Is Osama Bin Laden Winning Now?

By Ron C. West

Almost everyone has heard the old analogy that if you place a frog in a pan and slowly bring the water to boiling, he will die without trying to jump out. I believe that the people of our great country are in the "pan" with the temperature slowly being raised to "boiling" because of the September 11th attack. I wonder if we will realize our peril before it is too late.

In my recent travels by air, I have seen some small examples of our knee jerk reaction to the September 11th tragedy. Resident aliens man our security gates at our airports and enforce ridiculous rules for our "safety". Examples of the extremes - they dusted my deck shoes for bomb powder and disposed of my dangerous moustache scissors with the ½ inch blade. Apparently, unlike many others, I did not feel safer after this type of experience, rather, I really felt violated. There is no screening of this type that would actually stop a suicidal person from getting on an airplane with a variety of deadly weapons if they were trained for the purpose. In all likelihood, the next "terrorist incident" will involve something other than an airplane anyway.

When I boarded an airplane, I did so with the knowledge that our government did not trust the pilots enough to allow them to be armed for possible self-defense of the airplane while in route. I note also that our government does not trust any citizens enough to allow them any type of personal self-defense. I also know that the government is aware of a large number of possible foreign terrorists in our country with unknown whereabouts and questionable visas that permitted them to come in.

In recent legislation, our federal government has passed laws that even the most ignorant understand are un-Constitutional. More such laws are in congress now with a high probability of passage. All of this is being done for our "safety" while degree by degree, raising the temperature to the point of death of freedom.

It is time for us to ask questions about the objectives of the madman who decreed the attack on the World Trade Center. What did he hope to accomplish besides killing and mayhem? Did he anticipate the total disruption of the American way of life? Did he anticipate the enormous costs to the American taxpayer? Did he understand that our government would use this incident to grab totalitarian powers outside of the Constitution? Did he think that he could disrupt entire industries and cause the stock market to fall by trillions of dollars? Do you believe that he thought that he would accomplish the most successful terrorist attack in the history of the world? Do you think that he expected to strike fear into the heart of every American? Whatever his initial expectations, our actions have handed all of the above to him on a silver platter.

I ask myself if I believe that our actions honor the people who paid the ultimate price of their lives in the attack? The answer I keep coming back to is "no way"! I keep wondering about our values. Do we trust other American citizens as much as we trust our government? Do we trust other nations and nationalities better than each other? Why do we believe that more laws and restrictions on our personal freedoms are the solution to the failures of our existing laws and governmental bodies that failed to prevent the attack? Why is the Immigration and Naturalization Service going to be better with a lot more money? Why do we need an Office of Homeland Defense when we have dozens of agencies already supposed to do that job? Why would our President ask for our Military to be made available for civilian police actions in our own country? I heard with unbelief a plan for citizens to be recruited to spy on other citizens. Where is our two party system offering differing view points? (It now seems as both our major parties are intent upon growing our federal government into a police state.) And perhaps most importantly, will any of these actions actually make us more "safe"? In reality, I believe not only will we be less "safe" from external attacks, we are greatly expanding the possibility of a future police state from within our own country at some ever-closer future date.

The bottom line of the September 11th attacks on our country is that Osama been Lousy (bin Laden) won a far larger victory against the United States of America than he could possibly imagined. With the scope and magnitude of his success we have virtually assured future attacks and massive losses of American life. Any madman can now point to all of the actions of our government and can extrapolate future losses of our freedoms at an every increasing rate with each new attack. Only when or if ever, we as citizens realize that ultimately we are responsible for our own safety will the effect of terrorism be minimized.

Do we face risks? Of course we do. Should our government try to protect us? Absolutely - but only within the bounds of the Constitution!

Our country was founded to allow freedom from fear of the tyrannies of King George of England. We should not allow a madman to cause us fear of tyrannies from President George or any elected president that may follow him. As Benjamin Franklin so aptly said, safety cannot be purchased by the loss of freedom!