9/11 coverup?

[Rhydderch Hael]

. . . that when an enemy steals a march on us, through his own cleverness and imagination, our unpreparedness, or a combination of both, so many monday morning quarterbacks search for scapegoats -- see post Pearl Harbor. ...

"...the transition from peace to war comes hard for civilians, but for professional soldiers there is no excuse. If I had been caught with my planes on the ground, as were the Air Corps commanders in the Phillipines and in Hawaii, I could never again have looked my fellow officers squarely in the eye."

The lightness with which this cardinal military sin was excused by the American high command when committed by Regular Army officers has always seemed to me one of the more shocking aspects of the war. Americans have been prone to excuse the failings of their military leaders partly because of the glow of final victory and partly because they still lack all the facts from which to form an honest and accurate appraisal— facts that have been carefully withheld from the public under the guise of censorship allegedly neccessary to military security. It is high time the American people made it their business to find out why the men they paid for twenty years to provide the national defense were so pitifully unprepared for the catastrophe that nearly engulfed us all. The penalty for the failure to do so will be a new and even more disasterous Pearl Harbor. ..."

One of those Monday-morning quarterbacks. Still playing the game that Sunday had brought to the fore, the one he had been playing since the previous Saturday. Claire Chennault, of the American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Nationalist Air Force.

I certainly don't accept that the attacks of September 11 was the product of an American conspiracy. Rightly so, because such ideas are a bunch of crock. But I never agreed well to the concept advertised of late (and advertised yet still) that the United States armed forces make for a nifty form of vocational school first— defenders of the nation second. The turnover of the ranks have been high for past decades. Turnovers in assignments, turnovers of service. A good majority of the force is well-trained but very new to the game.

There should be little or no distinction, in mentality at the least, between an army at peace and an army at war. "Always be courteous, but never friendly" so goes the adage of a professional soldier. Our armed forces got friendly when it advertised itself as a quick way to teach you skills, ready to move off to a civilian vocation once you served a single enlistment term. We bled because of that.