"9/11 Has Made Us Stupid,"

So says Thomas Friedman in this NYT column. Friedman's exhibit A? We don't have enough tourists coming in.

IMO, this is a pretty stupid exhibit, and for me is exhibit A in the liberal stuck on stupid trial. Like so many liberals, Friedman has naively raced past what happened to us on 9/11 and is displaying a 9/10 mentality towards it. Why do I say he has a 9/10 attitude? Because on 9/10/01, everybody was more concerned with the slumping stock market than about security and terrorism. George W. Bush didn't campaign as either a security president or a terrorism president. He campaigned on domestic issues like education. And it sounds to me like that's where Friedman is stuck, too.

Back in 1991, in the heady days of the "peace dividend" which allowed Dick Cheney to take his revenge against Democrat nemesis Jim Wright by taking 91% of the defense cuts out of a single county (Tarrant--my home), I couldn't understand my parents near hysteria about cutting the military. I don't think "hysteria" is much of an exaggeration. Their reaction to the idea of beating our sickles into plowshares was very emotional. In an unguarded moment, my father finally mentioned Pearl Harbor and America's vulnerability in the days following it. "I never want your generation to know that feeling," my angry mother had spat out.

Of course, I'd never had to think about that sort of vulnerability. While I had grown up in a Cold War world (remember "duck and cover" drills?), that global threat had never seemed all that imminent to me. No, I never wanted us to dismantle our missiles. I wasn't so stupid that I actually thought if we went first the Soviets would follow. But I did think that building and buying bigger and better airplanes, boats, missiles, guns and other military gear was a waste of money better spent on education, the environment, and helping the poor (because giving more aid would fix poverty, even though it hadn't worked in 25 years at that point).

As I stood in my babysitter's living room that morning of Sept. 11, I realized that we had had our Pearl Harbor. And for the first time in my life, I understood why my parents had been so insistent that we spend more, not less, on our military. Because being prepared for any attack, no matter how remote, was more important than buying an extra politically correct book for third graders, or another film teaching ninth graders about oral sex.

It's Friedman's blind 9/10 view that is the problem. Sure, I wouldn't mind if we had more tourists coming to America. That would be great for the tourism industry. But I don't want to relax security standards just so that can happen. It's bizarre that Friedman doesn't notice that, as he celebrates the increase in tourism in Europe, he forgets the terrorist attacks and threats of attacks the Europeans have. And it isn't just Britain suffering these threats and attacks; they are all over Europe in the places Friedman is celebrating for having increased tourism. I guess the terrorists like to visit places, too.

I took a lot of heat from the moonbatosphere for saying it's time we get over Katrina. I said that not because I lack sympathy for people hurt by the hurricane, but because pouring millions of dollars to rebuild where another hurricane can hit is a waste of resources and shows we learned nothing from the situation. But being wary after 9/11 isn't counterproductive or wasting resources; it's recognizing that the world we live in is dangerous and there really are people determined to kill Americans wherever they find us. It's not 9/11 that has made us stupid. It's the naive 9/10 thinkers that make us stupid.