In the footsteps of Bin Laden: the past, the present, the future of terrorism

I watched “In the footsteps of Bin Laden” last night on CNN and I must say that it was gripping and frightening because it made me realize how difficult it is to foresee and to stop people who are determined to kill millions of people. The saddest and the most frustrating thing is that all of the signs were there that we were going to enter an age where terrorism is once again a legitimate tool for many to achieve political and religious goals, but that too many people refused to use their imagination to anticipate and to prepare for the worst. Maybe, it was inevitable that the world would be in the place where it is today threatened by people who want to destroy a big part of it in attempt to purify from what they consider to be the sins of modernity. Maybe it was impossible three years ago to imagine that 9/11 would happen. Frontiers and oceans are no longer able to protect the West from the ills of the rest of the world and from the hatred and the violence of those who believe that mass-murder can be not only justifiable, but also honorable. The future scares me for I wonder if we are fighting terrorism effectively or whether we are prolonging the struggle by making the same mistakes that we did before by forgetting to use our imagination and by recognizing that the most serious threat to our world are no longer just weapons of mass destruction, but ideas of mass destructions. The real question is how we stop the millions of youth around the world who are looking for a reason to live or to death from becoming the next Bin Laden, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, or Mohammed Atta. I don’t know the answer to this question and unfortunately, I don’t think that the leaders of the modern world have one either.