Five Years Later

Today has been a little difficult. I must confess that I only directly knew one person who died at the World Trade Center, one of the Port Authority Police Officers who I had worked with at another job. Today has been much harder for his family, his girlfriend and his closest friends.

Nonetheless, I am scrupulously avoiding most coverage of the day because I cannot bear to listen to the politicians drone on and on about how we must be vigilant in the so-called "War on Terror", and hear how the President wants this tool or that power in this conflict. As far as I am concerned, he has squandered pretty much all the opportunities given to him in the last five years, and especially those right after that September day, a day which caused even the leftist French daily LeMonde to proclaim "We are all Americans."

Meanwhile, we must listen to Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney go on separate Sunday morning talk shows and read from the same script. George Tenet probably wants to hang himself right about now. But then again, this Administration has a history of hanging people out to dry, friend and foe alike. (Tenet, Michael Brown, Valerie Plame, Katherine "No more recounts for my friend George" Harris...). Particularly galling is Rice's continued insistence that "clearly, we are safer, but not yet safe." What has she been smoking?

So, what has and what has not changed in the last five years?

Osama bin Laden is still out there.

American forces are in harm's way in Iraq and Afghanistan, with no end in sight to either conflict, and no apparent idea of what that end would actually look like. Thousands have been killed and tens of thousands more wounded, and that's just for the Americans. In an odd twist, Iraq has become the Central Front in the War On Terror, as every jihadist with a dream of blowing himself and everybody nearby to bits streams in from far and wide to learn just how to do that.

There is still a hole in Lower Manhattan. Only now are the architects coming together to produce something in the way of a memorial and replace what was lost.

A huge bureacracy has been created in Washington, called the Department of Homeland Security. Given what we know about its response to Hurricane Katrina, its lack of effective security at various airports, and the ongoing fiasco with the FBI computer system, maybe we should call it something else.

A surplus of some 160 billion dollars in the Federal Budget has morphed into a yearly deficit of $400 billion or more. Something like 80 spending bills have crossed the President's desk. Guess how many he has vetoed? Better yet, guess how many total bills he has vetoed?

8,000 illegals cross the border with Mexico daily. What is the government waiting for?

Notice any more security around your local power plant, chemical factory, rail yard, reservoir? Me neither.

So, what has changed in the last five years?

Not much, apparently.