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Are we safer now than we were immediately after 9/11, or have we just been lucky?

I'm sure that every thinking person out there would be able to figure that if it was so easy to attack the American homeland, we would be subject to daily terrorist assaults. However, if it is merely luck that we've come six years since 9/11 with no terrorist assaults on American soil, how do you explain that we've been able to stop or disrupt something in the neighborhood of 175 terrorist plots? (And those are merely the ones that are being acknowledged.) Did we happen to stumble across them just by blind luck? Or have we actually refocused our law enforcement and intelligence efforts into actively seeking out and destroying those plots? It should be fairly clear that our efforts have been providing tangible results. That is unless you're blinded by a particular political discourse.

There are those that drone on and on about our loss of freedoms and constitutional rights, but I personally know of no one who has been hampered in the least, outside of the long security and check-in lines at the airports that is. I know of no one who knows anyone that has had their rights trampled on as a result of the changes in our policies. And it is unlikely that those folks know anyone either. If you're going to act or carry yourself in public in a suspicious manner, then you shouldn't be too surprised when you draw additional scrutiny. If you've done nothing, then it should be cleared up rather quickly. On the other hand, if you're up to something nefarious, then I think we would all want that individual scrutinized.

Muslims may complain about how they're being automatically targeted for scrutiny, and in most cases they're correct. Virtually all the recent terror attacks in the world have been carried out by male Muslims, so how in the world could anyone say with a straight face we should also put blue-haired grandmothers with a deadly pair of knitting needles up to the same scrutiny as one who would fit "the description of the suspect," simply to conform to some illogical politically correct notion? If you reside in the US, and you make a telephone call to a number on a watch list in Tehran (e.g.), then we, as your neighbors, have a legitimate right in this day and age to inquire about the reason you made that call. That's nothing more than plain common sense.

No my friends, we've not been lucky, we've been diligent. And I hope we remain so.

Learn more about this author, James Swartwout.
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