Tuesday, February 15, 2005
(1:54 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
24 Blogging
Frank Rich's recent article (thanks to Brad for the link) said that the show 24 knew more about terrorism than the Bush administration does. I wrote a letter to the New York Times last year in which I criticized Douglas Feith's contention that one of the lessons of 9/11 was that the terrorists want to get ahold of weapons of mass destruction. That's ridiculous, though -- the lesson is that there are plenty of potential "weapons of mass destruction" laying around in the US, and all it takes is a little imagination and ingenuity to get ahold of one of them and cause major havok. The current situation on 24 is the kind of thing that should have leapt immediately to mind -- although the "override" thing is somewhat outlandish, the idea of terrorists striking nuclear power plants, rather than getting nuclear weapons-grade material from the North Koreans by way of Pakistan...., is much more in line with the techniques used on 9/11. Rich's recent post at Infinite Diablogue notes that the issue of "first responders" is another lesson one could have immediately drawn from 9/11 -- that is, how to get the people who can help to the people who need help. Again, 24 shows the dangers of not having adequate personnel and planning in the event of an evacuation, and one could not help but think as they mentioned the use of National Guard units, "Huh, if that kind of thing really happened, it would really suck for a big chunk of our National Guard units in Iraq."This is what resolute leadership looks like apparently: pick a crisis, real or imagined, and use it as an excuse to push through a plan that you had already decided to implement in any case and that therefore has nothing to do with the reality you're actually confronting. Social Security is turning out to be the exact same clusterfuck as Iraq -- although thankfully the Democrats are not just rolling over this time.
UPDATE: To continue my habit of putting random links at the end of posts, here is something from Slacktivist on the need to establish an outpost for true American values.
