The dumbing down of America combined with the growing tendency to blame American institutions for every problem under the sun has resulted in jury decisions that truly defy rationality. And the 2005 ruling that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey bears more responsibility for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center than the very terrorists who exploded the bomb is a prime example of just how remarkably screwy "juries of our peers" can be nowadays. As today's New York Post editorial says, "Blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was behind the '93 attack, must still be laughing over the ruling."Remember the details? The 1993 attack involved a 1,500-lb urea nitrate-fuel oil bomb hidden in a truck and detonated in an underground parking garage. The terrorists hoped to destroy the foundations of one of the towers, causing it to then topple into the other to bring them both down. If successful, the attack would have killed more than 200,000 people. The tower did not collapse but the force of the immense explosion still killed six and injured over a thousand.
So who was to blame? Well, six extremist Islamists were eventually convicted of carrying out the cowardly, evil action while others who helped plan and finance the attack, including al-Qaeda thug Khaled Shaikh Mohammed escaped. But the 2005 jury, drawn to settle lawsuits by victims, somehow managed to divide the blame, deciding that 68% of the responsibility for the deaths and injuries was that of the Port Authority while the mass murderers themselves were only 32% responsible!
Here's more of the eminently sane Post editorial:
...Jurors faulted the PA because they believed it hadn't taken adequate measures to prevent an attack. But agency lawyers note that security planning was based on the fact that there were no known specific threats at the time. Indeed, before 1993, vanishingly few Americans would have thought a major terrorist strike on the Twin Towers was likely, even in a general sense.
Here's an even better reason to chuck the finding: It defies common sense.
Terrorists planned the attack, built the bomb, rented the truck, drove it to the building - and exploded it. They are the ones responsible for the damage, injuries, pain and suffering and six deaths that resulted from the attack.
Not the Port Authority.
Not the Man in the Moon.
(No doubt, lawyers for the plaintiffs - 45 victims of the attack who haven't reached a settlement with the agency, from an initial pool of 655 - would sue him, too, if the moon were made of cash.)
Let's face it: What happened here is that six misguided jurors - feeling understandable sympathy, perhaps, for the victims - bought into the contorted logic of fee-hungry lawyers who were targeting the agency's deep pockets.
But no reasonable level of internal protection (certainly nothing in accordance with conventional thinking at the time) could have prevented the terrorists from striking if they were intent on doing so. After all, stepped-up security at the WTC didn't stop the 9/11 attack. Even today, it would be naive to think every key site in America is 100 percent safe - despite considerable post-9/11 security efforts and anti-terror measures.
Blaming the PA does more than just punish the wrong party; it absolves the terrorists... It tells them that when they hit Americans, Americans respond by hitting . . . each other. In the wallet.
It's no way to win a War on Terror. And the judges ought to say so - by dumping the ruling in the circular file.
