Terror What Terror

Terror? What Terror?

Our nation is being held hostage by a very clever administration which uses ‘Terror’ as a divisive tool. Even to the most casual observer of American society, the mass fear of terror is a farce. The subtle, official, implication that an attack on our nation is imminent makes a mockery of responsible national leadership.

To get a feel for what real terror is like, just walk the streets of our nation’s inner cities. The fear of law abiding citizens is palpable. People, forced to live in the midst of this horrible environment because of economic deprivation, walk their kids to schools, hide behind locked doors and barred windows, and close their eyes to continuous violence for fear of murderous recriminations. This is unrelenting, daily terror. It is an unmitigated insult to the good people of these neighborhoods for those of us –the great masses- to harp on an unrealistic, unseen, statistically insignificant threat of foreign terror on our shores.

Between December 1, 2005 and January 8, 2006, 46 people were murdered in the streets of Philadelphia. It is inconceivable that no one saw any of these shootings. But not even the police can convince the residents of these neighborhoods to come forward and identify the shooters. Doing so would be suicidal.

Just imagine not being able to let your kids play in their streets or even look out of your windows. Imagine going to bed every night to the sound of gunfire. Imagine your kids being bullied or even beaten because they won’t join a gang, your daughters sexually harassed when they walk the street. This, my friends is unthinkable terror.

Listen to the sad story of this mother:

Catherine Young is looking through a box of her son's things -- a box filled with grief and pride.
"All the shattered dreams are in this box. Everything he worked for to get to his goal are all left behind in a box," Young told NBC 10 News.
Inside the box are the remnants of her son, Richard Johnson, who was shot last July in Philadelphia.
Those remnants include old report cards.
"He was an excellent student in Greek. This award is the President Education Award and it's for outstanding academic excellence," Young said.
The remnants also include Johnson's most cherished belongings.
"This is the briefcase he carried to work every day. He had a job working at a law firm," Young said.
It was Johnson's life-long dream to become a lawyer and last July he was about to turn that goal into a reality. He had just graduated from high school and was headed to St. Joseph's University on an academic scholarship.
But last July, Johnson was gunned down in Philadelphia's Point Breeze section as he was walking with his cousin and his girlfriend.

Our government has spent billions of dollars protecting us from a specious enemy while it cannot find minimal dollars to attack a real, potent and deadly enemy in our midst. We must not allow politicians to continue to play on our unrealistic fears and make moral cowards of us all.

Yes, the terrorists killed three thousand of our citizens on September eleven, 2001. We should never forget that day. It was, indeed, a day of reckoning. But there is another form of terror that kills thousands of our citizens each year in our inner cities. Let us not forget these victims and their families as well.