Bruce Schneier says that our mindless reactions to terrorist plots is a victory for them in itself:
Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers’ perspective, the explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause terror, and in that they’ve succeeded.
Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up 10 planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that’s basically what’s happening right now.
Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we’re terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists’ actions, and increase the effects of their terror.
Bob Poole, with whom we had dinner on Saturday, has a column on the current wasteful and ineffective state of airline security. As the Israeli columnist noted a few weeks ago, we’ve become drugged into a stupor by political correctness.
You know, there was a time in the British Empire that this would be considered an act of war:
The Sunday Telegraph revealed in April that Iranian-made de-vices employing several EFPs, directed at different angles, were being used in Iraq.
And in June, this newspaper obtained the first picture of one of the Iraqi insurgent weapons – designed to fire an armour-piercing EFP – believed to have been responsible for the deaths of 17 British soldiers.
Apparently, for all the talk of the “war mongers” Bush and Blair, war (or at least waging a war that one is actually in, like it or not) has gone out of fashion in the west. And the Iranians and Syrians are taking full advantage of that fact.
Now of course it is wrong to give gratuitous offence to people of other faiths; it is right to respect people’s beliefs, when these beliefs pose no threat to civil order; and we should extend toward resident Muslims all the toleration and neighborly goodwill that we hope to receive from them. But recent events have caused people to wonder exactly where Muslims stand in such matters. Although Islam is derived from the same root as salaam, it does not mean peace but submission. And although the Koran tells us that there shall be no compulsion in matters of religion, it does not overflow with kindness toward those who refuse to submit to God’s will. The best they can hope for is to be protected by a treaty (dhimmah), and the privileges of the dhimmi are purchased by onerous taxation and humiliating rites of subservience. As for apostates, it remains as dangerous today as it was in the time of the prophet publicly to renounce the Muslim faith. Even if you cannot be compelled to adopt the faith, you can certainly be compelled to retain it. And the anger with which public Muslims greet any attempt to challenge, to ridicule or to marginalize their faith is every bit as ferocious as that which animated the murderer of Theo Van Gogh. Ordinary Christians, who suffer a daily diet of ridicule and skepticism, cannot help feeling that Muslims protest too much, and that the wounds, which they ostentatiously display to the world, are largely self-inflicted.
He also notes that for this reason, and others, “fascist” is not an unreasonable word with which to describe them.
Americans are now most aware of the Iranian role in promoting fascism: 58 percent in the poll think Iran is now the “main promoter of Islamic fascism in the Middle East,” and 76 percent believe Iran must be prevented from obtaining nuclear weapons “at any cost.”