Osama has America spooked. All the tough talk, flag-waving and marketing jingo can't hide Osama's strategic victory: he's turned America into it's own worst enemy. Americans are on the run, afraid of one another, spying on each other, suppressing each other's freedoms. On the global stage, the Bush administration is posturing, swaggering, overreacting. September 11th has revealed a superpower more paranoid and vulnerable than anyone could have imagined, and sympathy for the wounded nation is fading fast. America has once again become a rallying point for resistance. It's sad to see the true-blue hero of World War II and of my youth, now turn into a spaghetti-western parody of itself. Right now, I'm more afraid of President Bush and his never- ending war on terrorism than I am of the terrorists themselves.

Tyler Adams is 13.963 years old.