This is the picture of an American terrorist:
::photo removed for bandwidth considerations::
No matter how many wiretaps the government performed (legally or illegally), no matter how many witnesses the government interrogated, no matter how many billions of our tax dollars went to advanced weaponry and intelligence, it is unlikely that we could have stopped this young man from attacking innocent Americans (who just so happened to be gay) on American soil.
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Make no doubt about it: by attempting to destroy human life, he is a terrorist.
This is only a small example of our government's inability to fully control terrorism. Most Americans will not make this connection, will shrug it off as gay-bashing, which is almost acceptable to the populace, or at the very least, almost universally ignored by heterosexuals (revolting isn't it?). Let me repeat: it's terrorism just the same, and even this small incident proves we are no safer than in 2001.
Again, our society is left picking up the pieces, only this time, little will be done. These were "gays" in a gay bar, by their own choice mind you! You mean just like the victims in the WTC were "capitalists" and "tourists" and others there by their own choice? I guess there's a sliding scale of who's worthy of being attacked and who isn't.
"But at least 3000 people didn't die!" you might exclaim. Well, truly, so far only one person died indirectly as a result of Robida's actions, but this isn't about a multitude of deaths or even the fact that Americans were targeted. This is about Americans' conditioned view of terrorists as foreigners with a grudge against America. As I mentioned above, no matter how thorough or extreme our efforts to prevent terrorism, some killers will slip through the cracks. The smartest and/or most psychotic of them will not give any signal of their intentions until after the fact. And while Bush is assuring us that he is only wiretapping those with links to Al Qaeda, an American terrorist just tried to kill our fellow Americans, and even a wiretap wouldn't have stopped this incident.
I don't have a very clear solution, but I can tell you that the solution IS NOT giving the President universal power to do whatever he wants.