L2P

Dear Mr. or Madam President, I would like to turn your attention to a big problem in our country: terrorism.

In the 1970s and 80s, during the heart of the Cold War, the Soviet Union took over Afghanistan. Armies started forming; people started dying. It was a tragic time, filled with horror and violence. America worried, wondered what to do. In Afghanistan, little by little their country started to fall apart. This, was the beginning of terrorism.

After the cold war was over, America still argued and foiled with the people in the Middle East. We sent armies, made of citizens, husbands, wifes, even parents. We sent these people who were strong enough to decide that they wanted to put their lives in front of ours. Small issues arose, but nothing too serious. And then, on a beautiful day, the morning of September 11, 2001, the world changed.

Since 9\11 we have improved our security but there are still some major issues (Sanchez). First I would like to talk about social media. Groups like Isis are taking advantage of young adults using social media. Recently Isis has been using “twitter”. The government has found many Isis sympathisers on twitter. The government is trying to find people who could possibly be with Isis. It’s difficult to really find the people who could possibly take action. One specific post caught our attention, the user had a picture of an Isis flag in front of the White house stating, “ We are here America #america near our #target :) sooooooooooooon”. A large percentage of them are most likely posers, but experts state that there has been a spike in Isis’s terror recently in the US.

We need to some big changes in the way social media is run, and the security of each user. Each user has a username and passcode, but that isn’t enough to keep their personal information safe. Or maybe we should shut down social media in general.

An example would be, Boston terror suspect Usaamah Rahim, born in the United States, radicalized by Isis, was killed before he was allegedly going to kill police officers (Sanchez). Along with another man who was thought to be with Isis, killed in Texas. Isis called them two of their soldiers. In the past two years there have been 32 people charged with trying to send material supplies to Isis (Sanchez). Law enforcers believe that Isis is using encrypted messages to communicate with followers in the US. It’s difficult to read their messages and that’s one of the problems.

My question is, over the past few years, why has activity of terrorism sparked up? What are we doing to fix this problem?

As a child growing up in the 21st century this scares me. Watching this everyday disappoints me. It’s terrible to see how worse this problem grows day by day. It’s scary, and sad. It’s heartbreaking to watch these people, and children, lose all that they have. And they don’t have much.

Thankyou,

Genevieve N.

Philadelphia, PA