I balked a little when Mr. Bush said that if we change our way of life, they win. Now given, he was talking about things like not going to Disneyland™ or your local shopping mall, or the Olympics(™?), and that would have really screwed up the party next summer at the Bohemian Grove.

But, really, we have to grow up about this. Don't get me wrong — we should never fail to pursue and prosecute the "perps" to the full extent of justice (and please notice I did not say, "the law").

We can't accept terrorism, but neither can we paralyze ourselves by locking down airports or disallowing "all liquids" on flights.

I have been criticized here at home for saying stupid shit like, "Hey, I'm not worried about flying back from Washington D.C. on my birthday, 'cause if you're on a plane that goes down coming back from D.C. on your birthday, what a great story!" I mean, everybody dies (you knew that, right?), so, compared to a long and drawn out cancer-without-medical-marijuana death, not that bad?

Assume the attack had been successful — there are about 6000 flights in the air at any given time (they showed a map on Primetime™ with a little red spot for every plane in the air that looked like that famous satellite shot of the cities all lit up), so those "as many as 3000 civilian deaths" would be way fewer than people who are just dying anyway from stupid shit like car accidents and old age.

I'm really really glad that those assholes were thwarted by the system, but they screwed up thousands of people a day every day for years, and I had to watch a Primetime™ about it, so they won.

And that's my rant.

Labels: politics, terrorism

posted by Chris at 11:16 PM Permalink