Another important four letter word

That's FEAR. ZbigniewBrzezinski has a piece in yesterday's Washington Post on how fear has damaged this country. The thing that really got to me is the number of sites that are now included in a national database of possible terrorist targets. Congress began the database in early 2003 with 160 sites. How many do you think there are now, four years later? Would you believe 300,000? Would you believe that terrorists would be interested in the Illinois Apple and Pork Festival? Some genius believes so as it is one of the items in the database.

Here's a quote from the article that tells you how far we have come:

The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself.

The really sad part about all this is that we really are no safer today than we were on September 10, 2001. There have been billions of dollars spent, but just look around you and see what you would destroy if you were a terrorist and how easily you could do it.