Just Forget It
Here we are again, coming up on September 11. Actually, though, we no longer come up on September 11; not in the United States. Now we come up on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. But I'm reminded of my childhood, when I had a bad scrape or a cut--something with a scab over it--and my mother used to tell me "Don't pick at the scab. Leave it alone and let it heal." As I got older and more self-conscious about my appearance, "The scar will be worse if you pick at it" got to be part of the package. And our annual sackcloth and ashes commemoration of the attacks of September 11 are picking at the scab.
Once a year, Osama bin Laden or one of his disciples releases a video around this time. The subtext is always the same: "We're still here and we're still relevant." There's just one problem with that. They're not relevant. For all of Bush's handwaving and new programs, the fact is that the United States is no safer than it was on September 8, 2001. The media have actually pointed out how terrorists could attack. Hell, a college kid put fake plastic explosive into the rest rooms on airplanes and no one noticed for weeks. What's to stop bin Laden's religious fanatic nutcakes from attacking the United States again? Nothing. Not one damn thing. As I wrote some time ago, suicide attacks can't be prevented because the attacker actually hopes to die in the attempt.
It occurred to me recently: One of the greatest dangers Americans face in air travel is the security gate. Just think what one of bin Laden's moronic fanatical shitheads could do in those crowds waiting to get through the enhanced security. And anywhere you put the security, you're going to have a bottleneck and crowds. I don't think bin Laden is an idiot (although I have to question the intelligence of anyone who would follow him), and I'm pretty sure that opportunities like an attack on a security gate are not lost on him. Likewise the crowded subway, and in Washington there's really no subway security that would stop someone with a bomb or concealed Uzi. I'll resist the temptation to do a few bars on the container ships sailing into U.S. harbors. Why haven't there been any attacks?
It's not George Bush. And it's probably not that al Quaeda doesn't want to. They really can't pull it together anymore. Maybe the prospective members decided that ski masks were damned uncomfortable in those desert training camps. Maybe they decided that an Islamic fundamentalist world might be where they wanted to live, but dying for it would pretty much rule that out. It might be that bin Laden can get to his assets any more. But there he goes again, this time looking all cleaned up but, underneath the Grecian Formulaed hair and the fake looking beard, he looks a lot like a sick old maniac who realizes, in his moments of clarity, that he's going to die, and he probably won't get a martyr's death, and his movement will die with him.
So I'll be opting out of the commemorations, thank you. I'll hope that those who lost loved ones in the attacks are healing, but I really think it's time for the country to stop picking at the scab. We've allowed George Bush to do that for almost six years now, and the scar is going to be ugly.
Once a year, Osama bin Laden or one of his disciples releases a video around this time. The subtext is always the same: "We're still here and we're still relevant." There's just one problem with that. They're not relevant. For all of Bush's handwaving and new programs, the fact is that the United States is no safer than it was on September 8, 2001. The media have actually pointed out how terrorists could attack. Hell, a college kid put fake plastic explosive into the rest rooms on airplanes and no one noticed for weeks. What's to stop bin Laden's religious fanatic nutcakes from attacking the United States again? Nothing. Not one damn thing. As I wrote some time ago, suicide attacks can't be prevented because the attacker actually hopes to die in the attempt.
It occurred to me recently: One of the greatest dangers Americans face in air travel is the security gate. Just think what one of bin Laden's moronic fanatical shitheads could do in those crowds waiting to get through the enhanced security. And anywhere you put the security, you're going to have a bottleneck and crowds. I don't think bin Laden is an idiot (although I have to question the intelligence of anyone who would follow him), and I'm pretty sure that opportunities like an attack on a security gate are not lost on him. Likewise the crowded subway, and in Washington there's really no subway security that would stop someone with a bomb or concealed Uzi. I'll resist the temptation to do a few bars on the container ships sailing into U.S. harbors. Why haven't there been any attacks?
It's not George Bush. And it's probably not that al Quaeda doesn't want to. They really can't pull it together anymore. Maybe the prospective members decided that ski masks were damned uncomfortable in those desert training camps. Maybe they decided that an Islamic fundamentalist world might be where they wanted to live, but dying for it would pretty much rule that out. It might be that bin Laden can get to his assets any more. But there he goes again, this time looking all cleaned up but, underneath the Grecian Formulaed hair and the fake looking beard, he looks a lot like a sick old maniac who realizes, in his moments of clarity, that he's going to die, and he probably won't get a martyr's death, and his movement will die with him.
So I'll be opting out of the commemorations, thank you. I'll hope that those who lost loved ones in the attacks are healing, but I really think it's time for the country to stop picking at the scab. We've allowed George Bush to do that for almost six years now, and the scar is going to be ugly.
posted by amsterdr at 11:55 AM
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