On the side of my house there was a huge wasp nest this summer. They had literally dug a cave into the ground at the base of the house. It was quite impressive really.
My wife complained that I needed to do somethign about it. Every time we were on the deck, the wasps would be buzzing around us. Occasionally they'd get into our face and we'd wack one of them. A pinprick strike on them.
Last month, my 4 year old was getting the mail and when he opened the mailbox a wasp flew out and stung him on the arm. That was it. I knew at that point I had to do something about the problem.
The wasp nest by then was huge. I wish I had a picture of it to post. It was underground mostly and surrounded by bushes. But wish a shovel, anti-freeze, and a hose I went in there and eradicated them. I got stung in the process but I took care of the problem pretty thoroughly.
There are still wasps, but not nearly as many and not nearly as close to the house as they were. I obviously can't wipe out all wasps everywhere, but I was able to take care of the problem in a pretty decisive way. Now it's just a matter of keeping an eye out for new nests and making sure they don't get started. I was lucky, my son isn't allergic to wasp stings. My wife is though. The wasps didn't really bug me until I realized that they could really harm my family. If it had been my wife who had gotten stung it would have meant a trip to the hospital at the very least.
Terrorists are a lot like wasps. For the past 30 years we've been watching their nests but not really done much about them other than pinprick strikes. Now they've really stung us and we have to act. Because next time they may strike with much worse than a few airplanes.
We must find where they are and root them out. We must take preventative measures to change the enivironment that allows them to grow. We'll get stung some in the process but we must do our best to eradicate the problem on a sustained, long term, large scale.
Those of you who have given this subject some thought, what do you think the world community should do to solve this current problem?