Rebuilding New York. . .

. . . And Waiting For Godot!

Nothing emboldens the terrorists more than for them to see their arch enemies squabble, babble, scratch their heads, and sit on their hands.

While Osama travels from cave to cave, he and his sinister cohorts can log on to the Internet on any given day [just how does he do that, when we can't get wireless to work from one room in our houses to the next?] and see that the huge hole he put in the ground (not to mention in our hearts) some five long years ago, is still nothing more than that -- a huge hole in the ground.

As a kid, I used to watch those old war movies. You know. The ones where the bad guys blew up a bridge, and, not a commercial later, the good guys had rebuilt it. In fact, every time the enemy blew up that bridge, the "good guys" (no matter the risk to life and limb) built a new one. Boy, did that demoralize the enemy.

Maybe its harder to tell the good guys from the bad guys, these days. I think it has something to do with hats. Or maybe there just aren't as many well-staged war movies anymore.

Maybe we've lost our will, or, given the scarcity of intelligent leadership, have lost our way.

Odd how we could rebuild the whole of Europe, not to mention a good part of Asia, but we can't seem to so much as lay a cornerstone here at home. We can build schools and hospitals, fix roads and electric lines, in Baghdad, but can't build a tower in New York or fix a levee in New Orleans. We can't even recover in a timely fashion from a relatively minor blackout (caused not by terrorism, but by a storm) in Queens. But not to worry. At least we're safe!

Or, it could be a matter of fatigue -- we're simply 9-11'd out. Years of waiting in fear -- as the colors change from yellow to orange, and, as if by calculated scheme, nothing happens -- will do that to you.

No, you can't say that. Why, it is blasphemy (if not downright unAmerican) to even think that!

But face it, five years, tens of thousands of feet of news reel footage, dozens of documentaries, myriad memorial services, a half dozen second-rate movies, and endless "chatter" -- from commissions, elected officials, families, wannabes, the media, Larry Silverstein, and the terrorists themselves via audio and video tape -- and many of us, admit it or not, have, frankly, had enough.

Build the Freedom Tower, already. Build something. Anything.

Okay, maybe we can never move on, but at least we should begin to move forward.

That, dear friends, will be our best defense against terror.
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Meanwhile, with 9-11-06 behind us, we take a moment to commemorate 7-11. Not the date -- the convenience store. It will give us something else to think about, and, with a Big Gulp in hand, something tangible to build upon.