Sacrificial lambs

On Sept. 11, 2001, our sworn enemies were busy crashing hijacked American airliners into American office buildings, each building containing about 25,000 sacrificial lambs. Meanwhile, some of our "friends" – all card-carrying members of the media elite – were busy criticizing our president for not offering up himself as yet another sacrificial lamb.

President Bush was in Florida that day, and as soon as the Secret Service heard about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, they got the president – and his entourage of media-elite types – aboard Air Force One, and set off for parts unknown.

Parts unknown? Well, not unknown to the president and the Secret Service and those who had a "need to know."

Blabbermouths like CBS' Dan Rather – who certainly had no need to know – suggested to us all that, by not coming immediately back to the White House, the president, if not actually a coward, was certainly giving the impression of being a coward.

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By the next day, it was realized that the terrorist who crashed the third hijacked airliner into the Pentagon had originally intended to crash into the White House. According to eyewitnesses, he had come up the Potomac at high speed, passed the Pentagon, and executed a 270-degree turn over the White House and the Capitol, had come back across the Potomac and had then lined up again on the White House. However, in doing the low altitude circle, he may have lost too much altitude. In any case, he eventually crashed into the Pentagon, not the White House, just across the river.

Most of us are thankful that the president wasn't anywhere near the White House, but that's not the view the media elite expressed over and over that day. This is what New York Times reporter R. W. Apple, Jr. – knowing that the terrorists had successfully taken out the nerve center of the world's financial exchanges and had attempted to take out the nerve center of the United States – wrote the day after the attacks:

Disappointing some of his political advisers and allies, who felt he should have returned to Washington at once from a trip to Florida to symbolize that the government was functioning, President Bush headed instead to Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, where a more secure command post was available. At the height of the Cuban missile crisis, when the sense of danger was just as palpable, John F. Kennedy stayed in Washington.

 

In case you didn't get the message in that day-after 'report', Apple amplified on the charge in his two-day-after 'report':

On television, in newspapers and in animated discussions in offices across the country, Mr. Bush's conduct was compared unfavorably with that of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who went to the scene of the attacks in Lower Manhattan; to John F. Kennedy, who stayed in Washington throughout the Cuban missile crisis of 1963, when many feared that nuclear war was imminent; and to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who remained at the Pentagon after it was hit and for a time helped in the evacuation of the dead and wounded.

 

Speaking of fear and nuclear war, a terrorist loose-nuke attack is now widely acknowledged to be the No. 1 threat to our national security. We can't begin to defend all possible targets against loose nukes, so we have to prevent the terrorists from ever getting possession of a nuke in the first place.

We can do that.

But, evidently, we can't prevent them from hijacking an airliner.

Now, there is a very simple way to ensure that the World Trade Center tragedy is never repeated. Don't rebuild it. Don't stake out 25,000 sacrificial lambs in any more 100-story office buildings.

How about the Pentagon, which was also struck by a hijacked airliner? The Pentagon is not tall, but it is one of the largest office buildings in the world, and is within a mile or so of the main runway at Reagan National Airport. How can we prevent the Pentagon from ever again being struck by a hijacked airliner?

How about Capitol Hill, which could easily have been struck by the hijacked airliner that eventually plowed into the Pentagon? Capitol Hill is at the other end of the Mall from the Pentagon, and is only a mile or two off the flight path for Reagan National Airport. How can we prevent it from being struck by a hijacked airliner?

How about the White House, which is essentially halfway between Capitol Hill and the Pentagon, and hence, is also less than a mile off the flight path for Reagan National Airport? How can we prevent it from being struck by a hijacked airliner?

It's simple. Close down Reagan National Airport and make the national Capital area a "no-fly" zone for private and commercial aircraft. Immediately shoot down any aircraft that intrudes, no questions asked.

But you say, Congress would never allow that airport to be shut down. It's so close that congressmen can leave Capitol Hill, cross the Potomac, and within 15 minutes be on a flight back home. It would inconvenience them, terribly, to have to spend an hour or more commuting the 30 miles or so to either Baltimore International or Dulles International airports.

Well, if Congress refuses to shut down Reagan National, then there is only one other solution to the hijacked-airliner problem. Move the White House and the Pentagon out of harm's way.

We have three branches of government – legislative, executive and judicial. The White House – and every executive-branch agency, including the Pentagon – has a congressional-relations entity, whose function is to provide Congress, on a day-to-day basis, the tons of information they require. Except for those congressional-relations entities, there is no reason for any other part of any executive-branch agency to be permanently staked out like a sacrificial lamb in Washington, D.C. In particular, there is no reason whatsoever for the nerve center of our government to be on the flight path of terrorists.

When Eisenhower was president, there was a conscious attempt to disperse vital functions of government, to reduce our vulnerability to attack by nukes. The Cold War is over, but we have just this week discovered that we are now even more vulnerable to attack by hijacked airliners than we were to Soviet ICBMs.

The president and the secretary of defense – and hundreds of widows and orphans – ought to demand that Congress allow Reagan National Airport to be closed to commercial aircraft and that a "no-fly" zone be established over the whole national Capital area. If Congress refuses to allow that, then the president and the secretary of defense – both former fighter pilots and hardly cowards – ought to spend most of their time on duty somewhere safe where homicidal maniacs, Dan Rather and the New York Times can't find them.