Article by Peter Gadiel, published in The Putnam County Courier , September 10, 2009.
We will soon observe the 8th anniversary of the mass murders of 3,000 people in the September 11 terrorist attacks and as the event recedes further into the past we hear more and more about the “9/10 mindset” versus the “9/11 mindset.” The one meaning settling back into the way we looked at the world the day before the attacks: smug; ignorant of the evil forces at loose in the world and careless of our vulnerability to them. The other, the 9/11 mindset meaning facing the reality of an era when we are no longer the safe and secure, geographically isolated fortress that this country was for over two hundred years.
That the 9/10 mindset was the sort of attitude that allowed us to squander the strength and security which was created for us by our predecessors: Generals like Washington, Grant, Pershing, Patton and Eisenhower; statesmen like Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster, John Jay, and of course again, Washington.
Geographic isolation provided less and less protection with the development of military weapons such as supersonic jets, and missiles. But it wasn’t the armed forces of our enemies that led us to September 11; it was the failure to care about who we were allowing into our country; the failure to control our borders.
The September 11 mass murders resulted from the refusal of government officials to enforce the immigration laws already in existence, the primary purpose of which are supposed to be the protection of our country and its people.
The Independent 9/11 Commission, in very great detail, revealed how it was that three officials of the US State Department, ignoring federal law and the regulations of their department, allowed nineteen men to come to the United States. The Commission, in great detail, described how these nineteen were then able to hide in plain sight thank to the presence of millions of illegal aliens. It detailed how these men were able to obtain the authentic US drivers licenses, that enabled them to then obtain all the goods and services they needed in order to plan, rehearse, finance and then carry out their attacks. How they were able to rent motel rooms and apartments; obtain credit cards and open bank accounts; transfer funds; rent cars; buy flying lessons; and on the morning of 9/11 use their authentic, US issued identity documents to board the planes they turned into missiles.
Why were these killers (all readily identifiable as young, single men from terrorist sponsoring nations, men who perfectly fit the profile of a Moslem terrorist) to readily able to obtain what the tools of mass murder and then live in the US for up to two years while they made their preparations?
The answer can be summed up in the phrase “9/10 mentality.”
It was a 9/10 mentality that cause Bill Clinton to ignore the recommendations of a commission headed by his own Vice-President. A commission which, in 1996 had recommended that airport and airplane security be drastically improved. It was this 9/10 mentality that caused Clinton to ignore these recommendations because the airline industry, unwilling to bear the greater costs, gave handsomely to his 1996 re-election campaign.
Is was a 9/10 mentality which caused Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno and her subordinate, Jamie Gorelick, to prevent counter-terrorist agents in the FBI to communicate with criminal investigators in the Bureau, and caused them to prevent the CIA’s anti-terrorist agents from communicating with the Bureau.
It was a 9/10 mentality which allowed tens of millions of people from all parts of the Earth, nations actively hostile to our country and way of life, to freely cross our borders either illegally with no screening at all, or legally with equal failure to screen. The result has been an influx of tens of millions of people about whom we know nothing, such as the 9/11 terrorists and others like them, and tens of thousands of ‘ordinary’ violent felons.
Certainly, this negligent attitude, this 9/10 head in the sand mentality is not limited Bill Clinton, Charles Schumer and other Democrats. Republicans such as George W. Bush and Senators John McCain and Richard Lugar have been just as eager to expose us to some of the world’s worst human beings as anyone in the other party.
During his eight years in office George W. Bush was at least as negligent as his predecessor…even more so because he refused to learn the lessons of 9/11: refused to stop illegal immigration, refused to increase the Border Patrol, ICE agents and prison facilities for illegals to anywhere near the strength authorized by Congress in 2005. Bush, in combination with Congressional Democrats and some Republicans even increased the number of nations whose citizens can come to the USA without even having to apply for a visa.
Certainly, the 9/10 mindset is a learning disability that afflicts both parties. But it’s not a disability which arises naturally in these politicians. It is planted in them by the wealthy and powerful forces that profit from open borders and uncontrolled immigration, both legal and illegal.
The 9/10 mentality results from a unique alliance based on the financial greed of those on political Right and radical ideology and greed for power of those on the Left, the 9/10 mentality. Thus, the ACLU, US Chamber of Commerce, communist parties, American Bankers Ass’n, People for the American Way, homebuilders, George Soros, Ford Foundation, agribusiness, LaRaza, American Bar Ass’n, NAACP, American Immigration Lawyers Ass’n, United Church of Christ, the travel industry, and the AFL-CIO; the Left and the Right all lobby for open borders.
And the result is that despite much window dressing, and despite the erosion of the rights of American citizens, we are very much in a pre-9/11 situation.
Putnam County and our neighboring communities nearby sadly prove this. On September 11, 2001 eight Putnam County residents paid the price of our government’s failure to protect it’s citizenry with their lives. Let us never forget the sacrifice made by Thomas Kuveikis, Robert Minara, Daniel Harlin, Christopher Blackwell, George Cain, Stephen Driscoll, David Fodor and George Paris. Let us also never forget that in 2005, Elizabeth Butler was savagely murdered by a multiply convicted illegal alien and, more recently, the deaths of Mrs. Donohue and her daughter in Brewster at the hands of someone who should never have been in our country in the first place.
These tragic deaths are no less the result of the pre-9/11 mentality than were the 9/11 attacks themselves. And what these murders and thousands of others around the country share in common with the murders of September 11 is this: all of them could have been avoided had politicians stood up to the ACLU, LaRaza, and the Chamber of Commerce. None of these thousands would be dead had elected officials refused to allow our country to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of uncontrolled immigration.
