Stopping terrorism starts at home

Dec. 22, Richard Reid boarded American Airlines Flight 63. He wanted to die that day, and he was willing to take 184 passengers with him. \nPrior to his departure, he obtained a British passport and packed his shoes with plastic chemicals and TATP (triacenton triperoxide). While the plane crossed the Atlantic Ocean, he started his death wish by lighting a match. A cautious flight attendant luckily smelled the sulfur and confronted the 6-foot-4 man. With assistance from other passengers, they restrained the man for more than two excruciating hours.\nWhat is happening to our world? Just when our confidence in flying is slowly being restored, a man decides to shatter it again. A man with no luggage, a common name and a passport from a country of which he obviously wasn't a native, boards a plane with a bomb in his shoes. I hate to think of the chaos that could have erupted if he had accomplished his mission.\nWould we have even known what took place aboard Flight 63 if a flight attendant hadn't smelled the sulfur from the match? What if two doctors hadn't sedated the 28-year-old? What was going through his head? When did he stop valuing life so much that he would decide to go on a suicide mission? How do we stop this evil?\nWe can tighten security even more. We can continue to make people take their shoes off at inspection points. We can make time in airports 10 times more stressful than it already is. We can pay $15,000 to hire bomb-sniffing dogs to replace thousands of fired airline employees. It's wonderful that the industry and government are taking extreme measures to restore security, but I hate to think about the families of the jobless airline employees. In addition to the thousands of lives we lost, maybe terrorism did defeat us in some sense.\nI'm tired of placing blame on Americans who were only doing their jobs. The airline industry has suffered enough. It lost Charles Burlingame, David Charlebois, Jennifer Lewis, Renee May and many other crew and flight attendants aboard the planes that went down on Sept. 11. It lost Dr. Paul Ambrose, Suzanne Calley, William Caswell, 11-year-old Bernard Brown and hundreds of other passengers. These aren't just names of people you might not know; these are names of victims. These are people who died because something is wrong with individuals in our world.\nI realize many of you are tired of thinking and hearing about Sept. 11, but there are wives who wake up to a cold pillow beside them every night. And there are brothers who have to tackle this world without the support of their siblings. And there are children still hoping that their parents are going to magically come home from work one night. Keep these people in your thoughts.\n I'm sick of searching for a way I can play a part in fighting what President Bush calls a "faceless coward." Fighting terrorism can begin right here in Bloomington. We can start by getting to know our neighbors, by helping those who can no longer help themselves. We could start by being a little nicer to people. \nOur security has been threatened multiple times. It is inevitable that it may be threatened again. Do something nice for a stranger today. We can kill with kindness rather than bombs and planes. Change begins with me. And change begins with you.