Through the 9/11 comission, and the intelligence documents revealed by it, it came to light that the FAA and the airlines were warned repeatedly leading up to September 11th of plans to hijack airliners in a possible suicide mission. But this was not enough to stir them to action. It seems as though the "actionable intelligence" they were expecting was exact flight numbers handed to them on a silver platter, so they could simply cancel those flights and continue on in blissful ignorance.
We need to face up to the unpleasant reality that the FAA is largely in the pockets of the airline industry, so when it came down to making tough choices that might significantly impact the industry's bottom line, the FAA wimped out and let the industry have its do-it-on-the-cheap way with the safety of the American people.
They made a gamble. They could either institute the necessary safety measures to protect their passengers that would cost them and risk them being uncompetitive, or they could play it cheap in the hopes that they could dodge the bullet of some unlikely cataclysmic event occurring. Well, they gambled with our safety and they lost that gamble. They chose poorly and the unlikely cataclysmic event did occur. So, now they're up shit creek without a paddle.
So, if airlines go belly-up now, do you think I will weep for them? Methinks not. They - and the FAA - betrayed America and permitted 9/11 to happen. And they betrayed the entire world as well, since the entire world has now been engulfed in a wave of destruction resulting from America's knee-jerk reaction to 9/11, otherwise known as the "war on terror".
In the end, we in America must take primary responsibility for 9/11. The airline security systems were so hopelessly inadequate that the tragedy of 9/11 was just waiting to happen. Enough people were aware of the risks of continuing operations with these weak security systems that there is simply no way for us to excuse our own culpability and then cry foul as though we are the poor helpless victims. We are not babies, yet we act that way. Time to grow up and accept the blame for a blatant lack of vigilance, laziness, complacency, and the corruption of our government agencies by corporate special interests.