It'd be completely naive for anyone to have nothing to fear but the case here is more about the fact that 9/11 did not make us more vulnerable to attack from terrorists. It simply enlightened many of our citizens to what's out there. Those same irrational people have existed throughout history and really the dangers today pale in comparison to eras when nuclear weapons were poised to fly with only a hair trigger preventing them.

To a rational person, we were infinitely more safe the day after 9/11 than we were the day before it occurred because the bad guys had played their hand. Never again in our future will passengers of an airline sit like sacrificial lambs if a hijacking occurs content to think the plane will land in some land and all will go back to their lives.

Never again will a foreigner sign up for a flight school in this country without all around him watching for signs of irrational behavior.

Our fears today are out of line with reality and you simply cannot argue that those fears have not been recklessly exploited by our current government. The number of truly evil people in the world is the same percentage it's always been and, if you really analyze it, most of those deranged individuals are not aligned with countries but belong to disconnected bands. We have no industrial powerhouses like Germany and Japan ruled by the truly insane that are capable of truly conquering their neighbors and amassing powerful armies. (and I'm not ignoring China and Russia. They simply can't attack without escalating things beyond their own best interests) The worst we have to fear are isolated attacks by small groups of people that only become popular if we over-react to them.

Yes, the possibility exists that one of these small cabals will nuke a city some day and that's an abhorrent and scary thought for any thinking individual but it scares me more that someone claiming to be an American would exploit and overstate that fear to carry out their power-hungry schemes of economic and political domination. History teaches us the latter is the true road to Hell.

Art