Of course, this is something we all knew (or should have).

Stop the presses! President-elect Obama is likely to face terrorist (or should we call them freedom fighters?) threats early in his term!

Indeed. History demonstrates that, for the past nearly three decades, almost every president has been tested with attacks. Some had more success than others in handling and deterring subsequent attacks.

Carter had the hostage situation with Iran, though that wasn't early in his single term. Clinton faced several attacks--the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the downing of a Blackhawk in Somalia, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in a Yemeni harbor near the end of his second term, to name a few. George W. Bush had the biggest, nastiest, most significant terrorist attack to date happen in the first nine months of his first term.

Let's take a look at potential trouble spots.

The Middle East

Potential areas in the Middle East that could cause difficulties for our POTUS-elect include Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, the Gaza Strip in Israel, and pretty definitely Somalia.

Iran's insistence on developing nuclear capability in the face of oil prices dropping could change Iran's potential trouble status, though. If the current government's insistence continues in the face of economic downturn that could, perhaps, be worse for Iran's single-export economy than others, it could see a revolution. Such could end with the radical Islamofacists taken out of power, and a more reasonable, moderate, and sane government taking its place.

Afghanistan with its tribal cultures and its unsecured border with neighboring, equally tribal Pakistan, will continue to be a trouble spot, requiring US military intervention to prevent the hostile Islamofacist Taliban government from re-taking the country from its citizens. Oh, and of course, the failure to catch Osama bin Laden hasn't helped stabilize the region, either. The upside to that is that he's worried about his security, and thus, less likely to come out of hiding any time soon.

Syria and Iraq are connected in potential trouble. With Iraq's military's difficulty in closing the border with Syria, insurgents continue to sneak into Iraq to attack US and coalition forces, as well as Iraqi military and civilian targets. Recently, Syria has begun to purchase arms from Russia, making them even more dangerous to Israel. Their danger to us is that they host terrorist training camps on their soil, and might be willing to provide terrorists with WMD.

The Gaza Strip in Israel is a problem, obviously for Israel, less so for us. The Gaza Strip also hosts terrorists, both in training camps and simply hiding from capture or elimination.

Somalia will simply offer the same issues and choices the Barbary Coast did to Jefferson. And Obama is no Jefferson. Honestly, none of our current cast of congress critters are.

That's not even taking into consideration the idea that Obama might have once been, or been born into, Islam. I'm not saying that he was, or that he wasn't. It's not important. What is important about the idea--whether it's myth or fact--is how the radical Islamofacists will view dealing with country whose chief executive officer and commander in chief has committed Islam's greatest sin: converting away from the Muslim religion. No doubt this will spark trouble, probably both in diplomacy and increased violence.

Russia

Russia, with its current behaviors, would challenge any POTUS. We've been too distracted, although with good reason, for the past eight years to pay attention to the resurgence of the Russian economy, or notice its renewed imperialistic aggression. We're facing another cold war, with the same tactics--proxies, belligerence masked with diplomacy, escalations of incidents that are borderline (do we respond or ignore this? And I'd bet the current POTUS-elect will choose to ignore the incidents) that build each on the one before--with an eye toward replacing the US as a world-dominating superpower.

And Russia would dominate the world, too, were we to allow it. We tend to let peoples and countries go their own way, so long as they don't start fights. Russia, historically, doesn't.

Here at home

I'm deeply saddened to see that blatant, violent racism is alive and well in the United States. Though we're more color-blind than many European nations, and far better than Australia, some of the threats that our new POTUS-elect come from our own psycho nutjobs who would like to see him dead for daring to be the first black man elected to the highest office in the nation. Once again, I say thank God for the skills of the Secret Service in preserving the President's life.

I'm also deeply saddened that said psycho nutjobs, as well as the P.C. Police, have made it difficult for those who aren't racist to express a political opinion without being accused of being racist, and a danger to the POTUS-elect. The old fart who expressed himself on his own property wasn't necessarily being racist so much as he was expressing outrage at the difference in the way the Obama effigy and Palin effigy were treated, both by officials and the media. I believe this because he named a whole bunch of white congress critters along with the new POTUS-elect on the sign in question. Honestly, this could distract the Secret Service from a real threat to Obama's safety.

So yes, I do foresee a whole host of threat possibilities that Obama will have to face. However, I'm certain that McCain, or any of the other primary candidates, would have faced most of the same.