'Ask the PIlot' take, on 9/11/11
What's the takeaway from Sept. 11?
Over the past decade, the attacks have inspired some lousy and very expensive decisions about travel
BY PATRICK SMITH
I should say something about the Sept. 11 anniversary. This was something I was hoping to avoid, but I suppose it's necessary.
As most people do, I remember the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, with an acute clarity: the subway ride out to Logan, and the inordinately large cockroach I saw crawling along the platform at Government Center station. My plane to Florida, taking off only seconds behind American's doomed Flight 11. The diversion to Charleston, S.C., where I joined a gasping throng of fellow strandees gathered around a TV in a terminal restaurant. And later, the long drive home in a rented car.
But I wish, as a country, that we were past this.
It's not the anniversary itself that irks me. The 10-year mark is -- or should be -- worthy of our solemn respects and a national timeout. But commemorating the attacks would feel a lot more meaningful if, in fact, we had ever stopped commemorating them. Our healing process has been never-ending -- occasionally introspective and edifying, but all too often maudlin and suffocating.
Maybe that's a terrible and insensitive thing to say, I don't know.
But the attacks were supposed to have made us a better and stronger country, not merely a more sentimental one whose most endearing qualities are a penchant for self-pity and a hunger for revenge. And about the worst thing we can do right now is focus too intensely on an event that, let's be honest now, not only killed 3,000 Americans, but that directly or indirectly inspired a pathology of disastrous and very expensive decisions.
[. . .]
The tragic irony being that the success of the 2001 conspiracy had nothing to do with airport security in the first place. This was a failure of intelligence at the FBI and CIA levels, not at the concourse checkpoint. As I've pointed out many times in the past, the hijackers were not exploiting a weakness in airport security, but rather a weakness in our mind-set -- our presumptions, based on years of precedent, as to what a hijacking was, and how it would unfold. What weapons the men used was irrelevant. Ballpoint pens would have sufficed, for the strategy relied not on hardware, but on the element of surprise. So long as the hijackers didn't chicken out, their plan was all but guaranteed to succeed.
[. . .]
As I see it, the real danger to the country isn't coming from the caves of Central Asia, but from our own stout refusal to act rationally, together with a willingness to accept almost anything in the name of security.
That's a terrible way to end a commemorative 9/11 piece, but it's also a terrible course for a country like ours to take. Perhaps a splash of cold water, not another candlelight vigil, is really what we need. In the long run, a healthier democracy is about the best tribute we could offer to those who perished 10 years ago.
Along with some of the repliers, I too think that Mr. Smith has covered my own take, close enough to a fare-thee-well.
The MADness of the Security Industrial Complex shall endure as long as there is a Terriorist anywhere extant
UNLESS as much High Dudgeon develops in that "43%" as was--[Alone.. not aided via any MSM or other bloviations du jour]
within each marcher in the streets: that growing Demonstration which forced an end to the MADness that was the entire Vietnam killing-adventure.
The only amazing thing about That-all, I see:
that the Vietnamese are, apparently so demonstrably Wiser than US, that: they do Not today, continue to live with a festering Knot in all their stomachs.
No Daily-Hatred internalized, over the genocidal attacks on their men, women and children, the Agent Orange chemical warfare and the Dow Chemical NapalmÂ
and all the other details of those disgusting years--as insouciant Muricans bought the identical, pre-Cheney incitements
(under the bogus 'Domino Theory': as contrived as was the WMD lie/trope of 2001.)
Finally.. enough people MARCHED, endured the 'com-symp' obloquy and ... prevailed.
Still Waiting: for similar/effective action against the Security Industrial Complex of Greedheads
making obscene fortunes,
off of predictably scaredy-cat Murican wimpiness, in all matters possibly causing discomfort of any kind.
