Have the Terrorists Won?

That is a part of my concern MiC.  That we think we know the "identity" of the terrorists.  Please understand that al Qui'da is not Usama bin Laden.  He is simply a figurehead now. al Qui'da thinking is an ideology.  We know that killing the leaders of ideology does not stop it.  We want to belive that.

Please note that the "half assed attemts" to protect us from the terrorists at airports involve directly making the passanger "uncomfortable".  We (as airline passengers) must jump through hoops and hurdles, while the cargo hold of the plane goes, for the most part, unchecked.  When there is a threat on tube trains in New York, people are extraordinarily searched and delayed, while armed men walk through the terminals.  Ask yourself, is a terrorist going to stand patiently in line to have his bomb vest searched?  We know that cars, with civilian passengers are lined up for miles at our southern borders waiting for security checks and searches, when trucks of commerce use a different terminal go unchecked.  I don't know MiC, but it seems you can get a bigger bomb in the trailer of a "semi" than you can get in my Honda.  This is not to mention the sea commerce, chemical plants and other possible targets of someone with evil intent.

You have to wonder if all of this "security" is designed with a purpose other than to protect us from the terrorists.  Much like the neocon agenda items that have been promoted before (elective abortion and "gay marriage" for example) it seems that division of people is the intent to me.  Perhaps since it is drumed into us almost daily who the "enemy" is, and how you can recognise him (or her), as we wait in line with them, we think nothing of having someone who has been "profiled" pulled out of line for "extra questioning".  While Don Imus says something that literally destroyed his radio career due to the public outcry, the frightwing pundits and those who wrap themselves in good people's beleifs (Savage, Hannity, O'Reilly, Roberstson and the like) and speak without fear of killing 100.000 Muslims, pray for the deaths of Supreme Court judges, call for the assaination of world leaders, and the bombing...no...nuking of whole nations.  Where is the public outrage?

My bringing up the "cheese incident" was to bring home how far we have let ourselves go in the name of fear.  Now we "drum up" incidents to incite and justify our emotion.  We know what we are doing to ourselves, but want a complicated detached solution, one in which we do not have to deal individually with our own monsters.  Perhaps we want to be evil, then after the blood is on our hands we bow and ask for forgiveness and everything is washed away in a river of tears.  You must ask though, who do we cry for.  Do we cry for our victims, or do we cry because we look in the mirror and see our enemy is not vanquished from the blood we shed, but has been emboldened through the crossing of the thin threshhold between good and evil within.

All of my life this country has had a "them".  We've got to stop them before they do something bad.  First it was the Japanese (and anyone with any sense of history knows what we did to them) and the Germans.  Then it was the communist threat and we had to protect the world against the threat of communism.  Then we had a short period of time where there was no "them".  The powers that be could not allow that to happen.  We always have to have a "them" that we can be against.  So "them" became the terrorists and after the disaster on 11 September 2001, the terrorists became muslims in a lot of peoples minds.  Now they have a "them" that everyone can be against and hate and it's us against them again. 

I look back and see the futility of all of this and I want to scream but it's like an echo in the wind, my scream dissapears almost as soon as it leaves my lips.  No one hears my screams and if they did they wouldn't care. 

I spent 20 years of my life supposedly protecting we the people of the US against the threat of them and now I look around and gather facts and  I'm shocked and ashamed because I realize that my worst nightmare has come true and ................WE HAVE BECOME THEM!

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To:  Zanubiyah

The terrorists have won.

They have succeeded in filling our hearts and minds with so much bullsh** that some of us are willing to send our young men and women to Iraq and Afghanistan to be killed and wounded in the name of democracy.

There were less than 3,000 people killed on 9/11 - the original figures were much higher, but when all is said and done I think the final count was reduced to 2,945 in total for all people killed on 9/11.

We now have over 35,000 casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan (35,268) split as follows:

4,407 dead, 30,861 wounded.  The figures for OIF, Operation Iraqi Freedom, are as of 10 a.m. EST, the figures for OEF, Operation Enduring Freedom, are only as of January 19, 2008 at 10 a.m. EST, so the actual total is higher.

So who are the terrorists, are the terrorists in the Middle East or are the terrorists in this Administration?

P.