Eight years and counting (bin laden editorial)

Last September marked the eighth year since the terrible tragedy of September 11th. Our country immediately grew afire and painted on a “You don’t mess with us” face and it was seen all across the nation. A person couldn’t go anywhere without witnessing our face paint and hearing our battle cry. Every time a person turned on the radio, turned on the television, walked through a store, or sat a stoplight looking at flag after flag on America’s bumpers, one was reminded of that date that will forever go down in history.

 With a promise that we would catch the supposed man in charge of it all, news reports are still streaming in of the voice recordings revealing that very man’s proof of existence. How exactly we get tape recordings from a man and not find out where he is will remain a mystery to many of us. We can send the Hubble Telescope into space to capture and find the unknown but we can’t use any sort of technology to find a man hiding in a mountain range, on earth. This would make an average citizen wonder where our government is investing its time and money.

 Mr. Osama bin Laden recently spoke publicly about the Christmas Day airliner-bombing attempt that took place on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit just over a month ago. While graciously approving the effort, he specifically stated that the message was from “Osama to Obama.” Now, as Osama threatens with more attempts of terrorism, Obama is working on withdrawing troops from Iraq. Something about this picture forming seems a bit odd. Have we really won the war? According to this recent report bin Laden is believed to be hiding in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. Well, why don’t we just get on the Internet and pull up Google map, America?

 “God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue,” bin Laden stated. Well, in most cases this statement would probably seem threatening and perhaps a bit frightening to the U.S., or so one would think. But if you are the president now days you have better things to worry about because the economy is in a recession which in turn means it needs some serious work and you must back yourself up with an action to the incredible speeches that won you office. That war stuff is old news since Bush is out of the picture. Just keep the airport security extremely high for our safety and until the recession is over let’s just play phone tag with Mr. bin Laden. 

            So here we are in a “Where’s Waldo” type of game, just left wondering if we really ever will catch bin Laden and his gang. Something must be done. As the old saying goes, “It’s always quiet before the storm.” It’s been pretty quiet lately. There have been some scattered showers here and there but if we can actually stop a storm from coming, why not put the umbrellas away and get after it?