Now I don't want to complain but if I hear "everything has changed" just one more time I'm going to crack. I hate to tell you this but nothing has changed. Before 9-11 we had terrorists and after 9-11 there are still terrorists. Did everyone just somehow forget about the World Trade Center in 1993 or the Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 and what about the USS Cole in October of 2000 an explosion tore a 40 x 40 hole in the side of the that destroyer. We were damn lucky it didn't sink. Dick Cheney was hiding before 9-11, usually in a hospital, and after 9-11 he is still hiding. He says on Jay Leno's show that he and president shouldn't be in the same place at the same time because everything has changed. Before 9-11 we worried about some crazy with a gun now we have to worry about bombs and other bad stuff. Does the guy think all the guns before 9-11 were single shot.
Sometimes terrorists are successful sometimes they're not, but nothing has changed. I know what you're thinking, doesn't this guy remember we lost 3000 people at one time on 9-11. I'll grant that, but it was not for a lack of trying that it didn't happen sooner. A few feet or inches and the World Trade Center could have collapsed in 1993, the Cole may have sunk and even more innocent victims could have died in Africa. And since I'm off on a rant the other phrase I'm tired of hearing is "nothing will ever be the same". The only thing that won't be the same is that we'll have less freedom, we'll never be late to the airport and still make our flight. We'll never have the same level of privacy that we had before. We won't have the same standard of living because we'll be spending all our money on security. Will we be any safer, perhaps, but the risk will always be there just like it was before. There will be future terrorist attacks there's no damn way to stop them. An open society will always be vulnerable. That's the price we pay. I think Nader put it well when he said, "this kind of terrorism is tolerated and bred by poverty, injustice, dictatorships, destitution and human suffering." That's the place to start. Otherwise the terrorist's win. It will never be perfect, but hell that's the way it's always been, nothing has changed everything is still the same.