"Wanding a Naked Emperor" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Wanding a Naked Emperor

While a whole lotta folks got all sorts blue -- and red ‘n white -- in remembrance of the terrorist attacks two years ago, I confess to feelings more of anger and distress. Not so much with what happened -- I still avert my eyes when there are pictures of the World Trade Center Towers being hit by the planes -- but with the realization that we haven’t done anything about it.

We never even asked why we were attacked. The response was...it doesn’t matter, just hunt down the perpetrators. And so we launched the Afghanistan war. We pushed the Taliban out of power, and probably killed Osama in our bombing of the Tora Bora caves, but then we retrenched and today our Afghan puppets control little more than Kabul against a resurgence of the villains who once held the reins of power.

We then staged the IraqAttaq because the American public still wanted someone to pound and Saddam was the best candidate. While we won the military battle, but we lost the political war; no Al Qaeda links uncovered, no WMDs. Worse, we made our troops, along with the selfless aid workers who are trying to rebuild the country, targets of every psychotic who could hop a bus to Baghdad.

Mr. Bush doesn’t know what to do; he says he’s open to suggestions, all but begging for help from the United Nations and our former allies whom we snubbed going in. That’s the good news. The bad news is that no one has a clue what to do about Iraq or Afghanistan or global terrorism.

The inherent problem is that the American public -- which has a significant voice in our foreign policy using the ballot box -- has it’s head in the sand. They would much rather sob over the past tragedy than take steps against it happening again.

Like everyone else, the local paper did a two-years-later front page story. The centerpiece was a photo of a Pinkerton Government Services security officer waving his metal detector over a shoe. Sharing the photo was the shoe’s owner, a neo-elderly woman from Wilmington, Delaware, a tourist who’d come to visit the Shasta Dam.

When you’re snagging sneakers off of LOLs at airports -- and dams -- you’re squandering attention and resources on what’s convenient, not what might pose a threat. The people who died in the World Trade Center attacks deserve a better legacy than wanding a naked emperor.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.