9/11.

9/11 - a date that will stir up feelings of terror and chaos forever. In one day - in one building - 2,996 lives were lost. So many families were robbed of their loved ones forever, not just from 9/11 but also from 'The War on Terror' that began not even a month after that fateful day.

9/11 affects us to this very day 10 years later. Every time you set foot in an airport you are subject to the strict laws that were introduced after 9/11. I believe we should be ready, or even willing, to go through these measures that have been set up for our safety. These measures that our governments spend incredible amounts of money on every year, just to protect us from something like 9/11 ever happening again. There is just one major fault in the system that leads me to believe that precisely that is the problem - the governments are focusing too much on what once happened rather than what could happen in the future. I just don't know to what extent I should trust them. The security companies creating these new methods seem to be sidetracked because their machines don't quite work the way they should. There have been numerous tests that prove how easy it is to smuggle a bomb into an airplane even with these technologically advanced machines such as body scanners. Body scanners don't, for example, scan your mouth, so who says a bomb cannot be transported that way? In another test someone put a water bottle in their bag as well as a bomb, the airport security watching the x-ray screen just noticed the water bottle, but didn't even see the real threat. (Liquids can no longer be taken into airplanes after an attempted attack on an airplane in 2006 were a terrorist tried to smuggle a liquid explosive on board.) My point is that the people working at the airports as well as the security companies are still paranoid that something like 9/11 or other terrorist attacks that might happen again - and with reason! I'm not saying they shouldn't - but they should also focus on possible new threats. 

The War on Terror. 5,491 more Americans killed. I feel that 2,996 lives lost were more than enough. On May 2, 2011 Osama Bin Laden - the leader of the Al - Qaeda - was killed by the CIA. He has been on the FBI most wanted list for 10 years now, and finally he has been eliminated. But then why is the War on Terror still going on? I understand that the troops cannot just leave Iraq from one day to the next, but why is the war in Afghanistan still raging? I think that it is hard to ever really succeed in a war that has no definite enemy. As I believe in the saying, 'War is not the answer', I think the American Government should start this next decade with a fresh outlook instead of being stuck in another war. 

9/11 will forever haunt our memories, and the innocent people killed that day should never be forgotten.