Halloween is supposed to be a day of fun.
Trick or treating, parties, costume contests. Not terrorism, not actual death. That is what we got here in America though. Right it the heart of our great nation, New York City. A man careened a rental U-Haul truck into bikers and pedestrians, killing eight. Considered to be New York’s deadliest terror attack since the big one that started it all, 9/11. Has it finally come full circle? Will America finally wake up to the true threat that terrorism poses to national security? Or will we continue to scoff at attempts to curb the tide of radicalism in the name of “equality”?
Our president seems to be, as the kids call it these days, “woke” on the issue of terrorism. He understands that a large part of its prevention goes into the vetting process. We simply cannot let these people into our country, it’s as simple as that. The man who carried out this particular disgusting act of violence is called Sayfullo Saipov. He is a legal immigrant to the country. He came here in 2010 from Uzbekistan.
Purportedly, he was radicalized here in America and carried the attack out in the name of ISIS. He was passed to enter the country then, and he was also apparently cleared to work for Uber. His record is clean, no evidence of past criminal behavior or connections to terrorist organizations.
So what, you may be wondering, is the point of focusing on stronger vetting when this man and many other terrorists have been radicalized here. This is why I mentioned earlier that vetting is only part of the solution. I believe that the government should prioritize devising methods to prevent radicalization here in the homeland.
Stronger vetting is fine and I encourage it by all means. However, we do have a problem with domestic radicalization that must be dealt with. How we go about doing that, I don’t really know. Many of the methods that I could conceive of; censoring of perditious terroristic materials online, surveillance of gatherings and sites of worship where seditious thoughts could spread, and individual tracking and surveillance for suspicious persons all seem pretty Orwellian and illegal in nature.
I don’t want the nation to have to take that route. What I want is for the government to put their collective minds together and devise ways of going about this that don’t involve slipping into a “Big Brother” dystopian country.
My hope is that the new administration is thinking the same things I am. That they are trying to devise alternatives, and will not decide to just go the easy way. I know many people have a problem with Trump, and I know he blurts out a lot of unreasonable things. He is our president though, and like it or not his administration is the one running the nation. I have my fingers crossed that they can put their political mud-slinging aside, sit down, and hash these issues out in the near future.