Editorial

Times have changed, but our resolution must not

Thursday, September 11, 2014

We hope you take time to attend tonight's performance of "The Guys," which promises to revive personal memories and emotions all of us felt, even here in mid-America, far from the attacks in New York and Washington.

The play will be presented by McCook Community College at 7 p.m. at the Fox Theatre; admission is a free-will donation to the McCook Fire Department.

The first news, a plane had crashed into a building in New York, raised little more than a shrug and muttered speculations. By the time planes had hit the other tower, the Pentagon, and through the heroics of the passengers, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, we knew we were under a full-scale attack.

No, we weren't attacked directly in our region, although there were reports of suspicious inquiries about crop-dusting planes.

But we all felt results of the 9-11 attacks that continue to this day.

First, it was nothing -- not a plane in the sky over Southwest Nebraska, as the FAA ordered all planes to stay on the ground or get there as soon as possible. An exception was Air Force One and its escorting fighters, which found temporary refuge in Omaha.

Scientists later took advantage of the unique opportunity to study the climate, and found the temperature in the United States increased by 2 degrees in just three days, thanks to the absence of vapor trails that normally reflected sunlight back into space.

Thanks to 9-11, we've all learned to allow more time for boarding airline flights, to leave nail files and large bottles of shampoo behind.

As it became more inconvenient to fly, more Americans took to driving to their destinations -- killing an estimated 1,595 people in the year following the attacks, thanks to the increased danger of driving compared taking a commercial flight.

We've grown more accustomed to government intrusions into our lives, from medical, telephone and financial records, in the name of the pursuit of terrorists.

As government resources were reallocated to deal with new threats, old threats raised their heads.

After 100 percent of the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors were shifted toward detecting chemicals and bombs, they were shifted away from inspecting imported produce, resulting in the loss of billions of dollars worth of produce, orchards and forest lands to insects and diseases.

Since September 11, 2001, America has become less dependent on the foreign oil that financed Osama bin-Laden and continues to fund ISIS, but opposition to projects like the Keystone XL project threatens to derail that trend.

Not surprisingly, the last U.S. budget surplus was in fiscal year 2001. Today, the national debt is more than $16.7 trillion, about $53,000 per person.

Yes, Obamacare and the ongoing retirement of the baby boomer generation have contributed to the debt, but defense expenditures in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as domestic security spending have contributed much to the debt.

President Obama outlines the ways he plans to deal with the ISIS terrorists intent on imposing their form of Islamic law on their region and even the world.

We must be diligent to fight terrorists where ever they threaten us, over seas or hear at home.

But we must not allow them to cow us into surrendering our freedoms in the name of security.

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