American Pie: Looking Inward In September 11
...Do beefed up security measures necessary mean that terrorist are dissuaded from planning death and destruction? I think not. Islamic extremists have never been rational thinkers, nor are they afraid of the consequences of failure.
The media might better ask citizens if they feel more secure about losing their homes or lives to a natural disaster...
John Merchant directs his thoughts to Americans in need on what has become a day of national mourning in the US.
Today, as I write, it is September 11, 2011, when Americans memorialize the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings and the deaths of so many unfortunate people who worked there. The anniversary comes in a year of overwhelming death and destruction in the USA, not at the hands of terrorists, but by the forces of Nature.
Small towns have been wiped off the map by tornadoes; floods have swept away homes, bridges and roads; fires have destroyed millions of acres and thousands of homes; drought has reduced crops to chaff, and an unprecedented earthquake shook the state of Virginia damaging homes and national monuments.
Hurricanes, that thankfully passed by, caused millions of dollars of tidal storm surge damage to east coast communities from the Carolinas to New Hampshire.
If I were a god-fearing man, I’d be contemplating what corpus America could possibly have done to deserve such wrath. Sadly, it wouldn’t be difficult to come up with the answers, though ironically, many, if not all the god-fearing folk probably would deny America’s culpability.
Looking around the world, it seems that the whole globe is being wracked by natural and man-made disasters: earthquakes, tsunamis, erupting volcanoes, plague, civil wars, climate change, mining disasters, political strife and genocide, meteors and meteorites.
As is the case with most anecdotally collected impressions, the reality is never quite as we think it is, but is made to seem worse by the blanket coverage and immediacy that technology and contemporary media makes possible. The beady eye of the TV camera and those who edit the footage, result in a kind of tunnel vision that in the end is misleading, even though the intention is to be informative.
In the years since what has become known as 9/11, US citizens are frequently asked by the media if they “Feel safer.” What they are referring to of course is the likelihood of another terrorist attack on US soil, given the supposed increased readiness of the various organizations charged with our national security.
Predictably, the responses are almost equally divided in most polls. After all, how does one know how safe to feel if the events have not occurred, and most of the security resources and improvements are kept secret from the general public, so we have no idea how effective they might be.
Do beefed up security measures necessary mean that terrorist are dissuaded from planning death and destruction? I think not. Islamic extremists have never been rational thinkers, nor are they afraid of the consequences of failure.
The media might better ask citizens if they feel more secure about losing their homes or lives to a natural disaster. Disaster prevention and relief has a pretty sad record in the USA. Recovery, in particular, still relies very much on neighbor helping neighbor, and the vagaries of the insurance industry.
For years after hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Delta, displaced people were living in trailers, and many that were evacuated to other cities have not yet been able to return. This in a country that gives billions of dollars in aid to other nations that hate the US, and that misappropriate the money and supplies.
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is apparently all but out of funding, and the National Guard, normally the solution of last resort, is heavily committed overseas. The Army Corps of Engineers, responsible for civil works to protect lives and property from flooding, has not been able to demonstrate its effectiveness in that regard.
So let’s by all means remember 9/11, but let’s not forget all the displaced and distressed US citizens whose lives are in ruins. They fought nature and lost, and the country should render whatever help they need to get their lives together again. As the saying goes, charity begins at home.
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