WASHINGTON – After America was attacked 61 years ago, we started turning vacuum-cleaner factories into machine-gun factories in a matter of weeks. We created an intelligence-gathering service that stole enemy plans within months.
People sacrificed their jobs, careers. Families were pried apart. All for their country.
That was then.
Now it’s a big deal to stick a flag on your SUV. Now the CIA is so fat, it’s more interested in protecting its turf – and its rear – than protecting its countrymen.
We’re better today at holding ceremonies memorializing victims than holding villains accountable. Witness Wednesday’s over-televised sobfest. It was a redux of the goofy candlelight telethon held right after we were attacked, when we were filled with justifiable rage.
We are in a suspended state of Hollywood therapy. If Bruce Springsteen would just sing us a few more ditties, if Susan Sarandon would just whisper a few more nothings in our ear, everything will be all right.
No wonder we’re on high threat alert 12 months later. We’re still mourning, healing, forgiving, blubbering, rationalizing. Meanwhile, the enemy is still recruiting, enlisting, planning, casing, hating.
Nothing has really changed. Osama bin Laden is still on the loose. The anthrax mailer is still at large. Airports still don’t profile young Arab men. The State Department still issues visas to young Arab men, who still come and train at our flight schools.
The Americans of 60 years ago took care of business. They didn’t talk about it, they did it. And they didn’t stop until the enemy was completely smashed. They didn’t just chase him away.
And they sure as heck didn’t take any chances at home. More than 1.1 million citizens of Germany, Italy and Japan were classified as enemy aliens.
So what’s changed us? (Hint: Justin and Kelly.)
That’s right, television. We’re now a nation of couch-potato warriors.
Yes, we’re more connected and more instantly (notice I didn’t say better) informed because of television.
But we think everyone else is taking care of business. We see all the talking heads on all the news shows talking to the endless parade of limousine-driven, blow-dried politicians, and we think all our problems are being solved.
But it’s just talk, folks. It goes right up into the ether. Nothing is actually getting done here – at least not the right things.
We’re so connected, we’re disconnected – now more than ever – from our government, which we’re supposed to control.
Washington has been Hollywoodized. It’s all show now.
We have a tough-talking president who squints like
Clint Eastwood. We have a tough-looking Homeland
Security czar (who even has a tough-sounding last
name). We have a meaningless color-coded alert system.
We have new airport checkpoint screeners wearing
spiffy federal uniforms as they strip-search
paraplegics. We have National Guardsmen brandishing
unloaded M-16s.
All eyewash.
You are not more secure. The celebrities in Washington, New York and Hollywood aren’t protecting you, as much as we’d all like to think they are.
So, it’s time to turn off the TV sets, and get off the couch and demand change.
March on the White House and demand the commander in chief invade Peshawar and stop diddling in Afghanistan and jabbering over Iraq. Pakistan is where the terrorists are. Demand he stay focused on bin Laden, who’s hiding out there.
And don’t e-mail, march! E-mail doesn’t get on television, which politicians watch as much as you do. March!
March on Congress and demand they stop the State Department from importing terrorists from the Mideast.
Demand they force Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta to profile young Arab men at airports. Demand they get him to arm pilots. Demand they get him to cancel contracts for error-prone CTX machines – those huge “weapons of mass disruption” at airports, as one whistleblower agent put it – and reinvest those billions of tax dollars in deploying more chemical-detection systems and bomb-sniffing dogs, reinforcing cockpit doors and walls with steel and Kevlar, and guarding jetliners and ramps overnight.
Stop sleepwalking through this war. Don’t let television anesthetize you. Turn it off! Rally! March!
You have the power as voters to force these bloviators in Washington to do the right and effective things to protect you and your family from another Islamic attack.
But who am I fooling. We won’t get up from our couches, will we? We won’t demand anything.
Look, Sting is at Ground Zero! Gotta go.
Related columns:
Please, no Basra this time, Mr. Bush
Let’s curb the kangaroo court of anonymous sources
Tim Graham