On Sunday morning, dozens of students were gunned down by suspected Islamic militants in Nigeria. A car bomb in Peshawar, Pakistan killed over 100 people late Saturday evening. A suicide bomber in Iraq killed 30 people on Sunday.
  Two devastating stories hit global media last week. First, a bomb killed 78 in a church in Pakistan. Second, a terrorist siege in Westgate mall in Kenya, which killed over 60 people and injured hundreds.
     I couldn’t cease to draw similarities to an identical attack when 10 terrorists from Pakistan infiltrated into Mumbai and took the city hostage for 60 hours in November 2008. Without a thought to spare lives, the terrorists openly fired at men, women and children at a train station, in a hotel and in a restaurant, killing over 200.
   In a breakthrough revelation on Sunday, David McKenzie and Antonia Mortensen of CNN reported Kenyan officials were warned of an attack on the Westgate mall over a year ago. The report also said several hostages were brutally tortured before they were killed.
  “Military doctors said militants severed hands, cut off noses and, in some cases, hanged hostages. CNN has seen photographic evidence of one dead victim with a hand amputated,” Mortensen said.
  James Verini, New Yorker  correspondant, documented an eye-witness account of Njoroge, a man who was present at the mall when the attack took place.
   “Men with large rifles or machine guns fired into the crowd,” Verini said, “Some children fell, shot; others lay down.” He described the gunmen firing into their backs. “One of the attackers took up a stone and slammed a man, who was holding a child, in the head. Then he picked his gun back up and fired more.”
   The New Yorker reported the official death toll at the Westgate mall was 62 civilians. The government’s rough numbers for dead shooters and security personnel are five and six, respectively, and it’s feared that there may be many more bodies in the rubble. The mall is still being searched for bombs. The Kenyan government, along with the F.B.I. and British and German intelligence agencies, have begun forensic investigations.
   Living in the United States, we are the safest and most secure humans in the world. Fifteen state-of-the-art investigative agencies work relentlessly to nullify any threats of terrorism that pop-up against the U.S., and we enjoy living in peace.
   Sept. 11, 2001 was a rare setback to our national security agencies when there was a collective failure and lack of coordination. Ever since the attack on the twin towers, our measures to combat terrorism have grown enormously.
   The Department of Homeland Security was born in response to the horrific September 11 attacks. In 2011, the department enjoyed a massive budget of $98.8 billion from which it spent $66 billion on internal security.
    John Cassidy, columnist for the New Yorker, in an article post on the Boston bombings earlier this year, attributed the strategic geographical location of the U.S. to less terror attacks on American soil.
  “The small number of successful attacks on the United States reflects the country’s geographic isolation and the efforts of domestic law-enforcement authorities, but it also demonstrates the decline of Al Qaeda in the face of a prolonged U.S. military onslaught,” Cassidy said.
   In the past few years, the number of terrorist attacks worldwide has steadily declined, along with the number of terrorism fatalities.
    In 2007, according to a report on the Department of State’s Counterterrorism Center, there were 14,415 terrorist attacks around the globe, which resulted in 22,720 deaths. In 2011, the most recent year for which figures are available, there were 10,283 attacks and 12,533 deaths.
  Congress has not declared a war since World War II, but our men in uniform have combatted several bloody terror attacks. There are more questions than there are answers. We need to build the next generation of leaders who have ideas and solutions to combat terror.
    The fear of being killed in a bomb blast or the fear of not seeing loved ones at the end of the day lingers in the minds of millions across globe. As Americans, let us treasure and celebrate our most privileged and prized possession: our peace.