Remembering September 11, 2001

The act of war that was committed against America on September 11, 2001 (9/11) has changed the way we look at many things. As Bill O’Reilly told Eagle Council XXX in St. Louis on September 22, for the first time in many years younger Americans are facing the fact that certain events and people must be viewed as good or evil, not merely in shades of gray.

I guess we won’t hear much now from the conspiracy-debunkers. It had to be a criminal conspiracy that planned and carried out the simultaneous hijacking of four airliners. We are now told that it all may have been masterminded from Germany.

We commend President George W. Bush’s plan to tell all our so-called friends and allies in other lands that they have to make a choice. You’re either with us to stamp out terrorism or we will assume you are against us. Cooperate in handing over the criminals or we will consider you the enemy! Any NATO country that doesn’t fully cooperate should be automatically expelled from NATO.

At the same time, Americans have some soul-searching to do about our security. Why were our FBI and CIA caught so completely by surprise? Why have they been spending their resources chasing after a few people who were no harm to society, such as one loner on a mountaintop at Ruby Ridge and a pathetic religious group in Waco, while the plotting foreign terrorists crossed our borders and lived in our country illegally, took their flight training in Florida, and repeatedly boarded our planes?

The terrorists are foreigners, most or all of whom should not have been allowed to live in our country. As FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted, at least some of the hijackers were “out of status,” i.e., they had no proper immigration documents. It should be repeated over and over again: The terrorism threat is from illegal aliens who are allowed to live in our midst — and this is a failure of our immigration laws and our immigration officials.

The criminals who were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, of the murders in front of the CIA headquarters in 1993, and who were involved in a 1998 plot to bomb New York’s subway system were Middle East aliens who should not have been in the United States. They were either granted a visa that should never have been issued or had overstayed a visa and should have been expelled. The 1996 Khobar Towers bombings, the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen were all carried out by radical Middle East groups.

Since easy access into the United States has been repeatedly exploited by aliens bent on terrorism, it should have been no surprise that it was used by the World Trade Center/Pentagon hijackers.

The policy of opening our borders to anyone who wants to sneak into our country illegally — or to remain illegally after entering legally — must be exposed and terminated. This is the most important security precaution our government must take.

The flood of illegal aliens coming across our southern border from Mexico is well known. The opportunity for illegals to come across our vast northern border is not as well known but offers easy opportunities for illegals bent on criminal acts. Canada has a no-questions-asked immigration policy, and many border crossings between the United States and Canada are unmanned.

The third wide-open door for illegals is the issuing of visas by 3,700 U.S. consular officers around the world. Our State Department has a laissez faire policy on issuing visas and approves 80% of the 8 million visa applications every year. The State Department manual used by consular officials states that “mere membership” in a recognized terrorist group, or even “advocacy of terrorism,” does not automatically disqualify a person from entering the United States.

Congress passed a law ordering the immigration service to track foreign visitors and students and match their entry into this country with the expiration date of their visas. Congress also ordered the immigration service to create a database of foreign students that would be accessible to law enforcement. These requirements are not due to go into effect until 2003!

Visa visitors — whether tourist, student or worker — should be tracked on a federal database that flags the names when their exit dates come around.

It is inexcusable that visa applicants aren’t screened more carefully, and that aliens aren’t expelled when their visa expires. Immigration officials don’t even know how many people are in the United States on visas or how many are so-called “overstays,” but it’s clearly a substantial factor in illegal immigration.

Many new airport security measures are now making airline travel longer and more difficult. The question should be asked how any of these measures, if they had been in place, would have prevented the 9/11 hijackings.

We want security measures that will put criminals at risk, not harass law-abiding citizens. The chance of U.S. citizens hijacking a plane on a suicide mission is infinitely smaller than the chance of foreign enemies doing the same. Why are all passengers interrogated about their luggage rather than about their citizenship?

It’s time to rethink the rule that an airplane be a gun-free zone. If the foreign masterminds behind this attack had thought that the crew or passengers were armed, they might not have invested so much in this type of terrorism. The courageous actions of passengers against the hijackers on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania apparently prevented the plane from reaching its target where many more people would have been killed. Self-help is essential in an emergency when no law enforcement officials are available.

While we worry about hijacked planes today, we may soon worry about hijacked foreign missile silos. Terrorists who would commit the unspeakable crimes of 9/11 would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons.

Congress should deploy the missile defense system needed to protect our cities against foreign attack. Our government should spend the taxpayers’ money for the most important business of government, providing for the common defense.

And let’s bring back the House Committee on Un-American Activities. We need congressional watchdogs to close the cracks in our internal security.