Death, Downtown - A perspective (OT)
Dear friends,
I was supposed to fly today on the 4:30 PM
American Airlines flight from
LAX to JFK. But tonight I find myself stuck in
L.A. with an incredible
range of emotions over what has happened on the
island where I work and
live in New York City.
My wife and I spent the first hours of the day --
after being awakened by
phone calls from our parents at 6:40am PT --
trying to contact our daughter
at school in New York and our friend JoAnn who
works near the World Trade
Center.
I called JoAnn at her office. As someone picked
up, the first tower
imploded, and the person answering the phone
screamed and ran out, leaving
me no clue as to whether or not she or JoAnn
would live.
It was a sick, horrible, frightening day.
On December 27, 1985 I found myself caught in the
middle of a terrorist
incident at the Vienna airport -- which left 30
people dead, both there and
at the Rome airport. (The machine-gunning of
passengers in each city was
timed to occur at the same moment.)
I do not feel like discussing that event tonight
because it still brings up
too much despair and confusion as to how and why
I got to live... a fluke, a
mistake, a few feet on the tarmac, and I am still
here, there but for the
grace of...
Safe. Secure. I'm an American, living in America.
I like my illusions. I
walk through a metal detector, I put my carry-ons
through an x-ray machine,
and I know all will be well.
Here's a short list of my experiences lately with
airport security:
* At the Newark Airport, the plane is late at
boarding everyone. The
counter can't find my seat. So I am told to just
"go ahead and get on" --
without a ticket!
* At Detroit Metro Airport, I don't want to put
the lunch I just bought at
the deli through the x-ray machine so, as I pass
through the metal
detector, I hand the sack to the guard through
the space between the
detector and the x-ray machine. I tell him "It's
just a sandwich." He
believes me and doesn't bother to check. The sack
has gone through neither
security device.
* At LaGuardia in New York, I check a piece of
luggage, but decide to catch
a later plane. The first plane leaves without me,
but with my bag -- no one
knowing what is in it.
* Back in Detroit, I take my time getting off the
commuter plane. By the
time I have come down its stairs, the bus that
takes the passengers to the
terminal has left -- without me. I am alone on
the tarmac, free to wander
wherever I want. So I do. Eventually, I flag down
a pick-up truck and an
airplane mechanic gives me a ride the rest of the
way to the terminal.
* I have brought knives, razors; and once, my
traveling companion brought a
hammer and chisel. No one stopped us.
Of course, I have gotten away with all of this
because the airlines
consider my safety SO important, they pay
rent-a-cops $5.75 an hour to make
sure the bad guys don't get on my plane. That is
what my life is worth --
less than the cost of an oil change.
Too harsh, you say? Well, chew on this: a
first-year pilot on American
Eagle (the commuter arm of American Airlines)
receives around $15,000 a
year in annual pay.
That's right -- $15,000 for the person who has
your life in his hands.
Until recently, Continental Express paid a little
over $13,000 a year.
There was one guy, an American Eagle pilot, who
had four kids so he went
down to the welfare office and applied for food
stamps -- and he was
eligible!
Someone on welfare is flying my plane? Is this
for real? Yes, it is.
So spare me the talk about all the precautions
the airlines and the FAA is
taking. They, like all businesses, are concerned
about one thing -- the
bottom line and the profit margin.
Four teams of 3-5 people were all able to
penetrate airport security on the
same morning at 3 different airports and pull off
this heinous act? My only
response is -- that's all?
Well, the pundits are in full diarrhea mode,
gushing on about the
"terrorist threat" and today's scariest dude on
planet earth -- Osama bin
Laden. Hey, who knows, maybe he did it. But,
something just doesn't add up.
Am I being asked to believe that this guy who
sleeps in a tent in a desert
has been training pilots to fly our most modern,
sophisticated jumbo jets
with such pinpoint accuracy that they are able to
hit these three targets
without anyone wondering why these planes were so
far off path?
Or am I being asked to believe that there were
four religious/political
fanatics who JUST HAPPENED to be skilled airline
pilots who JUST HAPPENED
to want to kill themselves today?
Maybe you can find one jumbo jet pilot willing to
die for the cause -- but
FOUR? Ok, maybe you can -- I don't know.
What I do know is that all day long I have heard
everything about this bin
Laden guy except this one fact -- WE created the
monster known as Osama bin
Laden!
Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!
Don't take my word for it -- I saw a piece on
MSNBC last year that laid it
all out. When the Soviet Union occupied
Afghanistan, the CIA trained him
and his buddies in how to commits acts of
terrorism against the Soviet
forces. It worked! The Soviets turned and ran.
Bin Laden was grateful for
what we taught him and thought it might be fun to
use those same techniques
against us.
We abhor terrorism -- unless we're the ones doing
the terrorizing.
We paid and trained and armed a group of
terrorists in Nicaragua in the
1980s who killed over 30,000 civilians. That was
OUR work. You and me.
Thirty thousand murdered civilians and who the
hell even remembers!
We fund a lot of oppressive regimes that have
killed a lot of innocent
people, and we never let the human suffering THAT
causes to interrupt our
day one single bit.
We have orphaned so many children, tens of
thousands around the world, with
our taxpayer-funded terrorism (in Chile, in
Vietnam, in Gaza, in Salvador)
that I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised when
those orphans grow up and
are a little whacked in the head from the horror
we have helped cause.
Yet, our recent domestic terrorism bombings have
not been conducted by a
guy from the desert but rather by our own
citizens: a couple of ex-military
guys who hated the federal government.
From the first minutes of today's events, I
never heard that possibility
suggested. Why is that?
Maybe it's because the A-rabs are much better
foils. A key ingredient in
getting Americans whipped into a frenzy against a
new enemy is the
all-important race card. It's much easier to get
us to hate when the object
of our hatred doesn't look like us.
Congressmen and Senators spent the day calling
for more money for the
military; one Senator on CNN even said he didn't
want to hear any more talk
about more money for education or health care --
we should have only one
priority: our self-defense.
Will we ever get to the point that we realize we
will be more secure when
the rest of the world isn't living in poverty so
we can have nice running
shoes?
In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back
to hating us again. He
withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out
of the Durban conference
on racism, insists on restarting the arms race --
you name it, and Baby
Bush has blown it all.
The Senators and Congressmen tonight broke out in
a spontaneous version of
"God Bless America." They're not a bad group of
singers!
Yes, God, please do bless us.
Many families have been devastated tonight. This
just is not right. They
did not deserve to die. If someone did this to
get back at Bush, then they
did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT
VOTE for him! Boston, New
York, DC, and the planes' destination of
California -- these were places
that voted AGAINST Bush!
Why kill them? Why kill anyone? Such insanity...
Let's mourn, let's grieve, and when it's
appropriate let's examine our
contribution to the unsafe world we live in.
It doesn't have to be like this...
Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com |
