Post Scripts: The next attack?

It worries me that years following the 9/11 attack we have not accomplished much in planning to protect America and its citizens from terrorist attacks. The United States remains the prime target of those who would like to see our beautiful country brought to its knees in a major attack.

Oh it’s not that we have not spent millions in anticipating an attack, or that our government is not aware of such a possible, if not probable, disaster. It’s just that Washington has done very little to get the planning into high gear. I shudder to think of what might happen if we learned that one of our major cities was about to attacked.

Think for a minute how feeble our national response was to the Katrina disaster. It took weeks and weeks before the Washington bureaucracy woke up to the seriousness of the hurricane damage. By the time government woke up, those affected were being treated like refugees from a far off planet.

Today, the flow of refugees into America, plus the possible and probable entrance into the U.S. by unknown thousands, including terrorists, only adds to the insecurity of our nation. Consider how easy it is for people (including possible trouble-makers) walk into our country via Mexico.

In the U.S. our transportation security problem is tremendous. Over 730 million people travel on commercial aircraft every year. Add to that 11.2 million trucks and 2.2 million railroad cars cross into the U.S. each year. In addition, 7,500 foreign ships make over 50,000 calls into U.S. ports every year. We are spending over $100 million a year for rail security and mass-transit security.

"Operation Safe Commerce" is a new program designed to develop up-to-date methods of making sure the movement of cargo through American ports and the entire supply chain. Screening of cargo entering U.S. ports is further along. Passenger ships are far more closely watched than ever before. There is a new program which links databases to provide valuable information (pictures and finger scans) on everyone entering our country with a non-immigrant visa.

The U.S. border with Mexico remains porous. Even undocumented Arabs are entering America through Mexico. Should this bother us? It certainly should because we will spend over $40 billion this year on Homeland Security. Are we prepared to stop another terrorist attack? Maybe, if we’re lucky.

We must remember America was settled by so-called "immigrants" who developed a great and mighty nation from the wilderness. We still need immigrants but we must remain selective in choosing those we select to become citizens.