Looking over the past decade or so, domestic terror incidents in the United States have arisen from numerous multiple shooting deaths in school settings, random sniper shootings in the Washington, DC area, truck bombing at a federal building and commercial airplanes crashed into buildings. Two of those, the two worst attacks in the history of the country, have occurred during the tenure of George W. Bush as President.
By far, the greatest number of tragic terrorist incidents in this country have arisen from incursion by gunmen into what was previously considered relatively safe area and subsequent shooting sprees that caused the indiscriminate deaths of civilians.
In response to the problem, we are now required to strip down to our underwear and socks, forced to go to the airport hours early to stand in seemingly interminable lines and prohibited from taking a full tube of toothpaste on an airplane. Our phone and mail privacy is sacrificed in the name of a "war on terror" and we are not supposed to criticize the Administration (we can actually be jailed if we do so in an airport). In addition, we are spending half a trillion dollars on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, thousands of miles from American soil. These measures are supposed to keep us safe from terrorist attacks.
Make no mistake, this writer is not opposed to the right to bear arms or the right to arm bears. It is but one of the guarantees of the Constitution. But I do wonder, in those rare moments of reflection, why one right is deemed so superior to the others. Just pondering the issues, why is it acceptable to constrain the Constitutional rights of free speech, privacy, interstate travel and association, while leaving unencumbered the right to bear arms? After all, no spoken word or e-mail has directly caused a single death in any of these terrorist attacks on American soil. Yet guns and munitions have been involved in almost every one, and directly responsible for the deaths.
I am not of the extremist view that all of these terrorist events could have been prevented. Hindsight is always more perceptive than foresight. However, there does seem to be a problem with Administration priorities and methods that is not unlike serving soup with a fork. After Columbine, there was a reasoned basis for developing measures to identify troubled students and to intervene, if possible, before a violent incident developed. In addition, the easy access that the two shooters in Columbine had to weapons and ammunition called for some measures to require greater responsibility on the part of gun owners to lock up their weapons.
Neither of these measures has been seriously addressed in the wake of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, although the Administration has expended billions of dollars for the alleged purpose of keeping America safe from terrorist attacks. More ironically, if greater attention had been placed upon schools, the training of the jihadi pilots in the 9/11 attack might have created enough concern for the FBI to actually do something with the information that they had prior to the attack. The Virginia Tech incident is too fresh to analyze objectively, but there is ample evidence that the shooter was previously identified as a problematic individual meriting intervention.
Of course, it would be unreasonable to suggest that employing the tools mentioned would prevent all future attacks. Those that plot terror are cunning and adaptive. But it is not unreasonable to expect our President and his "experts" to examine the common elements that are associated with the attacks on American soil and take counter terrorism measures to address those factors. Such efforts should be a much higher priority than some foreign escapade that has no concrete bearing upon protecting Americans from danger. The principal terrorism impact of the Iraq occupation has been to generate a much larger number of jihadis who would like to attack America if they only had the means and opportunity. At present, and for the foreseeable future, their only opportunity lies in attacking American troops in their own country sent there by President Bush. But much of their fervor comes from the fact that America is occupying their country and controlling its government, a grievance that would dissipate with departure of the US presence.
A fair assessment of the job that our President is doing suggests that he not only is using the wrong tools for the job he is supposed to be doing, but the tools that he has chosen are being used ineptly. Picture the cook furiously serving soup with a fork. No matter how sincere he might be, or how vigorously he works at what he is doing, the simple truth is that he is not going to get the job done.
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