Re: the Christmas bomber.

Does the following sound more than just a wee bit familiar?

“The problem was the inability to share between data bases.”

So almost nine years after 9/11 they’re still pulling out that old well rotted chestnut?

Paid cash, one way ticket(s), no luggage, an explosive merely moved from a shoe to a crotch?

Hellllloooooooooooo…. the shoe bomber? And almost nine years ago? You know that collection of numbers that pols loved to regurgitate over and over to excuse anything and everything, “9/11?” Remember we were told 9/11 “changed everything?” Maybe they stayed the same, only got much, much worse?

Oklahoma City was an act of terrorism. There were acts of terrorism, and attempts, long before 9/11, and acts or attempts after. Since the first tower bombing perp did a, “We’ll be back,” Terminator imitation, maybe some pol should have paid attention, don’t you think?

The excuses every time? Well… too often the same damn ones. Solutions pols and pundits pushed back then seem weak echoes of the same solutions pushed after 9/11. Maybe they have always honestly thought the best way to protect us was to dump our freedoms like they were toxic waste. You know, the very same “freedoms” they keep telling us we’re hated for? Can’t be that they hate us for what they have done in our name. Never that. No, no, no… not our nation’s policies, or our “mistakes.”

Even if we, as a nation, went overboard with our own citizens, it was all to protect us.

Unless…

…well, it couldn’t be, could it?

No, I won’t even go there…

Yet.

Note to all our leaders: past and present; since your supposed solutions seem to have failed… how about instead we start limiting the most stupid, yet most offensive, intrusions into our personal lives? Limit the massive shredding of the Constitution supposedly for the sake of safety.

To paraphrase…

“Those who sacrifice liberty for the sake of safety deserve neither.”

How about instead of trying to convince us to give up liberties, you and those who have been hired and appointed to solve this problem…

…do your damn jobs?

I know: I’ll bet you’ll say you think doing what you have done is “doing your job.” I’m sure you do. You may have even convinced yourselves this is “doing your job.” The all too human ability to deceive oneself has always been a bottomless pit leading straight through the equally endless and hottest lake in Hell.

But I suspect most of this may have little to nothing to do with stopping terrorism or terrorists.

Let’s not go there right now.

If the goal is “to limit terrorism,” maybe we could start by actually paying attention when a father tells us his son who wants to go to America around Christmas time is hanging around with the wrong people? Or paying for a one way ticket with cash and has no luggage? Or pay attention when our own citizens and agents tell us suspicious looking people are taking flight lessons who have no interest in landing, or intelligence sources across the globe are screaming “something’s coming?” Or maybe just insist they do what was promised years ago: make sure important databases are shared and actually paid attention to?

In other words…

Our elected and appointed officials need to do their damn jobs.

Recently the Obama administration decided asylum seekers won’t be kept in prisons as the Bush administration insisted. Those on the Right who complain about not holding immigrants claiming asylum at all may have a point. Yes, one can lie and gain access, although if the job is being done right flags should go up sky high long before we have to assess such things. You know, warnings received and posted in multiple data bases?

And in the case everyone is blathering about right now: couldn’t they have paid attention to at least one of the sky high flags?

Space alien to fellow alien-o-naut…

“Hey, down there, Gorbadoodle. Look at all those freakin tall flags screaming danger down there on that blue/green planet! Their leaders don’t want to pay attention. Let’s leave. We’re looking for sentient life.”

Time to fulfill an election promise.

Time for real change…

Instead of auto throwing those who have already been abused in prison because an administration can make political hay out of supposedly “protecting” us, or just letting them in and make political hay out of doing the opposite: maybe we should demand our pols stop pissing on each other for political gain and…

Do their damn jobs?

Put asylum seekers some place nice… not prison. And if they check out, then let them in if we think it best. Don’t send them back to where they will be murdered, if not.

Ah, if only this “bumbling” was only aimed at “incoming,” instead of citizens.

But our leaders would rather make us all take off our underpants, or look through them with comic book X-ray glasses-like machines and pat down grannies… than actually making sure databases are shared after, how many damn years? Or rather than listen to our phone calls, have free access to our houses and records… than listen to those who tell us certain men are taking flying lessons without wanting to learn how to land? And if one party is power they would never use this power against those in the other party, especially election time? Right? Oh, wait… they already have when the party in power broke into opposition’s computers in 04. And if you might point to that opposition party, now in power, and claim they did something as bad… my point is still the same.

