The threats among us

There’s nothing like some coffee and a homemade bomb to start off your morning.

Najibullah Zazi was a coffee vendor in lower Manhattan before he became suspected of affiliations with terrorism. The New York Times reported that he was always smiling and that he was a seemingly patriotic New Yorker.

He even had a “God Bless America” sign on his cart.

If you ask me, the fact that he was always smiling should have been a clue that something suspicious was going on. No one smiles that much in New York.

Zazi allegedly returned from a trip to Pakistan last year with a plan to build bombs with backpacks and beauty supplies. His story is disturbing because, like many headlines since 9/11, it is going to stir our society up.

As if we don’t have enough trust issues, skepticism and conspiracy theories already, now we have yet another reason to view the people we come across in our everyday life with suspicious eyes.

I hate to think that Americans might have to start doing routine coffee checks to make sure that nothing suspect was tossed in by the vendor/terrorist.

But as we watch the news and read the paper, we might be alarmed to find out that fearing our coffee is just the beginning. Last week, F.B.I. agents revealed that Zazi was most recently working as an airport shuttle driver in Denver.

I wonder if his business card reads: Airport shuttle driver by day – scary, terrorist bomb-maker by night?

I wish guys like this wouldn’t quit their day jobs.

The truth is, we have no idea what to think about the current state of our country and planet.

But we will continue to try to solve each problem we encounter, as we always do.
The F.B.I. has been doing a nice job on the case of Zazi. Though their job description has definitely evolved in the aftermath of 9/11, it has always been their responsibility to help Americans sleep at night by getting the bad guys locked up.

Obviously there is a lot that the F.B.I. and Americans don’t know about.

I mean coffee vendors and shuttle bus drivers have a tendency to slip under the radar. So do some lawyers and people like Bernie Madoff.

The only thing worse than knowing about all of these threats to our society is not knowing about them – the unknown threats that won’t surface until it’s too late.

In algebra, the unknown is assigned a letter. The objective is to solve for X. Typically, by the time the problem is solved, the X turns in to a number.

Algebra is the perfect example of humans being uncomfortable with the unknown. It’s as if we were programmed with the urge to get rid of every unknown we encounter.
Such is true for life. We must continue on in our pursuit of answers. And the new game plan should be: get rid of every unknown.

I don’t want Americans to live in fear of their morning coffee.