Shut up, move on, watch out!

townhall.com ^ | 3/27/04 | Neil Cavuto

[kattracks]

No offense to the 9-11 Commission, but I'm sick of the 9-11 Commission. I know it hasn't even released its report on what led to the tragic unfolding of events that day, but I'm no longer obsessing over that day. I'm focused on "this" day, "these" days.

I am focused not so much on threats, real or imagined, before Sept. 11, but on threats very real and far from imagined post-Sept. 11. I find it incredibly ironic that during a week past and present administration officials were being grilled on what they knew and when they knew it, the militant terrorist group Hamas put out a dire warning on what they want to do and when they want to do it.

Let's be very frank. Sept. 11 has come and gone. Nothing can bring those nearly 3,000 poor souls back. Mistakes were made, miscues were apparent, intelligence was anything but. But this isn't about correcting wrongs. This is about settling political scores.

And here's what I think: The terrorists are laughing at us. They're laughing at our political infighting. They're laughing at our obsession with all things shallow and nothing substantive. They're laughing at a country more concerned with scoring points than getting answers. And here's the killer, the laughing at us ignoring real killers.

I mean, did anyone find it even a tad odd that as we're going back years, desperately reconstructing a tragic event, some of our worst enemies are reconstructing to do it again?

Hamas doesn't like us. Al Qaeda doesn't like us. A huge chunk of the Muslim world doesn't like us, is recruiting against us, and is focusing on destroying us and those close to us. Look at Madrid. Look at Baghdad. Look at us. And all we can do in turn is play games -- sifting old stories and old excuses in a pale attempt at justice.

There is no justice served here. And for the families and friends of all those lost that day, we do them no justice this day. It is a mockery that some of them have been allowed in the very chambers in which these hearings are being held . . . they are props in a circus. They deserve to be much more. Their struggle today is as heroic as their search for their loved ones from 900-plus days ago.

They're due more than political grandstanding. They're due some answering . . . not what we could have done then, but what we're doing now. Believe me, there's plenty of blame to go around. The Bush administration had warnings, the Clinton administration had warnings. But few could have put the bizarre pieces of this puzzle together.

You know, it's very easy to play a Monday morning quarterback now. But that doesn't help anyone. I know we didn't put the pieces together; that doesn't put lives together or bring families together. We have lost wonderful people. Let's make sure we don't do it again.

Let's search for the errant Hamas nut job who might be lurking in a New York subway station as we speak. Let's check our ports and our railways, our highways and our databases. Let's follow the money trail now, not the washed up trail then.

We are so intent on blaming each other -- Democrats who say a Republican administration botched it, Republicans who say a Democratic administration missed it -- that we're all missing the threat that's alive and well and as potent today as it was then.

I don't know what these hearings will solve. I do know this. Dead bodies won't come back. But it's dead bodies terrorists want to see more of today, in this country, NOW.

I heard some insipid questioner asking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that we owed it to those who lost their lives that we learned something from this.

Learned something from this?! You must be kidding!

Americans know that. Americans appreciate that. And more than any other people on this planet, Americans are doing their best to never repeat that. It's a pity the ass who was grandstanding sounding prosecutorial couldn't leave his pumped-up pedestal long enough to see he was sounding . . . pathetic.

©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Read Cavuto's biography

[ChocChipCookie]

Neil gets it right, again. Just another smart Conservative.

[AntiGuv]

Hmm.. I'm not quite sure "get over it" is the best political message to take forward on this..

[citizenK]

While "get over it" is a common theme of Cavuto's, that's not what he is saying in this article about the 9-11 terrorist attack and the (in)famous commission. His main point is that the commission is simply about politics, it's not about preventing the next terror attack - an attack that Cavuto and most rational Americans are sure is being planned against us. Cavuto says "move on," and that's a whole lot different from "get over it."

I like Cavuto because he shoots straight from the hip - kudos to Neil for another clearheaded article.

[Captainpaintball]

If Richard Clarke was soooooooo sorry about failing to prevent 9/11, did he apologize in his book?

[smoothsailing]

Cavuto is OK.

I'm just not gonna let him have any of Mama Anzolone's spumoni.

[OldFriend]

Props in a circus says it all. I call it political theatre orchestrated by Tom Kean.

DISBAND THE 9/11 COMMISSION NOW

[Tax-chick]

Exactly right. No amount of rehashing is going to make anybody who's dead become not dead. Everyone should be looking ahead ... NO, not to how they can score points before the election ... to preventing the next planned attack. I haven't forgotten that we're still issuing visas to Pakistanis and Saudis, nor that our airline pilots still aren't armed, not that a short, gray-haired white woman with kids is more likely to be searched at the airport than a man in a djellabah shouting in Arabic.

The fact that these hearings were held tells me that a large segment of our government still DOESN'T GET IT.

[Democratshavenobrains]

Its like Cavuto is reading my mind. All the Pearl Harbor invesigation commission accomplished was the firing of officers that were in charge of the Pacific Fleet. Democrats are hoping this will have the same effect on Bush.