If there is a “Terrorist’s Hall of Fame” somewhere on this planet – probably in the Tribal Districts of Pakistan if you want a nice safe place to have one – it would feature the “heroes and martyrs” section including the dozen of rabble-rousing clerics, the piles of suicide bombers who have shredded innocent lives with an angry-yet-lust-for-“paradise” explosion for Allah, the hijackers, shoe bomber, crotch bomber and that perennial favorite, Osama bin Laden. Under Islam, those living normal pious lives in keeping with the requirements of the faith will be piled into a giant waiting room upon death to await that distant judgment day when they may ascend into heaven. Those who sacrificed their lives for their religion get the “fast pass” without waiting.
Doesn’t seem fair somehow, and clearly, fanatics have used this “loophole” as a gigantic recruitment tool to garner long lists of young men and women waiting for their “fast pass” to heaven… and their suicide bomber death. Despite this expectation being decried by moderate Muslim clerics all over the globe, the thought of martyrdom and instant paradise just cannot be shaken from the psyche of some many young gullibles, otherwise living shallow and often hopeless lives. They are greeted as heroes by parents and the public. They see the honoring parades, the posters of glory and are seduced by this viciously-conjured practice of unqualified clerics promising instant paradise in heaven.
These gullibles have decimated the Western way of life, costing the United States and its allies trillions of dollars in wars that have sapped the strength and spirit of these great nations. Wars that we have not won, that continue in one unsatisfying way or another, while “hot spots” continue to emerge all over the world, most recently in war-torn Yemen, where yet another al Qaeda training facility has produced an astounding success… without even bringing down the Christmas day flight to Detroit. Our budgets have been strained to the breaking point by the military and diplomatic costs imposed to ward off the evil of Islamists terrorists. We live in fear and cannot get on a jet flight without the most somber reminder that traveling is the favorite target of those hell-bent on destroying us.
The effectiveness of these al Qaeda (and their cronies’) efforts is staggering; we may have stopped an number of individual incidents from shattering the lives of innocents, but sooner or later, we know there will be a big hit; our lives have been profoundly disrupted, American soldiers sacrificed into the gaping mouth of “defensive” military action, our privacy compromised, traveling by passenger jet is miserable and profoundly time-consuming (remember, time = money!), we have massive new federal bureaucracies with undereducated bottom-end-job-seekers peering into our luggage, now looking at the naked figures of our bodies and sometimes even patting us down, our communications tapped and our taxes sucked up by all of the above. We can’t even go to sporting events without going through a metal detector and a purse search!
A shoe bomber killed our ability to take most liquids and gels on board aircraft. The crotch bomber has limited us to one piece of carry-on (while most of the airlines continue to charge us for checked baggage!), made us sit in our seat for the last hour of flight (with no access to our carry-on) and has travelers (read: tourists or terrorists?) from certain countries face pat-downs (which may be seriously violative of their religious beliefs) and personal baggage inspection. It will take more bureaucrats, bottom-level government officers, scanning equipment and vastly more money (while deterring revenue-producing tourist dollars) to implement this additional layer of intrusion. And jet travel has a new time-delay added to the already incessant waits at the airport.
In the world of budgeting for the future, in business and in government, a 1% increase generally doesn’t stir anyone’s ire. A percent here and there, a little at a time, and one hardly notices that what may, in any given instant, seem like a pittance; over time, an aggregation of “pittances” can produce billions and billions of dollars of valueless costs that drain our economy, haven’t seemed to work anyway, sapped our strength, hammered our spirit, and forever changed the way we live.
Remember when you could greet an arriving passenger at the gate… surprises and hugs along the way? Are we really any safer? And just think, if someone really wanted to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into this country, how hard could that be? Look at the tons and tons of illegal drugs that make their way into the U.S. every month! Could al Qaeda operatives have ever fathomed a success like the one they have enjoyed at our expense over the years since 9/11/01?! How much more could they have hurt us than we have hurt ourselves? Are we proud of the “victory of profound disruption” we have handed them on a silver platter? And exactly when is enough… enough?!
The January 13th Sphere.com puts our commitment to “security” this way: “On Dec. 19, 2009, President Obama authorized a military budget plan for a record $663 billion to defend the United States, the highest since World War II -- higher, adjusted for inflation, even than during the Korean and Vietnam wars… Six days later, al-Qaeda struck with an attack on a Detroit-bound airliner that very nearly succeeded in killing 278 passengers on board the Northwest Airlines Airbus 300. Less than a week later, al-Qaeda attacked in Afghanistan, where the United States is building up a force of nearly 100,000 troops at a monthly cost of $3.6 billion. This time it was a suicide bomber who evaded U.S. intelligence nets and killed seven Americans and a Jordanian at a remote CIA base.
“Everywhere, it seems, Uncle Sam is struggling to regain its footing -- despite its vast spending on security… Counting outlays for the military, homeland defense, airport security, nuclear weapons, and other facets of defense, the United States will spend well over $700 billion for security this year, more than the rest of the world combined… But thanks to a cunning and innovative enemy, a defense budget encrusted with ‘we've always done it this way’ convention, and strategic choices attuned to the last century, the United States seems to be merely treading water in what senior officials acknowledge will be a long and difficult war.” Are we remotely getting our money’s worth; are we truly any “safer”?
Maybe these words from Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria (January 11th) might tell you how far we have conformed to al Qaeda’s plans: “The purpose of terrorism is to provoke an overreaction. Its real aim is not to kill the hundreds of people directly targeted but to sow fear in the rest of the population. Terrorism is an unusual military tactic in that it depends on the response of the onlookers. If we are not terrorized, then the attack didn't work. Alas, this one worked very well.” I, for one, deeply resent having my way of life so deeply altered – clearly and intentionally – by these “terrorists” with their perverted sensibilities… and I am beginning to think I’d rather live with the risks than let these butt-heads gloat in the victory they seem to be savoring.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I know that this just can’t go on like this for much more.
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