Wrote this yesterday, then abandoned it as one thought kept leading to another. Then Titivil kinda scooped me, so I thought I'd toss my 1.5 cents in:
Wow, alot of talk last night about the "lessons of september 11". I find that curious, since Iraq was NOT a "central front on the war on terror" until we made it one, and I guess I'm a little in the dark about what, exactly, those lessons are. GW said "we will not allow our future to be determined by car bombers and assassins". No, instead we've let our future be determined by guys flying planes into buildings. It's diffurnt!
I've been racking my brain trying to come up with some lessons of September 11. Y'know, aside from "be very careful who you make friends with".
Let's see, there's "Jet fuel is very, very hot when it's burning."
So, you know, don't use it to barbecue chicken wings.
How about "Bad things happen to good people?"
Ummm, "Dan Rather gets weird when he's tired". Well, we already knew that.
This one, for sure: "New Yorkers really know how to deal with monumentally fucked up shit. The rest of the country, not so much".
Oh, and there was this one: "In the event of a national emergency, Saturday Night Live will alert you when 'it's okay to laugh again'". Phew! Thanks, Lorne!
National tragedy plus popular music equals "Christ on a bicycle, please turn it off!".
Here's something I really don't think was a lesson of September 11: "When a bunch of Afghan-trained Saudis crash planes into your buildings, always attack a nearly defenseless country that poses no threat to your national security to settle an old grudge and provide hugely lucrative no-bid contracts to your corrupt friends. But don't really plan it or devise an exit strategy".
I guess I just don't think that the thing about terror attacks is that they're instructive. The thing about terror attacks is that innocent people are hurt and killed. How would you feel about an analogy? Once, in Boston, I was walking down the street when a guy staggered out of a bar, walked right up to me, and swung his fist at my face. He missed, but if he had connected, what would the "lesson" have been? Don’t Walk? Bars harbor terrorists and should be blown up? Boston is part of the Axis of Eeeevilll?
There was more, from which I have spared you.