accidents, house fires or day-to-day crime? What about the survivors of participants in our historical wars? What about the victims of the government assault at Waco? What about the passengers and crew of American Airlines Flight 587 that crashed in Queens? What about those aboard PanAm Flight 103 that was blasted out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland? If the government feels the need to throw money at one group of victims, what about other groups? What happens if there is another terrorist attack? If ObL's goons attack a large gathering of people and slaughter tens of thousands? Are we to be extorted of further billions or even trillions of dollars for victim compensation forevermore? We had better stop obsessing about 9/11 and understand that it was just the first major skirmish in a long and ugly war. It is also a certainty that we will suffer more natural disasters. If we spend all out emotional capital on one incident, we'll be ill prepared to deal with the next, whenever it comes. © 2005 Charles Stone, Jr. Author Bio Born: Buffalo, NY 8/7/42
Graduated: Williamsville Central HS 1960
Military Service USAF 1/27/61 - 1/4/65 Missile mechanic, 3 years in Germany.
Computer School, Buffalo, NY 1967.
Worked as a computer programmer, programmer/analyst, systems analyst, DP manager and consultant from 1968 - 1990
Became disabled in 1991
Currently living in Kissimmee, FL
Interests: politics, motor sports, history (mainly military), Web surfing, talk radio junkie.
Member of the NRA.
Favorite TV shows: CSI, Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, Nova.
Favorite radio program: Neal Boortz
Political leaning: libertarian, Constitutionalist, individualist.
Supported and campaigned for Harry Browne in 1996 and 2000. Not sure I'd do it again.
Published in: Bureaucrash, Sierra Times, The Libertarian Enterprise, Free Market Net, We Hold These Truths, The Informed Volusian. Newz-Board
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