What does it say that this memorial was unveiled in Jerusalem while we still have a hole int he ground?  Remember which side of the ‘fence’ this was built on.

Tips to Letty Kaplan

In the three months after 9/11 there were 1,000 extra traffic deaths in the U.S.

We would surmise that the threat of flying caused more people to drive and that driving is much more dangerous than flying.  But the additional deaths occurred on local roads in the Northeast close to the terrorist attack, and these fatalities were far more likely to involve drunken and reckless driving.  9/11 led to alcohol abuse and post-traumatic stress that led to extra driving deaths among other problems.

140 U.S corporations abused the stock market decline after the attacks to back date stock options.  Police resources were shifted from anti-Mafia units and other crime prevention including chasing financial scoundrels. 9/11 could have contributed to the financial meltdown.

Due to less air travel, influenza - which travels well on planes- spread less.  In DC the extra police on the street during terror alerts decreased crime.  Marijuana became one of California’s most valuable crops as imports from Canada and Mexico was squeezed by tighter border restriction .

From Superfreakonomics by Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

Economic externalities are  a fascinating subject. Recall how unexpected and unpredictable many of these externalities seem and imagine how many externalities will result from the government’s widespread legislation.

While mindless mantras kept advocating that we are LESS safe as a result of Bush’s anti terror policies, some of us could not ignore the absence of terror attacks on our soil after 9/11.

One reason was a very deliberate and careful decision to engage the enemy is his own backyard.  Al Qaeda did not have unlimited resources, and our military engaged and eliminated thousands of them in Afghanistan and Iraq. In spite of strategic mis-steps that are always clearer in retrospect, even a bad strategy in Iraq kept Al Qaeda more focused on surviving in the streets of Iraq and the mountains of Pakistan that formatting further terror in the malls of America.

But another reason was the increased efforts of the CIA now coming under scrutiny.  While our mortal enemies were broadcasting decapitations on the internet we used enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) such as water boarding to prevent further attacks.

As reported in the Wall Street journal editorial on 8/27/09, this was not done by rogue sadists, but was done with the advice and consent from the Pentagon, the Justice Department , and with knowledge and consent of the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee. Read this very important editorial, The Real CIA News here.

Some contend that these EITs were ineffective, but this belies the moral question as to whether effectiveness is even the issue.  The report identified clear results such as Binyam Muhammed, who planned to detonate a dirty bomb and previously unknown Al Qaeda members planning a second in the U.S. in California.

One of the reasons we failed to prevent the attack ON 9/11 was the crippling of our intelligence forces in the previous decades.  We struggle to find a way to defeat a murderous immoral enemy using the high moral standards we demand.  But Holder’s effort to criminalize those who had to make very difficult decisions in the wake of 9/11, in the very arduous moral gray zone few of us have to consider, will serve only to make us more vulnerable.

You cannot win a war in a court room; you can only lose it.  Denying we are at war will not change our enemies committed to defeating us.

The ‘birthers’ have been derided as a part of the lunatic fringe of the right and appropriately so.  Like others who take fanatical positions, no amount of proof seem adequate.  Yet as Jeff Jacoby reminds us  in his column such lunacy has been seen before.  Many of those who scorn the ‘birthers’ fawned at  Michael Moore’s idiocy in ‘Faranheit 911′ accusing Bush of colluding with the Saudis and Osama bin Laden.

Jacoby noted the survey in 2007 that 35% of Democrats believed that Bush was tipped off about the 9/11 attacks and another 26% were not sure.  Many still believe Reagan conspired with Khomeini  not to release the American hostages until after his election. Others still contend that FDR intentionally left our fleet in a vulnerable position in Pearl Harbor to engineer our entry into the global conflict contrary to our natural isolationist preference.

Our world is filled with hatred, instability, and uncertainty.  It seems to give many comfort to find a conspiracy or an enemy to explain our fears rather than to accept our own limitations in an uncertain world.  The paranoid justify created conspiracies and fantasies because they fit the facts they used to create them to begin with.

I believe these conspiracies are easier for some to absorb  than to face the real issues.  It is far more important and productive to address the real problems with this president’s policies than to waste energy on far fetched conspiracies