They Really Don't Get It

Here is a photograph that makes me sad and angry:

It is a photograph taken yesterday of a low-flying airliner terrifying the people who experienced 9/11 first hand.

This Boeing 747 is a backup of Obama's own Air Force One, and it was accompanied by an F-16 fighter jet escort on an unannounced "classified" mission described in some reports as a "aerial photo mission" for either film footage for a film company or "file photos" of Air Force One.

These guys haven't heard of computerized graphics?

Of course they have, which makes me think that there's more to this story that we'll never hear about. Or maybe not. Maybe there really is some film company out there that stands in good enough with the Obama administration to hot dog over the Statue of Liberty in a couple of Defense Department aircraft. If so, I'll bet they're not from the New York/New Jersey area. I cringe when I think that this stunt might have been done to provide the press with slick photos to make Barack Obama's favorite ride look good.

There's nothing like knowing that your tax dollars are being thoughtlessly squandered to provide the people of a city or two with an unavoidable flashback of the most horrific event in their lives.

Imagine looking out your office window at the New York Mercantile Exchange Building near the World Trade Center site, watching a big airliner and a fighter jet heading straight for your desk:

You would likely be one of the thousands of people who fled their buildings in fear of their lives. A good night's sleep wouldn't be in the picture for you for a while.

I've read blog comments that mocked the people who panicked when their airspace was invaded without warning.

I guess those mockers haven't erected memorials to their loved ones in their backyards because, well, there just wasn't anything left to bury.

Which brings me to the topic of the "torture" of certain terrorist enemies of our country, including the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Every one of the people who died as a result of the 9/11 attack died as the result of torture. Many of those who survived suffered what was clearly intended to be torture, including terrible burns and crushing injuries. Take, for example, the last person pulled from the Twin Towers rubble, Genelle Guzman, who spent 27 hours surrounded by dead bodies in pitch blackness, with her head pinned between two pieces of concrete, her leg crushed, able to move only her left hand. Her recovery, to the extent that she has been able to recover, was long and torturous. She lives with the knowledge that most of the people she worked with died gruesome deaths, and that their families mourn them. Unlike Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his brother terrorists, Genelle Guzman was not a murderous bigot who had trained for this attack. She was a young mother supporting her family on the wages of a Port Authority clerk.

Let's not pretend that the people who loved the victims of 9/11 didn't also suffer torture. And how about the rescuers, or the people assigned to sort out the body parts for identification?

I'm with the Americans who don't think defending ourselves and our loved ones from attack is a moral problem.

Better them than us.


[Thanks to Michelle Malkin and Ace of Spades via There's My Two Cents.]