Are we Safe?

This Saturday around 6:28pm, a Nissan Pathfinder S.U.V. was found in the center of Times Square containing simple alarm clocks attached to gasoline pipes, propane, firecrackers and fertilizer. Less than a few minutes of having parked on West 45^th Street, a nearby vendor observed smoke coming out of the SUV and notified a police officer. The bomb squad appeared a few minutes later and successfully detonated it, leaving investigators to pour through hours of surveillance footage to find suspects. The bomb was reported to be a very simple one that would have set off a “fireball”, killing several civilians and tear the car to pieces but would not be able to demolish buildings. The New York Times reported that there are many theories floating as to why this bomb was planted. A video of the Al-Qaeda was found on YouTube claiming that they were responsible for the attack. However, terrorist analysts are skeptical and believe that this may be a propaganda stunt rather than the real deal. There has also been speculation about it being an attempt to bomb the Viacom building. Viacom owns the sitcom South Park which recently depicted the prophet Mohammad in a negative light. Since then the company has received many threats from Islamist groups. With these events occurring in broad day light we need to ask are we safe? What more can the government do to make events like this not occur? This time we got lucky that the car was parked in a central location and that the vendors were able to spot the smoke coming out. The Obama administration is now working hard trying to find the criminals behind this event and how to prevent it from occurring again.