LEADERS READY FOR ATTACK?

Yesterday was a very interesting day in the life of our nation, as a small plane literally had the people of Washington D.C. running for their lives.
Was this a terrorist attack? No it turned out to just be a Cessna pilot and his student flying and getting lost. They wandered to within three miles of the White House, and luckily for them, the security forces in the air and on the ground determined that they were innocent or we might have seen the plane shot out of the sky.
I have to admit that I laughed pretty hard as they showed the panicked reactions of our nation’s leaders. The Speakers in both Houses of Congress looked very wide-eyed when they were told to leave the building and do so at once. They showed the vehicles with the Vice-President being whisked away to an undisclosed location, which confused me. Is it not true that there is an underground war room for the President in time of war? Would that not be a safer place for the Vice-President to be instead of racing through the streets of Washington at high speed. The late night talk show hosts had a great time making fun of the people of Washington, much as I plan to do in this column.
It has been only a few years since 9/11, so perhaps that is why the people were running as they did, but for god’s sake, where in the world were they running too. It is not like they actually had a planned area to run to, such as a family might make when deciding what to do in case of a fire and planning to meet by a tree or at a neighbor’s house. These people were running in all directions, so obviously the only plan that they have developed in three years is to get out of the building and run wildly in any direction. Is that really the best plan that they could come up with in three years.
Truthfully, ask yourself, if you were a terrorist and watched the panic over the approach of a plane little bigger than a full size automobile, would you not believe that you had indeed succeeded after 9/11, because of the behavior change which you caused. After all the terrorist wins when he can get people to change the way they live their lives, and yesterday was definitely a change in the way people used to react to a flyover by a small plane lost and off course.
I think that if I wanted to do more terrorist mischief, I would have several students enter flying programs and whenever possible take the lessons in the D.C. area and turn the wander off course scenario into a daily occurrence. From there I would perhaps move into other vehicles, such as buses, trailer tractors, etc., so as to make it unsafe to be on any road or near any form of transportation. I often think that terrorists already operate many of the trailer tractor rigs on the highway, because they drive wildly endangering everyone near them. I know that not to be the case, but we should be aware that sooner or later terrorists will understand how important these transportation vehicles are to the lifeblood of this nation, so we should just once, try and be ahead of them in this game of life and death.
In a quick aside they showed the shooting a male who decided to take the L.A. police on a fifty minute chase and then exited his vehicle while trying to draw a pistol from his pocket. He was rightfully shot to death, and that should have been the end of it, but no because the killing was shown on television there is all kinds of nonsense about the fact that they should not have televised the event live. Wow! When did people get the fact that their children see and enjoy watching more violence through television shows and movies than they would ever see, even if they followed the police everyday on their regular patrols. I think it was good for young people to see the outcome of someone who chose to disobey the law and then tried to run from police. Personally I believe that all automobile chases should end in the death of the driver and it should always be shown on television. Perhaps this would cause the person who is driving to remember the image of what happens when you run from police and they would have second thoughts and pull over and take the charge that they are guilty of instead of running from police and knowing that they are going to be killed at the end of the chase, No Exceptions!
One final thought on the Washington follies that we saw yesterday. President Bush and the rest of our Washington leaders need to sit together and talk over what they are going to do in the case of another attack, for this was an embarrassment, but it did remind us once again that no matter what money has been spent, or what agencies have been created, we are no better prepared or any safer than we were on September 10th, the day before the world changed for America. Wake up people, another attack is coming and we need to be ready for it!