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And NO, I am NOT advocating on behalf of terrorism!
I am just sick of pretending the people who do this stuff are brain surgeons. They weren't. Neither is Osama. They come up with simple plans, and then implement them.
Let's take September 11th. Step 1: Find twenty people willing to die for their cause. (We have 150,000 in the middle east at the moment, so Americans needn't bother pretending this is a difficult thing to do -- people are ALWAYS willing to die for something.) Step 2: Pick target. (Look! A very TALL building!) Step 3: Learn to fly a plane. (This involves opening the yellow pages, so we may have been able to stop them at this point, but we missed the chance. Damn!) Step 4: Buy plane tickets. (Drat! Another missed opportunity! Maybe more obnoxious "hold" music would have stopped them!) And then Step 5: Smuggle weapons onto planes. Who would have thought of that? Oh, wait a minute! Somebody did, and that's why we walk through those funny metal detector thingys. Huh.
I hate to point this out, but NONE of these steps was difficult. Steps 6 and 7 involved taking over the plane and then aiming at the buildings, but honestly, most of the tough work had already been done. All that was needed at the end was a willingness to kill people...sigh.
And then we have the Oklahoma bombing. Now there was the work of a mad genius if ever I heard of one! Pick target, rent truck, buy fertilizer, park truck, walk away. If only someone had noticed him capering like a madman singing an evil song before it happened! Except he never did that.
Would be terrorists don't even need to come up with their own fool proof plans; they can go to the video store and rent movies that can substitute as "how to" guides for evil deeds. Invite a couple of friends, pay for their popcorn, indulge in a good old-fashioned "yeah, but" analysis of the movie and BINGO! As long as Arnold, Bruce, or some cop with only a few days left on the force doesn't show up, you are GOLD!
I'm not trying to scare people here. I'm pointing out the unspeakably obvious. People can do ANYTHING if they are angry, frustrated and really pissed off, and there is no way on God's green earth the rest of us are ever going to be able to stop SOMEONE from killing people, but we obviously need to try. Even if and/or when we understand the motivation behind mass murder (AND DON'T TRY TO TELL ME "They hate our freedom!" BECAUSE THAT IS A CROCK!), the reality brick here is we may not be able to stop it all of the time. We can implement common sense precautions and then PAY ATTENTION to them (see: metal detectors), we can try NOT to piss off the rest of the planet, we can give our law enforcement officials as much support as possible, we can keep ourselves alert to "suspicious" behavior, and finally, we can LISTEN to the injustices people are complaining about BEFORE they get so unbelievably annoyed they hit the "Forget it; let God sort them out" point, but these things ("terrorist attacks") are still going to happen sometimes.
Our best bet is to limit the pool of possibilities, and one option involves solving the problems in the middle east with some SENSIBLE policies. Got a problem with Israel keeping their promises? Cut off the money. Arafat not doing his part? Well, I don't know him well enough to come up with a solution, but someone out there probably does. Either way, addressing these problems would make life a lot easier on the rest of us. After all, if we eliminate those with legitimate unheard grievances from the equation, we only have to deal with the mentally ill who hear voices, and hopefully, they won't be able to stand the "hold" music.
End Rant.
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