The last time I checked this was still a free country . . although the far right make me doubt that sometimes.
Bush has fallen right into the lap of tie military industrial complex. Yes we need a strong military and we have to go after the evil terrorists, but Bush has become a reactionary and is letting the terrorists get their way in shaping our society and much of the free world.
"Oh but the horror of the evil that has been done! We must react strongly." Yes, the flying of the fueled and primed bombs we set out for the terrorists to command into the trade towers and the Pentagon was a dastardly deed . . indeed. But let's put this situation into perspective:
By far the greatest threat of violent death and maiming that has been repeatedly demonstrated over longer than the past thirty years has not been dealt at the hand of religious nuts, dictators in the Mideast, of any other targeted member of the "axis of evil". No way. The most violent form of terrorism has occurred right under out noses and we have easily grown to accept it as a fact of life and a cost of a "modern society". Over the past 30 years there has been a mere few thousand U.S citizens lost to the purposeful acts of terrorism. But in the meantime, tens of thousands of people are killed each year on our highways and byways in violent crashes of metal. We have grown to accept this slaughter as a cost of a vital, free and functioning society. If the government wanted to end the slaughter they could restrict the use of cars or only allow well trained and proven drivers use them. Or government could banish cars altogether . . maybe 30,000 people per year would be alive and functioning if they did. But let's face it, we can't even agree to limit the speed to double nickels (55) because "We want to live free or die, so motherpucker get outa my way!".
The harangue among the reactionaries in Congress and the White House is to reign in freedoms in the name of ending terrorism. Well maybe some of that thinking is a good thing. Good but long overdue and it's now become a reactionary guilt trip by a Congress, Presidency and political bureaucracy that had failed to do the simplest of things to protect us in the past. Yea, nobody thought that an airplane loaded with 300,000lbs. of airplane fuel (you call that a fuel-air bomb in the munitions industry) could be commandeered by terrorists. Pure unadulterated political ass-saving bullshit. Bullet proof and secure cockpit doors had long been proposed as one measure to protect against just such a potential terrorist attach but the $30,000-$50,000 to build and install them was considered too expensive. The FAA could have required them but the industry insiders who run it had no balls to compel their buddies at the airlines and Boeing (also Airbus) to spend the money - even though an industry wide mandate would have allowed the cost to have been passed on to consumers. Plastic bullets that are designed not to break through the skin of the aircraft had been designed and tested years ago . . but they weren't allowed.
The Bush administration is using the terrorist thing to press right wing political agendas. A few steps further down that road and we'll have a home-grown Hitler of our own. |
