Edited by Gerald Boerner
Commentary:
Where were you when those planes crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan? I was at home watching the morning news; the day was totally disrupted after that. It was incredible that a few foreign terrorists could enter this country, become trained as small plane pilots, and then implement a coordinated attack on these buildings in the City by hijacking four commercial flights and crash them into the twin towers (2 planes), the Pentagon (1 plane), and into the Pennsylvania countryside (1 plane). What was just as incredible was the way the Twin Towers just collapsed upon themselves. Just as astounding was the way the passengers on the plane over Pennsylvania fought back against the terrorists while their own lives were in peril; this probably saved either the Capitol Building or the White House!
As terrifying as these terrorists attacks were, the quick response of the Congress to respond to President George W. Bush’s call for legislation to “beef up” our defenses against any further terrorist attacks. This resulted in a wide-ranging piece of legislation, the USA Patriot Act, the set finding terrorist conspiracies as a priority over our Constitutional Rights, as stated in the Bill of Rights. It was supposedly done to increase the likelihood to find any other “sleeper” cells of terrorists, but it created almost a police state in this country. I traveled from LAX to the east coast during the post-911 period and was faced with military men and women carrying automatic weapons; in Vietnam I expected this, but not in this country.
So let’s take a quick look at this legislation, the events that prompted it, and the criticisms put forward against its abridgment of our personal rights. This exploration can only scratch the surface, but more information is available in the references cited… GLB
These Introductory Comments are copyrighted:
Copyright©2011 — Gerald Boerner — All Rights Reserved[ 3279 Words ]
Quotations Related to Terrorism:
“This was not an act of terrorism, but it was an act of war.”
— George W. Bush
“Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.”
— Noam Chomsky
“If Clinton had only attacked terrorism as much as he attacks George Bush we wouldn’t be in this problem.”
— Dennis Miller