Irish Itinerant

After making somewhat of a verbal faux pas over here, I thought I’d use my little slice of the web to state my thoughts so that there are no misunderstandings. I remember the morning of September 11th, 2001 like it was yesterday. At the time, I worked for a major US airline, and we were tending to business as normal when word came in of an aircraft that had struck the world trade center. Wow, I remember thinking - must have been some private pilot who got himself all disoriented in some clouds. However, the skies over NY were clear - weird…

In just a few minutes, we heard that another aircraft had hit the same place. What the fuck? At that point, TV channels began changing, phones began ringing, and all hell broke loose. As you know, later that morning, all aircraft over or inbound to the US were ordered to land at the nearest suitable airport. We had planes, passengers, and crews everyfuckingwhere.

In the months that followed, life changed a lot. I was grounded from my part-time flying job due to airspace restrictions, and the pace of work picked up tremendously at the airline. There were Secure Cockpit Doors to be installed, aircraft weaknesses to be identified, new procedures to be developed, etc. See some pilots thought it might be a good idea to do one thing, and we had to convince them to do another (sorry, not going to elaborate here). I can remember sitting in the cockpit on a number of flights with a crash axe in my hand. The axe was supposed to be embedded in the skull of any would-be cockpit intruder.

The portion of the comment regarding industry and politicians was inspired by the farewell address of President Dwight Eisenhower in 1961. From wikipedia:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Is anyone going to argue that we have arrived at exactly the situation that Eisenhower warned against? A significant percentage of special forces operatives are private contractors. Ditto for many of the folks that perform logistical tasks for the military. Ask any soldier, and they’ll have a story of a contractor doing a similar job to their own in Iraq or Afghanistan for 3+ times the pay.

In short, the more profitable war becomes, the more we’re going to see of it.

On being scared - many would not have it any other way. Not to sound too “black helicopter”, but fear is an excellent means of control. Hermann Goering (remember this infamous Nazi?) had the following to say:

“…it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. … All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”

Did terrorists attack us? Yes. Is fear being used to perform acts that we might otherwise not go along with? Yes. I do not believe that our gov’t knew of, or in any way assisted with, Sept. 11, 2001. However, it has allowed them to do some things without Joe Public even batting an eyelid. The Iraq War, Patriot Act, illegal surveillance, etc.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but I had to get this out of me. If I were to try and paraphrase all of the above, it would probably sound a lot like “Fuck you Noel, shove it up your hole.”

I feel better now.