Tony, Please read this.
I got this email from a friend.
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 |
