9/11 Nine Years Ago: A Day Spent in a TV Station –

How We Could Have a 6.5% Unemployment Rate Today Instead of a Koran Burning

Where were you on 9/11 nine years ago? What were you doing? I was in Houston and spent the day at a TV station as a “terrorism expert.” How’d that happen? Where do we go from here?

How did it happen? I was invited to the Houston Fox 26 station because I had been their “Middle East Expert” during the first Gulf War with Saddam in 1990. Why? Frankly, no one else was available. I was picked because I had been writing a “fiction” book about a flash war in the Middle East (and a terror attack on the U.S.) when Saddam invaded Kuwait. (I had been in international attorney for large companies but was laid off in the Texas 80’s bust. I figured it might produce some “income”). Little did I know that my “fiction” book would become fact within two years: first the Saddam invasion of Kuwait and second, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (which really was the first attack on the U.S. but got little attention because it killed six people).

On 9/11, we had little idea of who was behind it and what was going on. My book was about Saddam leading such an audacious act, but I was wrong. Osama bin laden had created Al Qaida in the 90’s out of anger of U.S. forces being in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. Bin laden had traveled the world; Saddam never left Iraq. Saddam and bin Laden hated each other – one was religious, the other anything but. It took someone with global experience to come up with the idea of using our own aircraft as flying bombs. It wasn’t the first time anyone had done so: Japanese Kamikaze’s did the same – but with their own planes.

Where are we now, and where are we going? Nine years later, Ground Zero is still just a hole in the ground. Not even the memorial has been completed. We seem to have lost the ability to build things. In California a pipeline over 40 years old exploded. Nearly 25% of our bridges are unsafe, like the one that collapsed in Minnesota over the Mississippi. After decades of complacency and inattention, we need a major infrastructure update - replacing half century old pipelines and old bridges is an investment in our future. China's infrastructure is NEW. This is what we should be doing.

David Brooks pointed out in a thought-provoking article today that our unemployment rate would drop from 9.6% to 6.5% if we had people with technical skills to match the unfilled jobs existing today! Instead, our young people are all trying to be lawyers, accountants or hedge fund managers, which are in overabundance. An example: When I left the legal profession to own and operate a green company, my income level jumped to the highest it had ever been, despite the worst recession in 70 years!

I think the recession has led to the rise in Islamophobia that we see today. I wish people were as concerned about rebuilding America’s infrastructure and skills training.

We could create an entire industry and jobs based on new clean energy, so we can continue being global technology leaders. Yet we seem to be focusing on answers that do not improve infrastructure or training – tax cuts for the top 2% will not increase training of high-skilled technicians nor replace bridges before they collapse or keep citizens safe from pipelines that are a half century old. Nor will it lead to using advanced drilling technology that is available in other countries but not our own.

Like Pearl Harbor, 9/11 was a wakeup call. But the answer is not finding fault with others who are building community centers two blocks from Ground Zero when there is already a Mosque four blocks away. The fault has been our own inability to build our skills or a replacement for the World Trade towers.

That is what America should be thinking about on this nine year anniversary of 9/11.