911

I'm beginning to think Bin Ladin won. How so you might ask? He's dead and we're still here. But it was his objective to bring down the American economy. Look where we are ten years after 911. We'll have spent over 2 trillion dollars on two (actually make that three or four) wars. We've created the largest governmental agency in U.S. history at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. We've had to bail the financial institutions (not just banks either) out from near collapse. That was over 2 trillion dollars. I forget who said it but to paraphrase them "a few trillion here, a few trillion there and soon that adds up to real money."
We are now at a point where we can't even take care of our own emergencies without wondering how we'll pay for them. The fear that has been spread over the last 10 years has made us swing at shadows in the night. If any group of thugs were that well organised then we would not have been able to set foot in a mall or gone to a football game without fearing some catastrophic event. We are now at the crossroads where the costs of vigilance are starting to outweigh the benefits. I have yet to see a bag or box detonated at the airport that contained anything more than some clothing and toiletries.*


*Fake bomb triggers scare on L.A. bus, police say

Suspicious item at KC airport not a bomb, FBI says
(via yahoo news 9/11/11)

I am far more fearful of our own populous when the safe guards and safety nets have been pulled from under us. I'd be more fearful of someone who's off his meds because that funding was cut and he can't afford them. Or the guy with the family who's been out of work so long his unemployment runs out. And if there's anything to be fearful of it's the fact that the last of the first stimulus moneys are nearly gone and the budget for homeland security is being trimmed. And what did we get from all of this? Now they want to continue cutting away at the economy and keep moving money out of the pockets of those who spend and into those who do not. We may be safe from the fear of a small extremist group but we threw the baby out with the bath water in the process.
But it's not just the lives that were lost on that fateful day we should be concerned about but the effects of the aftermath and our response. To say that we'll respond in such a way that this will never happen again is illogical because we know that some event like it will always happen again. Because it always does. Just look at history.