We spend billions each year on Homeland Security and yet some of us live in terror of foreign attacks against the nation, especially a repeat of 911. The fact is that since 911 there have been 42 deaths in this country accountable to foreigners or American Muslim terrorists. In that same time span there have been some 420,000 deaths in this country from guns, most of them legal. Who are we kidding? Are we worried about safety or bigoted politics? The greatest terrorist attack in this country was twenty years ago this week in Oklahoma but the terrorists were white, Anglo Saxon Protestant, not Muslim and they killed 168 people in one shot. What does that say about looking under the wrong stones?
Then there’s the matter of this clown from the post office that flew his gyrocopter onto the Capital lawn and the other asshole that flew a drone onto the White House lawn. The discussion of what should have been done took place all over the tube and I must say that I come down on the side of the crazies. No one knew what these flying machines carried and they were violating restricted air space. The authorities should have shot both machines down.
I can hear every anti-violence, true believers, calling for my head because that’s what they do when you rev them up, but just hold on a minute. We had no idea what either of those bird’s were carrying. They could have had a bomb on them or a biological weapon and we would now be mourning our reticence at shooting them down.
Both pilots were aware of what they were doing so there was no excuse of an accident and these are the buildings that house our government. No matter how you feel about congress or the president they are our congress and our president and it’s our job to protect them. The guy who jumped the fence and ran into the White House should have been shot too. This is not fun and games. This is not worrying about some mystical attack from a bunch fantasy Arab terrorists who have no access to this country. This is real national security, not what might happen, but what is actually happening, is what we have to deal with. This must be stopped. This is not some gun happy amateur cop blasting a black suspect with the wrong weapon in backwards USA. This is the seat of national government and some jerk is landing an aircraft on the lawn or jumping the fence. This is not the time to ask, “What are you doing sir?” or command “Stop or I shoot.” This is the time to protect the nation. If there was ever a time to shoot first and ask questions later, it’s incidents like these. Those aircraft should have been blasted out of the sky and that fence hopper should have been shot.
I call for this kind of overkill reaction because it creates two functional results. It eliminates the immediate danger presented by the invaders but it also sends a message to other potential serious terrorists that we can and will defend what is ours, thereby drawing a line that must be respected.
I understand that none of these clowns were a serious threat, but we didn’t know that until after the fact. By that time it would have been way too late if they were. We were lucky. A catastrophe was avoided by dumb luck. But that’s no way to run a country.
It would have been better to blow these fools away and put up with the anguished cries of the bleeding hearts, then to let someone blow up the White House or release a deadly virus in it.
If we want to avoid eternal war and eternal terrorism, people around the world must be made to understand that we will be fair and unaggressive (Something we have yet to prove we can be), but that if they come for us we will destroy them. That established position, along with serious negotiation is the only path to peace.