I'm late getting to this, but Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria captured the fundamental fallacy of Washington's reaction to the Christmas Day [un-]Bomber. 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. Hat tip: Cameron Bode, Excerpticize....

25 January, 2010

Responding to our post on the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing, Cameron Bode points to another section of Glenn Greenwald's trenchant analysis of US response to the failed Christmas airplane bombing: Ever since I began writing in late 2005 about this fear-addicted dynamic, the point on which David Brooks focused yesterday is the one I've thought most important. What matters most about this blinding fear of Terrorism is not the specific policies that are implemented as a result. Policies can always be changed. What matters most is the radical transformation of the national character of the United States...

04 January, 2010