I have noticed a change in my email lately, from mostly correspondence of a personal nature mixed with a few jokes to a barrage of Osama bin Laden jokes and pictures.

I have gotten little characterizations of Afghan people with missiles shooting at them, Osama with a target on his rear-end and even a game called, "Shoot Osama."

It's enough to make you wonder about how much people are thinking about this stuff. I bet Hitler cartoons were popular around the time of World War II, although I wasn't around to see them.

I guess he was the last national enemy we had. Even though we fought the ‘cold war' with the Soviets for so many years, they never really had a figure-head that we unilaterally hated. I realize that Joseph Stalin wasn't exactly the ideal of an international friend of humanity, but he didn't even compare to Hitler on the list of ‘most hated leaders.'

I have heard more reports lately that bin Laden is just a figure-head leader and that others actually lead his organization. You never know who is really pulling the strings. I would say there aren't too many people in history who have had ‘complete' control of a country or organization. Most have had to deal with others who have at least some power of one sort or another. Look at our own country as an example. You have the three branches of government, all inter-dependent, with other interests also taking part — like those who finance campaigns, special interests and sometimes even real live voters.

With that in mind, I feel this war to ‘wipe out' terrorism isn't going to be as easy as it seems. I think we can kill terrorists and make attacks more difficult, but I don't think we can eliminate terrorism. If it were that easy, we would just wait for them all to blow themselves up in suicide attacks.

And since we now have a national enemy again, we can do things that we couldn't do before. Like build up the military (which I am in favor of), have more national unity, have someone to blame all of our problems on and restrict the rights of our own citizens. In WWII, everyone was afraid the Germans or the Japanese would invade the United States. It never happened. In fact, I don't think that will ever happen in the traditional sense. We may be invaded in other ways, such as by small cells of terrorists or even by refugees and foreign nationals seeking asylum. But to invade with an army here would be crazy. Think about it. We have millions of gun-toting veterans and even just regular citizens who would take gorilla warfare to an invading army. Never has a country had an armed populace and been invaded. As far as I know, there are only a few other countries in the world that allow their population to bear arms. Thank God we're one of them.

The part of this entire thing that bothers me is the opportunity for the government to restrict the rights of the citizens in the name of protecting us. I don't want to be protected at the cost of losing my basic liberties. After all, that's the reason this country was founded in the first place. If it means I have to be in danger from ‘crazies' to own guns and worship at the church of my choice, then that's fine. As for the weapons, every criminal in the country has a gun, why shouldn't I have one to defend myself and my property? Not only that, but the new anti-terror laws allow the FBI and other agencies more lee-way in tapping phone lines and other investigative techniques we probably don't even know about.

I'm all for tracking down terrorists, whatever their nationality, creed, race or religion. But I worry a little about ‘Big Brother' having too much power to snoop into the lives of everyday citizens. When this is all over, will we ever go back to the way things were? No way. Once a right is restricted, it hardly ever gets unrestricted.

I know we need unity now and we need to be all the more wary and mindful of what is going on around us, but I don't think we need to give up the very freedoms that make this country worth living in for us Americans and worth attacking by those who hate us. So, while you're watching out for terrorists, watch out for our own leaders, who may take this opportunity to try and push through legislation in the name of ‘anti-terrorism' that is really just extending the rights of the federal government to control the citizens of this country. Sound crazy to you?

Look at issues like gun control, personal privacy and land rights.

With the anthrax scare added in, does that give the government the right to go through our mail? Not yet, but who knows what will come. In some ways, I am more worried about the ‘fix' than the ‘problem.'

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