Sunday, April 12, 2009

FW: from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals The Stories Behind the News

from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals
The Stories Behind the News

People Succeed Where Systems Fail

Posted: 11 Apr 2009 07:36 PM PDT

The American people and their government chose to ignore the real lesson

of 9/11. Which is that people succeed where systems fail.

The system failed badly on 9/11, allowing terrorists to enter America,

train there, hijack four planes and executive devastating terrorist attacks

on American soil. The systems failed Federally, they failed abroad and at

home. They failed on a state level, on a corporate level and on a municipal

level. Simply, they failed.

But where systems failed, people did their best. The system failed the

NYFD, nevertheless without proper guidance or communication,

firefighters nevertheless managed to reach the highest floors. The

system failed the passengers on United 93, but they nevertheless

took back the plane and prevented an attack on the White House.

Contemplate that for a moment. It wasn't the White House
that saved anyone's life that day. It was ordinary Americans who

gave their lives to stop an attack on the White House.

Had we really understood that lesson, had the government understood

that lesson, and that of the large numbers of Americans who volunteered

at Ground Zero, who joined the military, who worked to gather information

on Jihadists and who demonstrated their willingness to resist the terrorists

at home and abroad... the history of the last 7 years might have been

very different indeed.

Instead the government put its faith in the same old defective systems,

with a new coat of paint, and some tinkering under the hood. And
told the people to cheer up, go back to shopping in order to boost the

economy and let the folks in D.C. get things done.

That after all was exactly what the government had told people about

the Communist threat, about the oil crisis and about any major
problem or threat.

Go to the polls when you're told, pay your taxes, smile for the

camera and stay out of our way. Yet that wasn't at all the way

things were supposed to work.

The triumph of the American experiment began with the idea that

freedom and government were vested in the individual. By the

dawn of the 20th Century however that idea had been swept away

in favor of a contradictory idea, that large governmental

institutions and militaries were the protectors of our freedom.

The victory over Fascism and the start of the Cold War seemed
to reaffirm the idea of government as protector, of democracy

as a tool to elevate men to supervise a larger struggle on behalf

of the free world.

That black and white picture however turned to static by the end

of the 20th century and the fragmented image that rose in its

aftermath looked very different indeed.

The Soviet Union was gone, in its place were dozens of nations,
entities and factions-- most of them committed to tyranny, some

on a global scale. And while none of them could singlehandedly

defeat the United States Army, they didn't have to. Because

government had stopped being the solution, and become the
problem.

The 20th century saw organization, centralization,

nationalization and mobilization as the solution, the waning

years of the century made it quite clear that if anything

the process had gone too far. Western nations could boast the
best organizations, but the best organization pitted against a

mobile enemy that could live as the 'rats within the walls' of your

civilization, was worth very little.

Expanding government made for

increasingly less efficient systems.

The bigger government got, the

more it took over, and the less it

could get done. We saw that

phenomenon up close in the War on

Terror in which we aimed canons at

gnats, killed a lot of gnats but

remained a long way from

solving the problem.

When the gnats relearned how to

exploit the flaws in the system, things

only got worse and at some national

fatigue reached a turning

point, just as it did in the Civil War, the Pacific Front during WW2, or in

Korea or in Vietnam. The American people can see when little

progress is being made at great cost.

The system chugged on, corners were cut and compromises were

made. And the Appeasement Party began a phony populist

movement with a rebranded image and a whole lot of dirty

money... and the rest is history. And depending on how things

go over the next few years, we may well be history too.

Now the same system is being transformed, dismantled
and rebuilt along different lines with the agenda of

undermining America's defense and the remains of the

free world. The Appeasement Party has surpassed the farthest
limits of treason, America's enemy sits in the White House and

his appointees run amuck with their dirty hands held high in

the air.

But that ending may too mark a beginning. The dismantling of

America as a superpower, the abandonment of American

sovereignty and the fall of national integrity is also one final

wake up call. As the systems come crashing down, we will

have a choice between one all encompassing system to

submit to... or between individual liberty and independence.

The American experiment is coming full circle again. The

colonists who resisted the control of a distant power with

global ambitions, have a chance to choose once again. The

idealistic view of an American superpower as a protector