I’m no fan of Dubya. I’m just not. To be fair, I’m not particularly fond of our two-party system, either. Neither one represents my interests, and there’s not much possibility of getting a viable third party together. Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying.
In any case, while everyone bickers about what was known and what wasn’t known prior to September 11, the fact is this: It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry, but the people who died that day are still dead. No finger-pointing is going to change that. For those of you who think the knowledge would have helped some live (I actually heard this on the news this morning), get over it.
Prior to September 11, every airplane hijacker had one thing in common with every other airplane hijacker: They wanted to live. Score some money, get some friends out of jail, whatever. But they wanted to live. These guys did not. No matter how many people knew that something was coming, you could have never seen this. It wasn’t feasible then that someone would kill themselves. America was not then, and still is not now, particularly famliar with terrorist actions.
Strangely enough, it took less than an hour for people to understand. One plane hit, the second plane hit, the third plane hit. The fourth? It hit. The ground. The people aboard flight 93 prevented their captors from killing others with the plane, even though they died themselves. What motivated them? They heard what other hijacked planes had done and they didn’t want their plane to do the same.
That’s all it took. It didn’t take prior knowledge of the events. It didn’t take strip searches in airports. It didn’t take the “patriot” act. It simply took realizing that these people were ready to die for their cause, and that in order to fight them, we need to resolve to make sure they don’t succeed. Done. Over. Why are we still debating it? Why are our freedoms abridged on a daily basis? What happened to the pursuit of liberty? Before another commercial airline flew in the US, it had already been handled. Why isn’t that obvious?
The damage done to our country since September 11 in the name of correcting the problem is vastly worse than the damage done on September 11 by the problem. If I were a terrorist, I’d be elated. Killing 3000 people is good. Killing an entire way of life? That’s just awesome. How about we take back the values that we (used to) hold so dear and show them that it takes more than this to kill the American spirit? Simple. Everybody is too busy wanting someone else to take care of the problem for them.
How sad.