9/11 -- and Writing NO PLACE TO RUN
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I absolutely, passionately believe that 9/11 was enabled by forces and interests high up in America – both government and commercial – people who knew it was in work, could have prevented it, but decided instead that it offered an excuse – a provocation which the public would buy -- for another war, something upon which our entire economy and incredible prosperity has depended since WWII. Something that, as 2001 neared its end, it was time for once again.
More than that, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone, on carefully reviewing as I did the events of that day, with its so-numerous, so-obvious anomalies, plus what led to them, and what has followed, could arrive at any other conclusion.
First, the fact that the future hijackers were known to be taking flight-training – and supposedly not-monitored. Then, on the day, the all-too-coincidental lack of USAF fighter-planes anywhere near Washington, D.C., and in the Northeast Corridor where, 42 minutes after the first plane was identified as having been hijacked, two F-15s finally took off from Cape Cod – and then circled over the Atlantic while the second tower was hit – this despite the fact that they could have reached Manhattan in time to perhaps prevent it by forcing that plane off-course or, worst-case, shooting it down.
And overall the “confusion” in which long-standing, previously-followed protocols about what should happen when airplanes are hijacked or even go off-course were ignored, it was clear then – and now – that something was certainly not kosher.
In the writing-trade, we refer to such things as “plot-conveniences,” devices that, in fiction, are so obvious that they are to be scrupulously avoided because they tend to discredit one's narrative.
The entire 9/11 scenario – including but far from limited to the above, as well as the highly questionable collapse of the Towers, and the cover-up of Flight 93’s having been shot down – contains far too many such “Whoa - just a minute now…” red-flags.
Making those points was my major reason for writing NO PLACE TO RUN. It struck me that I might try via popular fiction to reach even a few people who wouldn’t normally view things that way, and hopefully cause them to think about what America has become. To ask questions they might not have considered before. And – maybe – stir them to begin trying to change our country before it’s too late.
The 9/11 Commission, which in the words of its Chairmen, Governor Thomas Kean and Representative Lee Hamilton, was “set up to fail,” issued its report at about the time I was finishing NO PLACE TO RUN. The report failed to refute any of what my novel puts forward about the events of that day.
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Dear friends:
In my view, the most frustrating aspect of President Obama’s reign is that he has shown so little sign of living up to that which we projected onto him: that he would be, as many of us so hoped, a leader with the magnetism and gift for inspiring us in the way that John F. Kennedy did when, on the occasion of his inauguration, he said: “Ask not what your country can do for you…”
And moreso when JFK announced that by the end of the 1960’s, we would put a man on the moon.
In doing so, he spelled out for us an achievable national goal, one that excited and united us as a people.
And we did achieve it. And in the process, far greater than simply increasing national pride, we created new technologies resulting in a still-growing, untold number of jobs – and whole careers that didn’t exist back then -- for workers throughout the world.
There is such a goal, a note to be struck by this president, if only we can reach him and convince him to take the step, to utter the words – to set this achievable goal -- that by the end of this decade, we will be independent of fossil fuels (and thus – happily and not incidentally -- free to allow the oil-rich people of the Middle East to reside where they prefer to be – in the 12th century).
How to accomplish this?
SPACE BASED SOLAR POWER
The National Security Space Office (NSSO) estimates that, in theory, one kilometer of (orbiting) solar collectors can collect a supply of energy, on an annual basis, “equal to the energy contained in all of the known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today.”*
*http://www.greenlivingonline.com/article/space-based-solar-power-101
Or, go to: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-01/eads-astrium-plans-put-solar-collecting-demo-satellite-space
I am certainly not a scientist, but I can find neither research nor arguments on the web stating that this cannot be accomplished.
Are there problems that will need solving? Are there technologies that will require tweaking or even outright invention? Will there be resistance from entrenched interests? Of course. Could we accomplish it this week? Certainly not. But imagine the power, the impetus that those words, spoken by this president, will have, the enormous positive thrust such an effort will create for our country, and for the world -- that by 2020 we will be independent of fossil fuels.
Please, if you know anyone who can reach President Obama with this proposition, or have any ideas for how to do so, get on board with your suggestions and/or influence.
Thank you.
Tom
www.ThomasBSawyer.com
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For most Americans, June 6, 1944 is remembered as D-Day.
For me, it’s August 10, 1949.
Far more meaningful to me in terms of America’s long-term history – largely because the results of what happened that day continue to reverberate – it’s anniversary will, not at all surprisingly, once again pass virtually unnoticed.
On that day in 1949, a vitally important semantic change took place in Washington – the arguably brilliant substitution of a single word that would have awesome, far-reaching significance for our country, of how we citizens perceive ourselves and the conduct of United States of America.
Because on August 10, 1949, the Department of War, which had existed under that name since 1778, became the Department of Defense.
And in the President’s Cabinet, the Secretary of War became the Secretary of Defense.
Think about that.
Not War – with all those nasty, distasteful connotations and the grotesque images they summon.
Defense.
Consider how very much more easily that word goes down for modern, socially responsible, civilized ears such as ours. How incredibly more politically correct it is. How comfortingly it reminds us that in military terms, our Truly Modern, Invariably Good-Guy America only employs warfare in its own defense.
As in Korea. And Vietnam. And Grenada. And Iraq.
Think about how enabling it is. How warm-and-fuzzily, for instance, we can tell ourselves – and believe – that those 58,000 names etched into that wall in Washington, D.C. died not waging an aggressive war that only benefited our national economy, but rather, they were killed Defending their Country. And how easy it becomes, on those rare occasions when anyone even thinks about it, for us to dismiss the 3.5 million Southeast Asian deaths we inflicted during that Defensive Action.
Or today, how soothing it is to be told – and to accept – that GI’s in Iraq are dying or being maimed in our Defense.
That one, simple-yet-anything-but-simple word-change was a choice, astutely made by people who by the end of WWII had recognized that, as tedious as that war had become, it had – with its attendant need for the tools to fight it, and the nifty sidebar that those items required steady, urgent replenishment – finally got us out of the worst economic depression in our history – what had been, really, the total collapse of the “free market” concept, the heart and soul of capitalism. At last they had found The Answer: the Perpetual Wartime Economy.
Sadly, it’s entirely consistent with our penchant for self-deception and denial in such areas as Oil and Global Warming and AIDs, to mention a few, all of them companion-pieces in a fundamental malaise: a National Refusal to question ourselves, our history, our behavior as occupants and abusers of this remarkable planet that has so willingly and accidentally supported us – along with birds, fishes, lizards, cats, dogs, ants and their fellow citizens.
That we buy into such labels as “Department of Defense” is far from new. One has only to recall Manifest Destiny, or The War to End Wars – or more recently, Operation Enduring Freedom (irony unintended, I’m sure – if the people who coined it had had a sense of humor – and the intelligence that connotes – we would probably not be in Iraq in the first place).
That we never seem to Get It is even older.
But most distressingly, that particular small but momentous switch in verbiage has evolved into a key element of a curve that daily pulls us downward at an ever-steeper, ever more final angle, in the direction of our destruction as a society.
I mean, I know just how difficult it is to suddenly – or even gradually – admit we’ve been wrong. On any level.
But – there’s wrong – and then there’s wrong…
So, how about we give it a try before it’s too late?
We can start by remembering August 10, 1949.
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