The Terrorists Won Actually, the terrorists — whoever they might be — didn’t really win. Terrorists never win, because terrorists can’t win. Terrorism might be able to inflict serious damage; but, ultimately, terrorism fails because terrorism is idiotic. The goal of super-patriarchal theocracy is unachievable beyond the benighted outlands like Afghanistan, Mali or Dearborn, Mich., where women have no sense of real freedom. Moreover, terrorism’s career arc is shorter than a teenager’s attention span. Most of the all-stars die at the height of their talents; the rest end up living in either caves or, worse, Pakistan. Sure, the Democrats might try to dress it up in a beret and an AK-47 and call it “A People’s Revolution against the colonial blah-blah-blah.” But in the end, it’s Che Guevara in a casket, Osama bin Laden with a gaping head wound, Tim McVeigh with a needle in his arm or Bill Ayers teaching education to future ThinkProgress bloggers. And terrorism does make the occasional incursion. The sort of anybody-but-America ideology does have its appeal to the permanent soft-underbelly-of-society types. Witness San Francisco, Chicago, the Upper East Side of Manhattan and whatever is left of Detroit. But beyond the urban rats’ nests that provide the Democrats with their triple soy lattes, imposing the sort of government terrorists dream of would be so costive as to make Pyrrhus wince. In short, terrorism can’t defeat us. However, we can certainly do the job for the terrorists. In fact, the process is pretty simple. When terrorists attack, we turn to our government and beg for shelter like a battered wife begging forgiveness for overcooking the pot roast. We look past the rape of our liberty to the happy home of safety. And we trust a government that has repeatedly proven it’s almost as responsible as a teenage girl with an unsecured credit card. The abominable Patriot Act, a bastard child of authoritarian greed and post-9/11 hysteria, is now the sole real tool by which they shall sow our freedoms… or reap them. And lest you make the mistake of thinking President Barack Obama is the lone villain in this tableau of tyranny, remember President George W. Bush midwifed the Patriot Act into the cold of light of day — with the full participation of a bipartisan majority. At the time, civil libertarians from sea to shining sea warned against it, noting that the act had essentially just added an unspoken “unless the President thinks you’re uncool.” When President Richard M. Nixon wiped his feet on the Constitution, the Nation united to knock him out of his shoes. When Bush did the same, the Nation invited him in for coffee and doughnuts. The only difference between the two was that Bush used the magic words: “national security.” Neither Nixon nor Bush could imagine what Obama had in store. And there’s no way in Allah’s endless sands that any terrorist could have foreseen it. Not only did we allow members of the political class to crush our windpipes with the jackboots of tyranny, but we begged them to do it. After the Patriot Act — which then-Senator Obama vociferously opposed — and its rape of the Bill of Rights opened the door, President Obama barreled through with Attorney General Eric Holder, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Security Agency and immediately set about proving correct his earlier self. But look on the bright side: At least we freed ourselves from the terrorism — except for Boston, and Fort Hood and April 15. –Ben Crystal
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 19:09:56 +0000