I find it interesting that the words "Big Picture" are in the title of this topic, yet so many of the articles I've read don't seem to look at the big picture.

All I see is the same old rhetoric about about how the War on Terror is just an excuse for the Bush family to flex their muscles to make more money.

Let's look at reality here: America has been ignoring terrorism for years. We usually think of it as something that happens in other countries. The Brits get hit by the IRA. Big deal. Israel gets hit by the PLO. So what? Japan has a chemical agent used in their subway system and countless die. It's not here, right?

America gets hit and the World Trade Center gets bombed (the first time in the 90s). We suddenly start to care - for about a week. But, the buildings were still intact. The bad guys that perpetrated the crime are captured and no one decides to keep caring. The administration in power does nothing to find out who financed the terrorists and it just gets swept under the collective rug of our minds.

Then, almost a decade later, two planes crash into the World Trade Center and another crashes into the Pentagon, with a fourth crashing in Pennsylvania (destination unknown), and America is starting to panic. Everyone's afraid that a terrorist is going to attack their home - and it really doesn't help that all three major national news outlets are adding fuel to the fire (I know that I didn't leave my Tv for three straight days). Back then, everyone wanted to go to war with every country that sponsored terrorism and no one in Washington would dare to speak against it - after all, it wasn't an election year.

Then, about a year later evidence was being found that terrorists are not only in Afghanistan, but in other countries. Because those other countries hadn't sent terrorists to America yet, people once again didn't care. They all screamed how we shouldn't go to war with other countries. They started to count every death as if it were a hundred times that actual number. Politicians started using it as a rallying cry - to get VOTES!

What's it going to take to get people to realize that even if we don't believe in terrorists, they believe in us - and they want us dead. What kind of body count will be necessary here at home before people realize that we need to take the war to them before countless innocent lives are lost on our own soil?

Find Your Own Ostrich

-Ferret

Learn more about this author, David Furritus.
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