Exactly one week ago the big media outfits went through the mandatory ritual of marking the 25th anniversary of… That Day.
Being what they are, they could hardly have done otherwise. Their marching orders were to be solemn and respectful, to note how many people died in less than two hours—enough to constitute a modest New Hampshire town—and remember all the people who loved them, and whose lives have been forever changed. Not to have done any and all of this would have been unthinkable.
The more daring of the news franchises, having temporarily appeased their audience’s apparently insatiable appetite for ritualized catharsis, may have brought up some of the effects of That Day on our daily lives. Like mediocre jokes from stereotypical stand-up comics, these typically cited various petty annoyances associated with air travel.
The boldest among those who peddle gab about current events might even have mentioned Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The alleged mastermind of the plot that shocked the nation is still notoriously unprosecuted, despite the passage of all these years.
Things start getting dicey when a “respectable” news organization—by which we mean, one that is either seeking to make a profit, or funded by a non-profit that is governed by a board of directors who value their reputations among their well-heeled peers—tries to explain why this alleged Arch Villain is still festering in a cell, on a leased plot of land, on an island with a communist government we’ve been trying to overthrow for more than 60 years.
Unhindered by such fetters, we can reveal that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is still stuck at Gitmo because Secretary of Testosterone Pete Hegseth has not yet bothered to replace the woke lawyers of the Office of Military Commissions who are supposed to be prosecuting him. Apparently they think there’s a problem with the fact that their prisoner has spent more time underwater than Flipper.
Oh, dear. So much for our effort to emulate the staid and dignified demeanor of all these newcomers to the news racket. What an ignominious fate for the oldest news organization in the world’s oldest democracy—apparently unable not to act the fool. [Sigh.]
If such is to be our fate, we might as well embrace and enjoy it. Considering who the electorate put in the construction zone once known as the White House, why shouldn’t our editorial fedora be topped with curved, spikey things with little round bells dangling on the ends?
Now, where were we before we indulged in yet another moment of introspection? Is there a point to any of this? Well, yes, though it scares the hell out of us to even bring it up. Maybe that’s why we’re stalling.
We were attacked that day, according to then-President George W. Bush, because “they hate our freedoms.” As with so many things he said, that simply was not true. KSM and his sponsor, the late Osama bin Laden, attacked us because we had military bases in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holy sites, and because we supported Israel, to the detriment of the Palestinians. By any objective measures, their jihad has nearly succeeded.
Obviously these two did not set out to put a rapidly-deteriorating, senescent, money-laundering egomaniac in a position where he could do the maximum amount of damage. They just kicked the hornet’s nest and got lucky. The rest we did to ourselves.
Our own power-mad politicians took advantage of the chaos to concentrate unprecedented power in an unconstitutional “unitary executive” branch. No follower of Islam put that power in the hands of the guy who tore up the nuclear treaty with Iran because his own name was not scribbled on it.
That Guy is, at this moment, finishing up the project KSM and OBL started at the dawn of this millenium.
In a “what could possibly go wrong?” moment that will be remembered down through the ages—assuming that mankind somehow survives the present moment and has the leisure to ponder history when it’s not grubbing in the ground searching for edible roots—he blithely launched a war even George W. Bush knew better than to start.
Now dozens of military bases—built with taxpayer dollars that might otherwise have been spent on U.S. hospitals, schools, and day care centers—lie in ruins across the Middle East. A vast arsenal of exotic and hard-to-replace munitions have been expended, mostly to blow up a small fraction of our enemy’s huge inventory of far cheaper, simpler weapons.
As for our allies, the Saudis—so well represented among the hijackers 25 years ago—for all their access to our top-shelf weaponry, they seem unable to defeat the Houthis who just grabbed the vital Bab al-Mandab strait.
All is not yet lost, though. With effort, and some luck, the gang of idiots losing in the Middle East may be defeated here in America, too, on this coming November 3rd.