Sometimes there are no right answers

Is there a way to make everyone happy at once? No. Is there a way to make sure something as large as the United States is completely safe? No.

On Wednesday, I heard two reactions to Tuesday's attack that really stood out in my mind. One person said that we need to address the issues that spawned this attack. I am wondering if they realize that means we are accepting defeat. Government policy has always been to not give in to terrorist demands. If we do give in, maybe we didn't do enough, so the next person angry with the United States will see that extreme methods worked in the past, so he will orchestrate another massacre.

Only two people were really needed to pull off the Oklahoma City bombing, and one person could produce similar devastating effects. No matter what, not everyone will be happy, so terrorists will always exist, and a smart enough person can kill any number of people with the right resources.

The second reaction was people saying how we screwed up, how we should have been ready for this. I would like to know how anyone proposes we be ready for an assault that essentially uses the blood veins of our country against us? Airport security could have been a little more stringent. Yes, they could have, but before you knew the consequences of our "lax" security, would you have wanted that? People are thinking that the knives used should have been seen in the metal detector, and they could have been, but now, even a plastic knife is not to be allowed on any commercial aircraft. I am wondering how they are going to know? They will have to search every individual to guarantee our safety, but before Tuesday, all of us would have thought that too extreme. Most would have refused to fly and definitely would have petitioned their representatives in Congress.

If we had identified all hijacked jets before they did any damage, we would have had to blow them out of the air with more than 40 U.S. citizens on each aircraft. How could we risk those lives without being certain of the final danger? There was very little that could have been done to stop Tuesday's events, and unfortunately, to paraphrase Star Wars, the tighter you hold on to something, the more it will slip through your fingers. No security is flawless, someone will always be out there looking for the flaws, and no one is truly safe, no matter what precautions they take socially or physically.

Benjamin Greene
freshman in LAS

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