So today a single engine Cessna 177 violated restricted airspace in our nation's capital
again -- reaching within six miles of the Capitol building before being intercepted. In other words, the relatively slow, little Cessna was intercepted after it approached within slightly more than two minutes traveling time (at top speed) of the Capitol building. The Cessna 177 can attain a top speed of 157 miles per hour.
Suppose hypothetically there were "evildoers" in the world who really wanted to get an airplane into downtown D.C. to do some evil. Suppose they had access to the kind of money that would permit them to buy a private jet (I know that's a reach but humor me). Suppose they wanted to load it with all kinds of lovely goodies that go BOOM in a kamikaze mission (a la Herr Timothy McVeigh). Nice thought, huh? Aren't you glad it's just a hypothetical?
The top speed of a Cessna Citation X -- a jet -- is 703 mph. Now suppose that hypothetical jet were flying at a top speed like the Cessna Citation X's of 703 miles per hour six miles away from the Capitol building. At that speed, the plane would be covering nearly 12 miles per minute. The entire 30 mile trip from the airport where the Cessna 177 took off today would take about 3 minutes. (By comparison, it would take the little Cessna 177 more than 9 minutes to cover the 24 miles it covered today at its top speed.) Do you think the hypothetical terrorist jet, its pilot intent on reach the Capitol building, would have been intercepted and disaster avoided?
If, like me, you're skeptical the hypothetical jet would have been intercepted, then you're probably wondering, also like me, just how safe the rest of us are, if Congress doesn't even have systems in place to protect itself well more than six years after 9/11. Obama and Hillary should be driving the point home with a Reaganesque question.
After 12 years of Republican control of Congress and over seven years of a Republican president, do you feel safer today than you did before Bush Co took over? Or safer than you did in the aftermath of 9/11?
Why the spineless 110th Congress has not repeatedly challenged the Idiot in Chief on this issue rather than endlessly kowtowing and occasionally playing defense is mind-boggling. Hopefully a Democratic White House working with a Democratic Congress will once and for all finally do things that actually make us safer. While there are no guarantees, it is the one configuration of government we haven't tried since 9/11 which we have any reason to hope might fulfill what McCain piously but vacuously refers to as "the most sacred responsibility vested in a president": protecting U.S. citizens.
It's just one more issue the Democratic nominee should relentlessly pound the Republicans on without letting up for a second. Democrats don't need to adopt the politics of fear to do it, either. This is a question of merely expecting a modicum of competence from our national government.
So, do you feel safer today than you did 7 years ago?