Power of telephone now being realized

“Come here, Watson” were the first words spoken on the first telephone by Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant in 1875. Little did he know that his legacy and invention would later precipitate the cost of billions to an anachronistic American military budget that eclipses all others in the industrialized world.

The telephone is now used as a strategic weapon by foreign terrorists to attack the core of our unprecedented, unheralded military prowess, vulnerably exposing its primary expenditures as wholly misdirected and utterly wasteful. Traditional warfare no longer exists, and the United States must eventually come to this realization. Spontaneous, random, erratic telephonic communication and intentional, deceptive cyber messaging can virtually bring a superpower to its knees.

Since we’ve intercepted calls supposedly coming from al-Qaida, the media seem to broadcast little else. Apparently no one is really listening, other than the enemies of America, since we see no change of course in the offing. Perhaps the possible visionary, Tom Watson, should have said to Bell, “Do you know what you’ve unleashed”?

James D. Cook

Schaumburg