Part II: The Rise of Terror and its success

Building One, North Tower, 1970

1960
David Rockefeller presents a plan for a world trade center along the East River of Manhattan.

1962
New York and New Jersey authorize the development of the World Trade Center.
Development proceeds amidst protests by [unconstitutionally] displaced business owners.

1963
The Port Authority wins the legal challenge to the development of the WTC.

1970
The North Tower of the WTC exceeds the height of the Empire State Building, making it the tallest building in the world.

1994
The WTC is designated one of the “Seven Wonders of the Modern World.”

On 9/11/2001 the outpouring of God’s blessing on our nation was suspended for cause. And, as if it were possible to miss the message, Americans  were put on notice through the 2002 Beltway Murders.

It began with six sniper shots.

On October 2:

James Martin, 55, program analyst, was shot in a parking lot  in Glenmont, Maryland.

On October 3:

James “Sonny” Buchanan, 39, landscaper, was shot mowing grass in Rockville at 7:40AM.

At 8:12, Premkumar Walekar, 54, driver, was shot fueling his taxicab in Aspen Hill.

At 8:37 AM, Sarah Ramos, 34, babysitter and housekeeper, was shot reading a book in front of an Aspen Hill restaurant.

At 9:58 AM Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, 25, wife and mother, took a bullet in the head at a Shell station in Kensington.

At 9:15 PM Pascal Charlot, 72, retired carpenter, was shot while walking on Georgia Avenue in Washington, D.C.

The victims had no connection with each other.

They all died.

It was Jihad.

The ragged tears in the lives of the families left behind by those first victims was just the beginning of the rip in the mindset of the country. By the end of October 3, the terrorism of the World Trade Center bombings a year earlier had, by these few simple acts, spread across the nation. These events commanded the attention of everyone conscious of “news.” Those susceptible to terror were terrified. Schools in the territory of the shootings went on lockdown.

But it was not over. For three more weeks shots rang out. Out of nowhere. Killing victims as young as 13 at random. Anywhere out in the open.

There was no conceivable personal defense.

Terrorism is a particular kind of violence. Those who say, “War IS terror” are doing violence to the language. It is not. The word “terrorism” means unpredictable acts of random violence against peaceful populations whose only purpose is to disrupt civilization by spreading fear.

For when they shall say, “Peace and safety;” then sudden destruction cometh upon them…

Terrorism is what noncombatants do because they can’t win militarily.

The Beltway murders were spectacularly effective acts of terrorism. Once complete, the campaign included only about 17 “shootings” and several of those victims survived. It is hard to imagine more damage being done to American public confidence with such a small death toll. The message seared into the nation’s subconscious was that the terror was not confined, indeed, could not be confined, to a foreign “enemy.” Their worst 9/11 nightmares were true. It was loose on the streets of America. It might arise anywhere at any time.

Before the arrest, during the terror, I wrote the following.

October, Two thousand two

Everything was loose and open like a bullet in the air

Like a freeway drawing a line

toward an indeterminate horizon,

perhaps at some wayside service station

to terminate pumping gas.

There drew out a swishing timeline

Of some still uncertain distance

With its own peculiar humming

Through the open space

between twin pops

Of firing pin and bone.

There are free and open spaces

In our shrinking, shaking nation

Exposed in our late loss

of the invisible protection.

We don’t know where the planes will land

We don’t know where the bullets stand

It’s open, big and vast and grand

And we don’t know who will save us.

When the Beltway killers were arrested, on October 24th, their project ended, but the damage to the American psyche remained. These were homegrown terrorists killing innocent people, completely at random, unpredictably, systematically. During the course of the investigation police turned up a message from John Muhammad  specifically left  for law enforcement to find:

Your children are not safe, anywhere, at any time.

Message delivered. Looking back, it was articulated this way:

‟Everything changed after 9/11”

Vast segments of the population were disillusioned about their personal peace and security. Many were called to examine their lives… some began to look to God…

But Government had an answer, too. In the wake of 9/11 we were offered the solution to our fear: mechanisms that began to construct a Police State but were called other things. International preemptive war abroad and the steady progressive development of “Homeland (in Germany they called it the “Fatherland”) Security”:

The only way an army can prevent terrorism in an Islamic state is to occupy the streets of that nation, disarm their populace and purchase spies. It is by imposing a Police State. (The Government of Iraq has been requesting our departure for years.)

The only way government felt it could effectively prevent terrorism at home, was to eradicate the 4th amendment, set up warrant-less searches, seizures, and wiretaps, eliminate due process, disarm Americans, track their movements and transactions electronically, and establish the right to detain them indefinitely and interrogate them cruelly, without trial, without filing charges, and without the right to an attorney. It was by becoming a Police State.

And the “Party of Freedom” began to do just that.

It was Surrealistic. It was the Republican Party as conceived by Salvador Dali.

In retrospect, it has been as if the Founder of our nation, the One in whom we said we trusted, He who blessed our nation above all that had preceded it for a thousand years, had at last demanded an accounting and began, without hands, to pull apart the pieces of our national process like a child with an insect.

As a direct result the Republican Party has all but disassembled itself… methodically… ruthlessly… inexorably… to reveal, beneath the outer lines of selfless grassroots activists, beneath the muscles and sinews of issues advocacy movements, beneath the focus-grouped sloganeering that fuels RNC fundraising… an ingrown central establishment  with a heart of utter darkness.

Teleprompter at the 2012 Republican National Convention with the scripted outcome ~ before the vote was held

We must awaken. We must retreat from the sham of self-congratulation and misdirection that got us here or we will doom this nation to slavery.

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