9-11 or 911?

Has anyone else picked up on the irony in the fact that the single biggest assault on our nation since 1812 happened on a date with the name digits as the number you use to call for help in an emergency? I think I remember a few people making some vague reference, but no one has ever come right out and said, "Hey, what a coincidence! I wonder if they were trying to tell us more than that they hate us for our freedom?"

Think about it: out of the 365 days of the year those terrorists could have chosen for their attack, they picked that particular day? I mean, the only difference between 9-11 and 911 is a single hyphen--what are the odds? And I find it hard to believe that anyone who could plan and carry out something of that magnitude, with so many details to manage and coordinate, would simply pick a date at random, don't you? I think that if you are going to use an event to send a message, it makes a greater impact if you include the date as part of the message, right? Like bombing a shopping mall at Christmas to protest the way our sacred days have been reduced to designated shopping days dressed up in hollow rituals.

So what would be the message? Why would someone fly planes into buildings primarily occupied by companies whose primary focus was money, on 9-11? Could it be that whoever it was (and I'm not convinced it was bin Laden--the only evidence we have is a video that I think is extremely suspect) was trying to send us a wake up call? Kind of a, "Hey, look at what your government is doing--it's letting these companies rob you blind, it's spying on your phone calls and Internet traffic, and is doing atrocious things around the world in your name. Wake up and do something about it because it's only going to get worse it you don't stop them now!"

If that was the message, we missed it. Instead of being the ice water that shocks us into awareness, it was a punch that knocked us to the mat. Instead of looking closer into the coup d'etat that turned our representative democracy into an imperial dictatorship, we rallied around the flag and our naked emperor; instead of letting our anger drive us toward demanding the truth, we let our fear force us into accepting a politically motivated lie; instead of clinging to the ideals and values that we, as Americans, have always cherished, we became willing to surrender our freedoms in exchange for security. And as Ben Franklin said, those who are willing to trade liberty for security, deserve and will have neither.

Personally, though, I think it's more like the man who will rob and rape a woman, then hand her a phone and tell her to call the cops because he is a cop and he knows that when his fellow officers show up, they are more likely to arrest her for trying to file a false police report than they are to arrest their buddy for his crime.

After all, anyone cynical enough to gut the Clean Air Act with something called the Clear Skies Initiative, is cynical enough to attack his own citizens (or at the very least, allow them to be attacked) on a day whose numbers match our emergency assistance line, don't you think?