The big What If!

I got to thinking about this tonight and the more I got into it, the more staggering the implications became.

What If.

What if September 11th never happened?

Try to wrap your mind around that for a second. Over the next few days because of the anniversary coming up it will be paraded before us again so, I ask you to think about a world where the perpetrators are caught before getting on the planes or there is some great foul up in their plan and even after getting on the planes, the aircraft don’t reach their intended destinations.

Are we in Afghanistan? If not, is the Taliban still in power? What’s the situation like in neighboring Pakistan because of it?

Are we in Iraq? What happens to Saddam Hussein? Has there been a coup? Is he murdered? Does he go to war with one of his neighbors?

Are we at war at all? With China? With Russia?

Does George W. Bush get elected to a second term? Does Al Gore run against him in ’04? Does John Kerry win?

Is there a mortgage crisis? Are the markets doing well? Have we squandered the surplus?

Does the government fail us to the extent it did during the catastrophe that was Katrina?

If there has been one defining moment that has determined the path of our nation over the course of the first decade of the new millennium, September 11th is it. It has set us upon a path no one can truly see where it will lead. We still couch political discourse within the framework of “security” and making America “safe.”