What is the point of terrorism?

After watching all the new coverage about the "Christmas Day Attack" where Umar Farouk Abdulmutalla, (a Nigerian) who tried to blow up an airplane over Detroit on Christmas day, I could not get Denzel Washington out of my head. I know what you all are thinking; "oh right because all black people look alike?". In 1998 Denzel was in a movie called The Siege, which was about multiple terrorist attacks in New York City. I thought about this movie thing right after September 11, 2001 as well, but for a different reason. Back then I was convinced that the terrorist attacks were not finished. In the film they did many different attacks a few days apart, making New Yorkers stay on edge and not ever feel safe. This time however I thought of this movie because of something that Denzel Washington said. "What if what they really want is for us to herd our children into stadiums like we're doing, and putting soldiers on the street and have Americans looking over their shoulders? Bend the law, shred the Constitution just a little bit? Because if we torture him, General, we do that and everything we have fought, and bled, and died for is over. And they've won. They've already won!" He saw that just the thought of possibly being attacked was just as bad if not worse than actually being attacked.

Is this what they really want? Is this part of their plan? Making us wait two extra hours when we want to fly, having grandmothers in Worland, Wyoming freak out when they see someone who doesn't go to their church. Are they winning? We are not only spilling blood by fighting them, but also treasure.

Today while watching Countdown they talked about how even when terrorist attacks fail, they still claim responsibility. Are they just trying to kill us, or are they just as happy to scare us into spending all of our money? How much money have we put toward security since September 11th? The United States is hurting for money, budget cuts left and right, yet we wouldn't dare taking away a penny from security. When the budget came out last year and defense got less money than expected (still more money than last year) many Republicans claimed that Obama was stripping money out of defense. We are spending so much money in Afghanistan and even went to war with Iraq under the cover of "security". The war in Afghanistan was part of the reason that the USSR fell. They were trowing money at a war that they could not win. Now we are doing the same.

Are they going to win? Not by killing every single American, but by having us throw money at the problems that they have created. Throwing money that we don't have to prevent something that has already happened instead of looking for where the next attack will come from. Terrorists will always find a way to terrorize people. I just believe that we have to find a different way of dealing with it as well as looking at different ways of preventing it.