Connecting
The Dots
Deborah
Venable
05/18/02
The
partisan political war of blame for 911 has taken space in the headlines away
from the war on terrorism. The entire
news media is in a feeding frenzy over it, and confusion reigns supreme. We see the administration and congressional
leaders in a veritable shouting match over all the “new” old reports of prior
warnings about impending attacks on America.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Who dropped the ball the greatest distance, the Republicans or
the Democrats?
The
most important question isn’t even being asked – What difference does it make now? I believe in learning from history, so don’t get me wrong here –
let me put a qualifier on that question.
If you can rationally believe that not one single American in the
Congress or the administration would have deliberately caused the death and
destruction, (even through omission of evidence), that occurred on September
11, 2001, then, what possible difference does it make now who knew what when?
Anyone
allowing himself to become embroiled in this current party blame fest should
remember a quote from another historical text:
“Let him who is without sin cast
the first stone.”
One
thing is quite certain – anyone who stirs this pot is bound to come away with a
burn. The Senate Intelligence Committee
is complaining that it did not have access to documents from the intelligence
community, the intelligence agencies continue to come under fire as the village
idiots in government, (even as it is revealed that they tried to warn
“people”), and the leaders of Congress and the administration are each
indignant to think that the other would accuse them of partisan politics in
such a scandalous situation. This “pot”
is splattering out all over place!
Let’s
stop and think for a minute – what would have been different if EVERYBODY knew
what is contained in those newly publicized “revealing” reports? Would the FAA have shut down all the
airports and grounded all air traffic indefinitely? That, folks, is the ONLY thing that would have definitely
prevented American airliners from being used as weapons like they were. Even now, as we look at what has taken place
in airports to supposedly keep it from ever happening again, we see NOTHING to
guarantee it won’t!
Would
the INS have closed our borders, rounded up every single alien they could find
and deported them? Would that have
happened, do you think? Wait a minute –
I’m laughing too hard to type . . .
Would
ALL flight schools have been closed and any foreign students sent out of the
country if everybody had known that we were training potential hijackers
here? Would every tall building in the
country and every sensitive government office have been vacated to save
potential human casualties if everybody had known about those potential
targets? Do we even have to ask these
questions given the reactions to the warnings SINCE 911? Even the airports are not “profiling” based
on KNOWN information, and have, in fact, gone out of their way to hassle those
who would never fit ANY profile – known or not!
One
other consideration – the various accusatory conspiracy theorists insist that
the military action in Afghanistan was a predetermined war to achieve free
access to oil. So, I ask again, IF EVERYBODY
HAD KNOWN that this was being planned, would we have all given up using
anything that required oil or petroleum products in this country beyond what
could be supplied by our own present production or that which could be acquired
from some place other than our major suppliers in the middle East? Would those who have continued to block
efforts to open up drilling sites within our own country have backed off and
actively worked to see our oil production capabilities increase to the point
that we would not need outside suppliers at all?
For
whatever mess we now find ourselves in, threatened economically, militarily,
culturally, religiously, governmentally, politically, and personally, IF we had
all known the events that have transpired leading up this crisis, WHAT would we
have done, and WHAT could we now insist our leaders should have done to prevent
it?
Connecting
the dots in the right order is imperative before we can learn from
history. Do we know where to start with
that giant task? I propose that we DO
indeed know where to start. Each and
every individual citizen in America can look in the mirror and place a big
number 1 right on our own foreheads! If
America will ever get back to the business of self governing, beginning with
individual responsibility, then we will quit allowing these “pass the buck
parties” by gutless politicians that only care about preserving their place at
the public trough! We will get our own
houses in order, clear our own debts, take control of our own families and our
communities, elect good people to represent us in a lean and clean system of
government, manage our own freedom before we presume to tell the rest of the
world how freedom works, and go on to number 2 – educate our children to know
the difference between how things are now and how they should be in the future!
How
many of us would have done things differently if we’d really listened up in
history class – those of us that actually learned some of the untainted variety
of history – and foreseen the mess we could make out of America if we
didn’t? How dare we, any of us, take
such a holier than thou attitude over this volatile issue, and continue to
allow America to move down the slippery slope that is greased with our apathy
and powered by our inability to see the whole truth!