Like many people today remembering the tragic attack on the World Trade Center, I wondered if I felt more or less safe as a result of the events of the past 5 years. And I’ll have to be honest that I don’t.
During my time in the Army and National Guard, I learned that professional soldiers think it’s a good idea to have a little war every once in a while. Military exercises are helpful, but there’s nothing like a real war to test the effectiveness of both offensive weapons and defensive equipment. The military is sometimes accused of “fighting the previous war” and to some extent that is a valid argument. They don’t know what the “next” war is going to be like so all they can do is be better prepared for the last one. Another good reason to have frequent small wars to stay up to date.
The problem I have feeling safer is that in spite of our being the most powerful nation that has ever existed, in spite of our having a record breaking non-wartime budget, we can’t stop our troops from being kidnapped and killed. And it appears we can’t stop terrorist attacks on our home territory without invasive, annoying searches before every airline flight as well as at entrances to stadiums, concerts, and amusement parks.
Hardly a day goes by when I don’t read about the president or one of his assistants insisting this administration needs more power, more unrestricted, unchecked, unsupervised power to listen to, probe, arrest, detain, torture enemy combatants for an unlimited time in this undeclared war because it’s “different” from all our previous wars. Even U.S. citizens can and have become “enemy combatants” and lose all rights normally due them. Another reason I don’t feel safer.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1933 inaugural address told the nation in the depths of a severe depression that, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." What a difference from today's headlines.
You know, in the days after September 11 a lot of people loved to comment on how the terrorists hated our freedom. If that is what they hated then perhaps they've won more than we thought.
ReplyDeleteFor one day they doubled the american mortality rate. Then we have systematically broken down the very things we said made us great. We've traded liberty for security and have lost more american lives in the process of "preventing" such an attack as we did in the attack itself. Some progress.