Man, what does a terrorist have to do these days to get noticed? It seems that no matter what Osama bin Laden and others do, there are people out there who continue to turn a blind eye to the reality of terrorism against America. Maybe in his Monday letter to the editor “Educate Yourself on Terrorism,” Thomas Knych thinks that hijacking airliners and crashing them into 110-story skyscrapers and government buildings isn’t indicative of an organized and well-funded terrorist threat against America. I do.
It’s not as if there weren’t warning signs that the terrorists were targeting us before Sept. 11. In fact, Sept. 11 wasn’t even the first time terrorists tried to destroy the Twin Towers. There have been several attacks in the past few years that were either planned and thwarted or actually carried out against American interests: the failed millennium plot to blow up commercial airliners in Los Angeles, the attack on the USS Cole and the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.
The point is that Sept. 11 was not an isolated incident, but a long-overdue wake-up call. America can continue to bury its collective head in the sand — but we would do so only at our own grave danger. From what we saw with our own eyes on that terrible day, and from intelligence found in Afghanistan, it is clear that the only thing limiting what the terrorists will do is what they can do. I have no doubt if they had some kind of nuclear or biological device, they would use it. They have no respect for our lives, and as we saw in the tape of bin Laden celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center, no remorse for past deeds; through a perversion of religion, they justify murder.
Is the U.S. government a collection of saints? No. Was calling Iraq and company an evil axis an overstatement (to put it mildly)? Yes. But regardless of what you think of President George Bush or American policy in general, you have to admit that terrorism is a very serious threat to people’s lives. It must be addressed and must be addressed now. We have both the opportunity and the obligation to prevent terrorist crimes in the future. Let’s make sure that in 10 years, we don’t wake up to find a much better financed and technologically capable terrorist network than what exists today and regret that we did nothing when we had the chance. Let’s not let our hubris be our undoing.
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