What if I walked up to you a couple of weeks ago and said, a Nigerian man with no passport, a one-way ticket, aided by a sharp-dressed man who said the fellow is a Sudanese refugee was allowed to board a Northwest Airline from Amsterdam to America you’d probably exclaim, couldn’t happen, those are read flags since 9/11. Well, you’re wrong. Another terrorist unsuccessfully attempted a mid-air explosion thanks to a failed detonator and heroic American citizens. But according to the expressionless Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on This Week, she said, “everything went according to clockwork” and further, “the system worked.” If it works so well, how come the rush to more regulations, restrictions and dog sniffers. Lady, I don’t know what clock you’re looking at or what system you think works, but your clock is broken.
Let’s go back to the future for a moment and remember a post-9/11 America. Let’s try to remember a time when someone’s gut instincts told ‘em, hey, something is wrong with this picture. They did not require the services of a sniffer dog, high-tech screener or even a government-issued book of regulations and best practices to follow. Naw, they just used their noggin and gut. It was December 1999, upon arriving on a ferry from Canada, al-Qaida operative Ahmed Ressam was arrested with a trunk full of explosives. His plan: to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. Customs inspector Diana Dean said, “His story didn’t make sense to me,” Dean was working the border that night. On a hunch something wasn’t quite right, she questioned Ressam and asked him to pop his trunk. Inside were big bags of white powder that were first thought to be drugs. The tests came back negative. When investigators looked further, they found timers and realized the powder was explosives. Dean said, “My heart dropped right into my toes when I realized what it was.” She went on to say, “I don’t recall any specific threats,” she added. “I don’t recall anybody saying watch for terrorists.”
There were warning signs about Ft. Hood terrorist and murderer Nidal Hasan. Even as I write this article, according to terrorist and attempted murderer Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, there are more al Qaeda-trained young men in Yemen planning to bring down American jets. Twice in 2000, including one time after the USS Cole bombing, Clinton had bin Laden in his sights and failed to pull the trigger, according to a senior Pentagon official familiar with covert counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan at the time. Under President Obama, we’ve gone from The Global War on Terror to the Oversees Contingency Operation. He’s weakened our resolve, embarked on an apology tour for the U.S., collapsed our economy and provided a timeline to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Complacency or its contemporary term, Political Correctness has reared its ugly head. In common man’s terms, I’d call it weakness. George Washington in his first message to Congress on January 8, 1790 said, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” On December 3, 1793, Washington elaborated more on this principle: “There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are ready at all times for war.”I know there are millions upon millions of fine, well-disciplined, hard-working and well-educated Americans from all walks of life who will rise to defeat the same tyrannical challenges our Founding Fathers feared, faced and conquered. What we need today and going forward is a commitment among the good folks of our great country to relieve politicians of his/her duties on November 2, 2010. We will have to fight the good fight. We, and not the government, for the government we once knew is now an amorphous thing that does not honor or abide by the same Constitution written by our Founders. In the coming years, it will be the common man who leads us back to the road to liberty and freedom once again. Here ye! Let freedom and liberty ring loud!
by Ray Thornton
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