This Just In — For the time being, I leave aside the widespread, alarming skepticism regarding the authenticity of the shooting incident at last Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.
In December of 1941, the United States suffered a massive surprise attack on the military base at Pearl Harbor. Two destroyers and 188 aircraft were lost along with more than 2,400 lives and more than 1,000 people injured.
In November 1963, the President of the United States rode through downtown Dallas, Texas at a slow speed in an open convertible, losing his life to an assassin’s bullet.
In March 1981, shortly after taking office, President Ronald Reagan exited the Washington Hilton and waved to the crowd gathered on the sidewalk when he was shot from just a few feet away. His press secretary, one of his Secret Service agents and a DC police officer were also shot.
In October 1983 two truck bombs were detonated in Beirut Lebanon, housing American and French peacekeepers, killing 241 US Marines and 58 French personnel as they slept.
In April 1995 anti-government terrorists detonated a rental truck full of fertilizer in front of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, killing 168 people, many of them children.
In September 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists took control of four commercial airliners and successfully attacked three targets, using the planes as bombs. The passengers on the fourth aircraft successfully fought for control of the plane and crashed it into the ground in Pennsylvania, probably sparing the White House or US Capitol building from a devastating attack.
All of these events have an important common theme. The attacks were successful at least in part due to a lack of imagination on the part of the U.S. Government, responsible for our defense. These were all attacks on our republic.
Real or not, what happened last Saturday at the Washington Hilton has revealed that the current administration put the country in great danger for the lack of its own competence and imagination. Not just the president … the country. All of us.
No matter your opinion (or mine) about who is (or should be) president, this kind of recklessness is intolerable.
In that room on Saturday was the President, the Vice-President, the Speaker of the House, a dozen cabinet secretaries and scores of members of Congress. If this attacker had four or five co-conspirators, all of them with a suicide plan like the 9/11 attackers had, Senate Pro-Tempore (92-year-old) Chuck Grassley would be President right now as he did not attend.
As we are a country now engaged in a shooting war with Iran, a well-known sponsor of terrorism, I simply cannot imagine the justification for having these people (especially both the president and vice-president) in the same location for an event that simply does not require their in-person attendance.
The individual who flew past the security checkpoint on Saturday got as close as he did mainly by just being a guest at the hotel for two weeks and waiting for his targets to arrive. As one security expert described it, the attacker’s plan was a joke. If he had munitions expertise and a few friends, this would have been catastrophic.
There was gunfire, hitting a security person whose vest prevented injury. With secret service all around, shooting at the attacker, none of them hit him. NONE. He was tackled and taken into custody without injury.
If this shooter had been as well armed and prepared as any number of mass murdering school shooters from the last 30 years, he would have left a mass casualty event of unparalleled horror – tuxedos and sparkling gowns drenched in blood and a government decapitated.
The reason that didn’t happen is that this attacker wasn’t interested in killing a lot of innocent people. It wasn’t the great preparation of the Secret Service or the bravery of law enforcement. No. It was the attacker’s unwillingness to do it. We can’t rely on that as a defensive posture.
So this week, we have late night comedy and talking heads on cable news wondering if the event should be rescheduled (it shouldn’t), instead of a 92-year-old President Grassley presiding over martial law and a crashed economy, trying to re-configure the federal government.
We have this ONLY because we were lucky, not because we were smart. Rescheduling this event, which would be a cost borne by the association, cannot be justified. This reckless endangerment should be the subject of bipartisan hearings this summer. Nothing less than our way of life is at stake.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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