Refuse to be Terrorized

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 25 Aug 2006 11:11:28 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Bruce Schneier at Wired - the gummint's response to supposed terrorist plots is exactly what those terrorists would want. Quietly foiling their plans, without fanfare, is the correct approach. Mr. Schneier provides a rational perspective for an insane world. We need to fight terrorism with anti-terrorism, not bans on liquids on airplanes. [cafe]

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics.

The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

...

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.

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