You see this is all part of the same political culture that decided it better to invade Iraq no matter what our CIA operative and her husband told us, then try to destroy when we find out they were telling the truth. Both parties voted for it. The silence regarding the destruction and creation of even more terrorists exists in large quantities on both sides. The silence too.

Do you see a pattern here yet?

By now you’d think maybe, just maybe, they could have tightened the system, have databases humming in harmony and started paying more attention to such lists and warnings… nine years after 9/11?

Nope.

Government would rather stick their hands or waves down granny’s panties than do their damn job. What’s next, fly nude with all our body orifices wide open? Might make a bucket load of money for medical professionals.

“Passengers who haven’t had their pre-flight colonoscopy need to line up in line B, other cavity searches will be done in-flight in full view of the other, laughing, passengers.”

There was a time when I might have considered that this was just typical governmental bumbling, just like whatever Blackwater calls itself now killing innocent citizens over and over again would be mislabeled as mere business bumbling. But the “bumbling” has been too consistent; pointed in one “unbelievable,” tinfoil hat, direction.

Imagine business and government are sharing the same model for success. It’s intentional. For example, did anyone else notice that after a rash of thefts of massive amounts of personal data, like government laptops stolen here in Tennessee; with little evidence any of it was ever used, that suddenly we were bombarded with businesses wanting to siphon off our buckaroos to “protect us?” Of course no one would suggest that it might be slightly possible that the thieves, the businesses, maybe even the government might be connected.

Except, perhaps, me.

You see I learned that this endless, rule of law-less, “preventive detention” that was sold to us as the best way to protect us, has achieved something concrete. Yes: it achieved the release of some of the worst amongst the detainees; released by the very administration who sold us the concept to begin with. They went to Yemen. Now Yemen is a bigger hotbed for terrorism than it was and… success!

Christmas bomber.

Instead of “protecting us,” are they fermenting fear, terrorists and terrorism, looking for the vilest strains to release where they can most reinvigorate the threat? If they were honest… a rhetorical question if there ever one… could it be that out of one side of their mouths they praise the passengers who stopped the attempt, and out of the other side they snatch this aluminum hat off my head and say…

“Curses. Foiled again.”

So now, I will “go there.”

Imagine for a moment another possibility: many of those who claim they are trying to protect us are actually trying to make us more vulnerable, take away our freedoms. Business; and this includes the mainstream media, is making boatloads of money helping them.

What a fine formula. A bit like catch and release. The government releases information, suspects most likely to attack us, refuses to keep information secure. Business “catches.” The government starts war and releases it’s obligation to live by what they start: fully fund, staff and take the grief for their mistakes. Business catches through Blackwater, by selling us on keeping personal information personal that should been personal to begin with, building new prisons to house those held without due process that politicians want to make us so scared of we’ll shred the Constitution into toilet paper…

Catch.

Release.

Catch again…

All the time intimidating the public into shutting the hell up and being very, very scared. At the same time they promise to be even a bigger, meaner, Daddy who will protect us… from the Granny with a bomb in her panties?

What a fine formula.

It’s called fascism.

It makes you wonder sometimes: exactly who is it who really “hates our freedoms?”

The more they harass certain people: those least likely to be terrorists, the more they can sell the public on the illusion they are actually doing something.

And gee, after all, if some actual perps “manage” to slip through… like the Christmas bomber… and frighten the populace into handing over more Constitutional rights, it’s plus, plus for them, right?

Maybe, just maybe, if they keep heading this way… eventually… they won’t have to deal with this messy thing called representative government if they scare us enough. Making their best friend and biggest enabler would be… would be… Who would that be? Oh, yeah…

Usama bin Laden.

And politicians, pundits and mercenary/vendors didn’t even hold a party to thank him. How thoughtless of them.

So now…

Dare we ask?

Maybe, just maybe, this is why they don’t want to do their damn jobs?

-30-

Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.

Copyright 2009
Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
All Rights Reserved