Not Safer

Put the pieces together, America. There's a lot of them, so follow closely.

Starting in 1993, the American homeland was first put under attack by Islamic extremists. In the eight years following that, we would suffer several more attacks, mostly by a group come to be known as al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, who coincidentally was trained, armed, and funded by President Reagan. Fortunately, none of those attacks would fall on American soil again, until one sunny morning in 2001.

We were suddenly and terrifyingly thrust back into reality, with the knowledge that we were not safe, virtually in our own homes. Today, for most of the country, that feeling continues. For anyone who denies that they feel safer, you can ask them about the events from last Wednesday, and how they felt about the headlines they most likely heard first:

"Plane Hits Building in Manhattan"

I know what I thought, and while I don't feel like a sheep who follows the herd (I don't believe that only Bush can save me), I know what I thought. "Oh dear, not again."

Almost immediately, I calmed down a bit, because I got a couple of details, like that it was right off the river, and it was an apartment building, and it was nowhere near midtown. I knew that in all likelihood, it was some poor fool who went off course, with tragic results.

We would come to learn in the hours that followed that it was Cory Lidle of the New York Yankees. Our fears were alleviated, to be replaced with sorrow for the loss of a young man with his life in front of him and many more years of a brilliant career. For me though, it brought one thing to my mind in perfect clarity: We are not safer now than five years ago.

After the first plane hit the World Trade Center, many of us initially thought it was a horrifying accident. That is the thought pattern that we lost that day, and that the Bushies have failed to restore. We immediately are led to fear the worst, and with good reason. 'Homeland Security' is underfunded, national intelligence is anything but, and the war to make us safer has made us far more vulnerable and in a state from which we may never recover.

We're not safer.