Terror in the White House
What's a terrorist? Not just somebody who throws a bomb. The object of terrorism is to create a climate of fear that will divert people from their ordinary day to day occupations.
So it was that when a small private plane (according to this morning's New York Times) ventured into restricted air space over the nation's capital, President Bush was whisked away to a "safer place."
No longer do we assume that an aircraft overhead is an ordinary, daily occurrence. Now every plane that passes near the Capitol or the White House is a threat to be fled.
The terrorists have succeeded in establishing terror.
So it was that when a small private plane (according to this morning's New York Times) ventured into restricted air space over the nation's capital, President Bush was whisked away to a "safer place."
No longer do we assume that an aircraft overhead is an ordinary, daily occurrence. Now every plane that passes near the Capitol or the White House is a threat to be fled.
The terrorists have succeeded in establishing terror.
posted by GrumbleGrouch at 10:44 AM
2 Comments:
so true...when we couldn't get the car on the staten island ferry to visit chinatown on father's day a few years back, my father declared that terrorists had won. and what's that about bush having been on a bicycle ride and wasn't alerted to the security breach until later when that cessna flew into restricted airspace a couple months ago...does this man ever work?! (not to mention laura says he goes to bed at 9pm...)
Discourage the terrorists? Hardly. The terrorists will discourage us first.
There is a "golden rule" to avoid terrorist attacks, but at this stage it will take some backtracking before we can apply it. We would not want other governments to meddle in our internal affairs, or even to tell us what to do. Yet we interfered for many years in the internal affairs of Iraq and Iran (to name only the obvious), and told the Israelis and Palestinians what to do.
The most direct way to avoid terrorist attacks is to not make yourself a target. Our latest foolishness was to invade Iraq without UN support, making it obvious that we, and anyone who supported us, were an enemy. We should have worked through the UN if possible, or used covert operations as a last resort.
"Don't give in to terrorism" is stupid machismo. Understanding why we became the targets of terrorism is a better way to look at it.
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