The Purpose of Terrorism...

…is to terrorize. And how well it succeeds, nowhere so well as in America.

It appears that when US government officials try to think about terrorism their brains stop working. It’s a word that has become a piece of neural malware and everywhere it spreads, rational minds sputter and then cease to function. Who could have dreamed that a simple word could be so potent and destructive.

That is from an article by Paul Woodward at warincontext.org, and I strongly suggest you read the whole thing. He also asks, of the latest State Department warning, “Why were they so specific, limiting the warning to just one continent?” Good question, which led me to wonder why the warning was limited to “public and private places” and didn’t include phrases like “anywhere and everywhere.”

Lest you think that Barack Obama, he of vaunted intelligence and famously studious approach to governing, might hold himself above the fray,

A White House spokesman, Nicholas S. Shapiro, said that while the State Department had decided to issue the alert, it came in response to Mr. Obama’s insistence that “we need to do everything possible to disrupt this plot and protect the American people.”

Awesome. Protect the American people, mind you, from a “plot” by an unknown number of unknown persons to fire an unknown number of machine guns in unknown places of unknown cities of unknown European countries at some unknown date in the unknown future.

So when my wife left for Italy, which is in Europe, I kissed her goodbye and told her, “Duck if you see a bunch of guys with machine guns.”

She gave me a dirty look, which I think meant, “I had already figured that out on my own.” She gives me that look a lot. Doesn’t properly appreciate my sense of humor.