Thomas Friedman at the New York Times argues that 9/11 is over. Let's read along for a bit, shall we? (I've added some bold face here and there.)
[S]ince 9/11, we’ve become “The United States of Fighting Terrorism.” . . . I will not vote for any candidate running on 9/11. We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate.
What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.
It is not that I thought we had new enemies that day and now I don’t. Yes, in the wake of 9/11, we need new precautions, new barriers. But we also need our old habits and sense of openness. For me, the candidate of 9/12 is the one who will not only understand who our enemies are, but who we are.
Before 9/11, the world thought America’s slogan was: “Where anything is possible for anybody.” But that is not our global brand anymore. Our government has been exporting fear, not hope: “Give me your tired, your poor and your fingerprints.”
You may think Guantánamo Bay is a prison camp in Cuba for Al Qaeda terrorists. A lot of the world thinks it’s a place we send visitors who don’t give the right answers at immigration. I will not vote for any candidate who is not committed to dismantling Guantánamo Bay and replacing it with a free field hospital for poor Cubans. Guantánamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.
. . . .
Look at our infrastructure. It’s not just the bridge that fell in my hometown, Minneapolis. Fly from Zurich’s ultramodern airport to La Guardia’s dump. It is like flying from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. I still can’t get uninterrupted cellphone service between my home in Bethesda and my office in D.C. But I recently bought a pocket cellphone at the Beijing airport and immediately called my wife in Bethesda — crystal clear.
I just attended the China clean car conference, where Chinese automakers were boasting that their 2008 cars will meet “Euro 4” — European Union — emissions standards. We used to be the gold standard. We aren’t anymore. Last July, Microsoft, fed up with American restrictions on importing brain talent, opened its newest software development center in Vancouver. That’s in Canada, folks. If Disney World can remain an open, welcoming place, with increased but invisible security, why can’t America?
We can’t afford to keep being this stupid! We have got to get our groove back. We need a president who will unite us around a common purpose, not a common enemy. Al Qaeda is about 9/11. We are about 9/12, we are about the Fourth of July — which is why I hope that anyone who runs on the 9/11 platform gets trounced.
Friedman claims to want to move onward to 9/12, but in reality he wants to return to 9/10.
He wants America's president to focus more time and energy on cell phone service, emission standards, what "the world thinks," "our groove," and providing field hospitals for Cubans, and less time and energy on keeping America safe from terrorists.
Oh, sure, he says he wants the president to keep America safe too, but he also wants the president to achieve that result effortlessly without detaining any terrorists, without taking fingerprints from travelers, without diverting money from anything else like bridges, airports, and Cuban hospitals, and without so much as mentioning Al Qaeda ('cause that's such a 9/11 downer). He wants this all to happen with all the cheerful bag-searching efficiency of Disney World.
The truth is that Friedman wants to return to a 9/10 world. Wouldn't we all! But Friedman is foolish enough to view his own wishful thinking as a sensible prescription for national policy.
Is 9/11 over?
Why would it be? Have we won a decisive battle? Has someone surrendered? Have we so thoroughly defeated our enemy that the threat no longer remains?
Bin Laden may already be dead (based on the recent fake "Bin Laden" videos) and we're making definite progress toward routing Al Qaeda in Iraq (although the New York Times continues to pretend that Al Qaeda isn't in Iraq at all). America and Europe have also disrupted numerous terror plots since 9/11, including Al Qaeda's attempted bombing of a plane in flight using Richard Reid, the shoe bomber.
Friedman acknowledges none of this progress, nor the effort that led to it. He takes America's continued safety as a given. The blood and sweat of America's soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq; the vigilance of air passengers, flight attendants and baggage screeners, the daily effort of the current president of the United States in receiving daily and weekly terror threat briefings -- all of these seems not to weight heavily on Friedman's mind.
Friedman's focus on emissions, shiny airports, cell phones, and what the world thinks implicitly assumes that the next horrific Al Qaeda attack is not being plotted right now. Such an attack can't be in the works because, after all, Friedman has emissions standards to worry about! Emissions standards are infinitely nobler, and much "groovier," than fingerprinting travelers and detaining enemy combatants to try to prevent another jet filled with passengers and jet fuel from hurtling into another skyscraper.
Whichever candidate focuses least on America's national security and most on the quality of Thomas Friedman's cell phone service has his vote. Thankfully, he only has one vote.
It's not "stupid," Mr. Friedman, to put America's national security first at a time when America remains under attack from Islamic jihadists. Terrorists stil seek to deal America mortal blows in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, an oppressive regime in Iran is busy arming itself with nuclear weapons while chanting "Death to America."
On September 11, 2001, cell phone service was reasonably adequate. Cell phone service and airphone service allowed Todd Beamer and other men and women to make desperate calls after Middle Eastern men hijacked their planes. Phone service, by cell phone and otherwise, was also adequate to allow men and women to call from the World Trade Center to say heart-wrenching goodbyes to their families and to beg for someone to save them.
We didn't need better cell phone service on 9/11. We needed so much more. We needed the kind of efforts that might have kept four passenger planes from being hijacked by Islamic terrorists to begin with.
Is 9/11 over?
It isn't over for me. I will never forget, and no thinking American who lived through September 11, 2001 ever will.
It isn't over.
Sorry. I wish it were.
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