The Fog of Life

I was watching The Path to 9/11 last night, and some this morning. I’m not halfway into it yet, but I can definitely report on my impressions so far.

First, it’s not as bad, I think, for the Democrats, as one would have been lead to believe. I don’t think it’s an indictment of their administration’s behavior and judgment so much as an accurate representation of the fog of life. I haven’t read critics’ responses to the piece, but I was impressed with it.

Watching it, I was immersed in the chaos and haziness of life among teeming masses, including the teeming masses of government bureaucracies. Making decisions in this kind of atmosphere is not easy. First, you never know what the effect of your decisions will be. There is no single effect. The effect is one of combinations and permutations.

For example, informants have a tough life. The “good guys” suspect them as well as the “bad guys.” Their lives are in danger, and that of their families. They operate out of a desire to be virtuous, to save lives, to stop evil from happening. Yet, they are conflicted, because they are informing on “their people,” which is a taboo.

I was struck by the pure evil of the terrorists. Their depiction has to be accurate, because they must spend every waking moment concocting plans, building I.E.D.’s, and making secret connections to achieve their goal of blowing people up.

I also was impressed with the Path’s authors’ ability to immerse us in various cultures. Having lived in the Middle East, I can attest to the accuracy of their depictions. Part of the charm of these cultures is their inter-connectedness. This leads to a fuller life than some of us have in the United States. There are scores of aunts and uncles, brothers and cousins, friends and comrades.

The good of this is that they are surrounded with love and support. The bad is that they are pressured to conform in order to be accepted. The good of the American way of life is that we are more independent, and so not as susceptible to cult-like pressures. The bad of our way of life is that we are alone.

To the terrorists, we are a monstrous culture. Not only are we infidels, we foster a decadent culture of Las Vegas, naked women, broken families and moral chaos. It’s interesting that, on the days preceding their deadly missions, the terrorists often partake of Western pleasures. Wine, women, song, decadence. Then they kill people and themselves, going to meet their 72 virgins. Very convoluted.

Like I said, other than the terrorists, I don’t think Path is so much an indictment of particular individuals as it is an indictment of human nature. We are imperfect creatures. We do the best we can. We all operate in the fog of life and make the best decisions we can in a complex, ever-changing world.

There are some judgments we can make with regard to the path to 9/11, yet these are with the benefit of hindsight. We are all good quarterbacks on Monday morning. Knowing what we know now, we all would have snared or killed Osama bin Laden and his ilk before they carried out their plans. It was just human nature, though, to have difficulty believing that such Terminator-like evil exists in the world. Even after the several bombings, including Cobar Towers, the U.S.S. Cole and the World Trade Center bombing of 1993—even after intercepting intelligence that clearly showed our enemies' intents, we, the good people of the world, had a hard time really believing that monsters could fly airplanes full of innocent people into some of the tallest towers on earth, full of ordinary folks.

So, here we are. Now we know. What’s the next step? Terminator-like monsters are making plans for even greater destruction, and we are aware of it. We find it hard to believe, again, that what they say they are going to do, they will do. I hope we wake up. I hope we have grown. Only if we are vigilant, and smart, and clever, and ruthless, can we prevent the next actions, which will include mushroom clouds over L.A. and N.Y.C., or sarin gas (Wikipedia discussion) on subways. We are on the path to 9/13. Can we stop it this time?

Rock

(*Wikipedia is always my source unless indicated.)

This Post’s Technorati Tags: The Path to 9/11, I.E.D.’s, Osama bin Laden, Cobar Towers, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, sarin gas, truth

Subscribe to my feed
                                          

Join me in the war on error, in the fight for truth, justice, and the American way! Support this site! Wanna swap links? It’ll help us both. Truth—The No Spin Politically Incorrect Zone

Join Rock's Political Blog Ring. Both Liberals and Conservatives

Join Rock's Political Blog Ring. Both Liberals and Conservatives are Welcome. (see left side bar or below these posts)

New! Join Rock's Chatroom and Rock’s Truth Forum, both uncensored. You’ll be a bit lonely for now, until traffic starts to discover these new venues, but whenever I’m on line, I’ll check to see if anyone’s chatting. It’d be nice if I could program an email to myself when someone wants to chat, we’ll see.

Plus, I have added a special poll each week, where I craft the poll questions, Rock's Poll Question of the Week. This week's question is, "Do you love George Bush?" You can hug him or trash him with your response, and see the results of how others feel.