Bin Laden Strikes London



Eyewitness Reactions, Here.

When I was in London, my sophomore year in high school, I stayed in Russell Square, in a 60's era hotel a few feet away from where, this morning, a double decker bus was blown apart by a terrorist bomb.

It was a different time back then. We were in the glory years of the Clinton Administration, just after Clinton's re-election and just before the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Three years after Oklahoma city. One year before Columbine. Sure, there was war in the world, but it was remote. It was a peaceful time in America.

Now, it's hard to picture anywhere being peaceful. From the beaches of Bali to the city streets of New York, nowhere seems safe. I'm sure that Fearless Leader will use this opportunity to remind Americans that we've gone without a terrorist attack in this country for four years. But the truth is, back in '98, a mere three years since a major terrorist attack, the vast majority of Americans felt safe. With this feeling of safety came a booming economy, unparalelled drops in violent crime, and a media so bored with everything that it decided a blow job would be the biggest story of the 90's.

Why did we feel so safe?

Timothy McVeigh was behind bars.

The "War on Terror," in that case, lasted 90 minutes, which is how long it took for police to arrest McVeigh for driving without a license.

Meanwhile, here we are, well over two million minutes into the war on terror, and Bin Laden, McVeigh times thirty, is on the loose-- and his affiliates are still fighting in the name of his organization.

How can anyone look at what Bush has done the past four years and think that he somehow made us safer? On vacation during initial terror warnings, reading My Pet Goat on Judgement Day, letting Bin Laden go at Tora Bora, entering us into a nonsensical quagmire in Iraq, and giving more terrorism fighting funds to Nome, Alaska than to New York City, New York??? What exactly has Bush done to make us safer other than give us a nice little rainbow warning system that changes colors based on political need? Do YOU feel safe??

Yes, it's been four years of no tragedy in America. But the number of Americans dying in Iraq is rapidly approaching 9/11's death toll. And todays bombings in London show that the terrorists are still perfectly capable of organizing a large scale attack, even under the supposedly more watchful eyes of the world's governments.

And hanging over all of us are the ghosts from 9/11, wondering why their killer hasn't been brought to justice.