Home Guy:

I'm going to say what others think, but don't say.

One of the biggest reasons why the US is a target for terrorists is because of it's staunch support for the state of Israel. Muslim countries (like Saudi Arabia and Iran) that support the Palestinian people know that they cannot win a military victory against Israel with the US backing it, so they covertly fund muslim groups to launch terrorist/guerilla attacks against the USA (and Britain, and to a much lesser extent Canada). My understanding is that for every mother's son martyred in the fight against the great Satan, Iran pays $20,000 US dollars.

So far as I know, no country in the EU provides Israel with as much military hardware, expertise and spy satellite intelligence that the USA does, thereby making Israel one of the most heavily armed countries in the world. It's that military support of Israel that's the problem for the muslims in the middle east, and that's the principle reason why Europe isn't nearly the target of muslim terrorism that the USA is.

However, I do remember a few years back where a bus load of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria was bombed. If I recall correctly, the bus driver sensed something wasn't kosher and told the tourists not to get on the bus. It blew up empty.

I'm not Jewish, but it seems to me that the creation of the State of Israel after WWII might have been the biggest mistake of the century. For the centuries since Mohammad walked the Earth and for thousands of years before that, Jews lived in relative peace with their neighbors in the mid-east. Jews had more trouble from the Europeans, especially eastern Europeans than they ever had with the muslims in the mid-east, who were generally more accomodating of them than the Holy Roman Church in Europe. Now, the Jews have their own state, but they can't live in peace in it. They're the one country with the highest per-capita number of cell phones because everyone wants to be able to check that their friends and relatives are safe whenever a bomb goes off over there. To be truthful, it seems to me that the Jews would have led a better life after WWII by living amongst the muslims as they had for centuries. The state of Israel was created so that there would never be another Holocaust, but what we have instead is a 60 year old festering wound in the middle east for which there is no acceptable medication. And, living amongst the Muslims is no longer an available solution because of the blood that's been spilled on both sides over the past 60 years. With war hawks like Netanyahu at the helm over there, it's only gonna get worse.

There I said it. I expect people understand that this is the elephant in the room that everyone pretends not to notice.

The reason why Canada's border with the USA isn't as wide open as it used to be isn't because either the Americans or Canadians have changed in their attitude towards each other, it's because a smart terrorist wanting to get into the USA from Canada is going to pretend to be friendly Canadian tourist. So, unfortunate as it is, ALL Canadian tourists wanting to get into the USA have to be treated with suspicion.