Godzilla returns? Run for your life! This is NOT a test…
If any resident of Washington DC believes that America is winning the war on terror, she has to be a hopelessly deluded Republican guest worker. Because for those who live and work in the capital of the United States, 9/11 has made us permanent hostages to the amorphous threats of Osama bin-Laden and his Al-Qaeda jihadists.
After all, our sleep is now routinely interrupted by the roar of fighter jets – ostensibly protecting us from another piloted missile; surveillance cameras monitor our movements as if we’re all under serial FBI stings; and the security screenings one has to go through to get out of this fortress zone have become a surreal fusion of sublime and ridiculous measures that leave one inured even to the most intrusive or asinine procedure. (As a matter of fact, instead of requiring everyone to take off his shoes for screening, some people really ought to be required to keep on their smelly shoes in the interest of public health!)
The hallowed zone of protection…and terminal duress!
Therefore, none of us was terribly surprised today when a little Cessna plane sent official Washington into panic mode. Indeed, a similar red alert was sounded last summer (on the occasion of President Regan’s funeral) when another small plane violated the air space over DC. The only curious thing about these alerts is that they only ever sound for those who work in the White House or the Capitol Building. Indeed, those of us who work just blocks away are left in ignorant bliss as if these presumed targets are located in some distant city.
The dreaded piloted bomb? No, just a misguided student pilot and his moronic instructor!
(Of course, all it takes is for one suicide bomber to do in any American shopping mall what so many of them do routinely in Iraq for red alerts to set off a national panic and turn this home of the brave into a stampede of cowards trampling over each other for the nearest bunker. But I digress….)
Meanwhile, I suppose we sitting ducks can only hope that the infernal Jihadists are deadly accurate when they finally do strike at their choice targets!
News and Politics
Anonymous says
Yeah, “this is NOT a test”.. unlike the Hilton
Anonymous says
hey, what’s with the reference to the hilton? is this a joke! this was a serious national emergency with real consequences. get real!