The Real Enemy

Complacency and Kooky Thinking: The Real Enemies in the Terror War
By Daniel G. Jennings
When the Terror War began on Sept. 11, 2001, I predicted that America’s mettle would be tested a few years into the war when the American people would become complacent and fuzzy thinking would make surrender or defeat possible.
That is now happening, even though the Terror War is still on and Al Qaeda and its allies are still out there plotting to attack and kill us we are arguing about how suspected terrorists held by our military are being treated. Instead of wondering why our military and intelligence agencies and their allies haven’t been able to capture or kill Bin Laden and other terrorist leaders we are having a political debate about the food at Guantanamo Bay. Instead of having a debate about our military campaign in Iraq and its effectiveness we are focusing upon pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
The further we get from Sept. 11, the easier it is to forget about terrorism and get back to our complacent way of life. The media has gone back to covering nonsense like the missing girl in Aruba and the Michael Jackson case. Politicians are back to arguing about nothing or next to nothing. National security has once become a footnote in our political debates and media coverage.
To make matters worse the kooks and conspiracy theorists are starting to crawl out of the woodwork and tell us there is no terror threat. Nuts who tell us that Al Qaeda couldn’t have been behind Sept. 11 abound and they’re beginning to attract attention. Those who don’t want to fight a long and bloody war on terror are listening to them.
The latest is Morgan Reynolds former chief economist for the Department of Labor. Reynolds, an economist not an engineer or a military expert, is telling the media that there’s no way the jets could have brought down the World Trade Center and an adjacent building. Instead, Reynolds said it has to have been demolition explosives. In other words Reynolds is claiming that Sept. 11 was staged. Reynolds doesn’t say who did this merely that somebody did.
Two or three years ago such lunacy would have been unthinkable Reynolds would have been drummed out of the spotlight for making such statements. Today we shrug and yawn and ignore him. Unfortunately there are those who will listen to Reynolds, the nuts, the America haters, the peace at any price crowd, and the others who don’t want to face the ugly reality of war.
The danger is that people like Reynolds and those who will listen to them will try to call a halt to the war effort. Or worse we’ll ignore the terrorist threat and stop taking action against it until another catastrophic attack on the scale of Sept. 11 occurs.
Such a climate of complacency, conspiracy theories and refusal to deal with the ugly reality of terrorism will leave us unprepared to fight the war or deal with upcoming attacks. You might ask how do we break this cycle of complacency and stupidity?
Sadly, enough the only thing that might break this terrible cycle would be another massive terrorist attack that would kill large numbers of America. Hopefully, some other answer will be found before we have to live through a second Sept. 11.