Ever since September 11, the entire United States has pondered two questions: "What went wrong?" and "What can we do about it?" What went wrong is security-based. The buildings did not conform to safety codes because they were exempt, which I personally think is ridiculous. As for the planes, airport security was apparently a bit lax-- but then, policy did not require it to be as tight as it is now.
So what do we do about it? What did we do about it? Well, for a start, airport security has been stepped up. However, I have heard little about remaining structures which are exempt from state codes, and I am not happy about that. To leave this situation is to leave a door open for terrorists.
We did, however, go to war. Oddly enough, we did not go to war with Saudi Arabia, the country from which most of the terrorists came. No, we went to war with Iraq. Now, Saddam Hussein is better gone; I'm not upset about that. What bothered me was the cause, not the effect. This was clearly about oil and politics, not protecting the world from terrorism.
See, what most people forget is that there are terrorists all over the world, not just the Middle East. A true war on terrorism would involve the government of each country giving an all-out, honest effort to eradicate terrorism domestically. Obviously, that is not practical at this time, and it may never be. But my point is that we never had a "War on Terrorism."
So what can we really do about terrorism? To begin with, we need to update safety codes and drills. We need tight homeland security-- in the homeland. We need to stop retaliating pointlessly and start fixing our own problems.
In short, we need to start thinking.
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