For the entire span of my childhood, I never once seriously contemplated the possibility that someone from another country would ever come here with the intent to destroy the very things we hold dear. I simply could not concieve of the idea.

And apparently, I'm not alone, since this has been quite a shock to just about everyone in the USA (and some other, lesser countries). Although terrorist bombings and attacks have been and are quite common in Europe, for the most part, it seems as though we have been blissfully unaffected by this vicious scourge. Until now. And what can we really do to prevent future attacks? Our basic public institutions are so ridiculously insecure that just about anyone can destroy them.

For example, if someone wanted, they could go into our libraries and rub a viral agent on the spines of our books. If they are using a virus that's highly contagious, airborne and has an incubation period of over a week, who knows how many people could be infected! And what do we have to protect against this?

And suppose some Muslims decide to strap explosives to their kid and send him off to elementary school? What do we do in that situation?

I think that there are too many potential weak spots with which the Muslims can attack us and, well, I think that if they really wanted to, they could make a real mess of things over here. And the worst part about it is that there's nothing at all that I can do. I have to rely on the US government to protect me...and I have no idea as to whether they are prepared to defend us from these sorts of unorthodox attacks.

I don't like this at all.