A fine rant from “the somewhat offbeat mind of an armed lesbian pinko.” Be sure to read the whole thing.
Americans need to grow up and get a grip. The Luftwaffe sent over wave after wave of bombers in 1940 in order to pound the British into submission, the British did not buckle. Yet al Qaeda sends one guy with exploding underwear (who only manages to burn off his own nuts) and the whole country goes into a tizzy.
Let us take a page from the British as they struggled to live through the Blitz:
Not to mention the Battle of Stalingrad where Russians ate dirt rather than surrender. And then prevailed in that major turning point of WWII.
Terrorism is a tactic. It is a fact of life in the age we live in. Let’s get on with it, let’s deal with it, and let’s stop living in pants-wetting fear.
She has a point. Over 60 million people died in WWII, including nealy half a million Americans. Now we can’t stomach a few thousand dying in Iraq. We’re spoiled, and don’t have the stomach for a real war.
Terrorism is indeed a tactic, but we should not miss the fact that it is a tactic that preys on the dispossessed, the despairing, the hopeless– and of course the mentally unstable. Who else would agree to kill themselves for someone else’s gain? From Sri Lanka to Palestine, those using their bodies for weapons delivery are the poorest of society, ignored by the rest of the world, hoping to improve life for their family in the desperate hope of changing something (or because someone promises a stipend).
The incomprehensible gulf between rich (that’s us) and poor, and the accumulation of power by a few, make such an approach virtually inevitable. Half the world lives in conditions we cannot imagine, much less could stomach for ourselves. But we don’t want to know. Most Americans have never been outside our own borders. We think poverty is food stamps, public education, and government-subsidized telephone service.
Want to stop terrorism? Give the voiceless a voice. Promote justice around the globe. But no, we sow militaristic corporatism, and wonder why we reap terrorism.
Thank you for the link!
Your post was wondrous. Thank you. And you’re in my RSS reader now.
No, thank you! And I should have thought to mention Stalingrad and/or the Bielski partisans (and since I own a couple Mosin rifles, there’s no excuse) as examples of people not being beaten down.
I too own a couple of Mosin-Nagant rifles, Czarist equipment from the turn of the century remanufactured in the 1930s and 40s and used in an incredible effort to repel better armed invaders. They are a symbol of resilience in the face of impossible odds, the way people used to talk about the liberty ships (but a lot easier to carry). And you can buy one for under $100.