As for Al Hunt, one could not go far wrong, in getting a hold on reality, if one were to chose to believe the negation of everything he says. You'd have to flip a coin when he contradicts himself, but he so consistently gets it wrong that that would rarely happen.
The WTC was a grotesquely outsized elephant built by the Port Authority at the bequest of then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller for his investment-banker brother, David Rockefeller. No tin-foil hat time on this one; the names are on the contracts. Thus, we created prime targets for terrorists to destroy.
The WTC did not follow the building standards required for other projects in New York City, because it was built by the Port Authority.
On the day of the disaster, the people in the second tower tried to evacuate. The Port Authority positioned security guards in the stairwells with bullhorns, instructing people to return to their floors. The argument is, "They were only trying to keep them from being hit by debris in the plaza -- and besides, who knew there would be a second attack?" Well, apparently the 25,000 private citizens in the second tower figured it out, because they tried to evacuate. And couldn't they have at least been allowed to evacuate to the lower floors and lobby?
We praise New York Mayor Giuliani, but what did he really do? The city sent firemen and policemen to their deaths. Other policemen interfered with the attempts by private citizens to evacuate the city. You can praise the mayor's presence at Ground Zero for its symbolism -- but that's all it was, symbolism. The illusion of safety.
Did the FAA save us? No, the FAA did nothing at all. Its airport security measures did zip. Its vaunted black boxes have yet to provide us with as much information as we got from the cell phones of private citizens aboard the doomed flights.
The FAA disarmed the pilots -- and it doesn't have the guts to do it outright, it hides behind regulations stating that pilots be required to attend 'certified' courses in firearms handling before they are allowed to carry firearms -- and then it doesn't define what 'certified' means, which means there can be no courses, and hence no firearms. Only a bureaucrat would find solace in that logical tangle. Certainly, the relatives of the dead airline passengers will not.
Moving on, let us consider the CIA, which receives $30 billion a year to track America's enemies. Only a couple of years ago, the head of the CIA stated that Osama bin Laden was the country's biggest security threat. Okay, figure this out . . . thirty billion dollars, and they can't handle a guy who lives in a cave in Afghanistan.
Then we have the US military, which failed to protect even the Pentagon. Here's a little news flash for all you wannabe terrorists out there: you could rent a Cessna 172 and drop Molotov cocktails over the White House and Capitol, and the entire United States military will be unprepared to do anything about it. Instead of locking me up for saying that, why not lock up the bureaucrats and politicians who've allowed that state of affairs?
Then let's consider our foreign policy. We give $3 billion in foreign aid to Israel a year. And we get back . . . nothing. We certainly don't get back protection from Middle Eastern terrorists.
For $3 billion a year, we could probably bribe every Palestinian to leave the West Bank and move to somewhere else . . . like Lower Manhatten.
Every terrorist who is interviewed never fails to mention that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the center of their grievances, and that they hate the US because we aid Israel. Yet we persist in believing that the terrorists attacked us because of 'our way of life.' So basically, the government and its flunkies are telling us that capitalism got people mad at us. It certainly wasn't anything the US government was doing. The US government takes care of us. You must believe that. Because if you don't, you're unpatriotic.
Never mind if the country is destroyed with such misplaced faith. The government is more important!
And in the aftermath of the September 11 horror, what is the United States government doing to protect us? It still won't allow pilots to carry guns. It has taken away steak knives from the passengers. It talks about issuing national ID cards. Our borders are still porous. (Has anyone considered that the influx of criminals from Mexico has over the years probably killed more than the 6000 dead at the World Trade Center?) In other words, the government has found new ways to restrict us, but is doing nothing to protect us.
Sure, let's go get bin Laden. Catching crooks is what government is supposed to do. It's the very reason that governments were first instituted.
But somewhere along the way, after using government to provide Social Security, welfare, and national health insurance, we seem to have forgotten the basics of Protect and Defend. We're so busy worrying about drugs for senior citizens that we left our borders open and our cities unguarded.
I entertain the fantasy that the September 11 tragedy took far fewer lives than the government claims. They haven't found anywhere near 6000 bodies at the WTC. And the death toll at the Pentagon was revised downward from 1000 to 100. Maybe there's been some bureaucratic incompetence at work in making the list of the missing at the WTC, and the actual number is far lower. I can't imagine too many people in the second tower seeing what happened to the first one, and then climbing back up those steps because a security guard told them to. So maybe the death toll is even lower than the government is saying.
Well, that's a harmless fantasy on my part. But here's a not-so-harmless fantasy: believing that we can trust the government to take care of us. The government failed us on every level. After September 11, the very legitimacy of government should be called into question.
If it can't protect our lives, maybe it can't protect our retirement funds, or health care system, or education system. Maybe it's doing an even crappier job in those sectors. After all, those are areas that historically government has never done well. And the deteoration is slow and gradual, so we don't notice it like we do when a building explodes. But in the end, maybe even greater tragedies will result.
A cabinet-level organization called Homeland Security doesn't make me feel at ease. It makes me feel like Stalin has come to America. It makes me feel that Osama bin Laden may have indeed destroyed our way of life, in ways that he never imagined.
It certainly doesn't make me feel that the Homeland is Secure.
Fools.