War on Terrorism - Part 4 of 5

How do we prepare for the next terrorist attack???

Rock steady – combat ready. We prepare to respond in the last way that Al Qaeda expects, and the way that neutralizes their terrorist actions. We keep living just like we were before. If we don’t react to terrorist violence the way they want us to, they will eventually seek other means of achieving their goals.

We, as individuals, must adopt the attitude that says, “The physical victims of this attack have truly suffered and should receive our help, but since neither I nor anyone I care about was directly affected by this attack, I’m going to go on with my life. I’m not going to stop living my life the way I had planned just because someone blew up a building more than 1000 miles away in a city I’ve never even visited.” Basically, we need to get hard. No more, “doom & gloom” apocalyptic fear-mongering, which is what the terrorists want and expect.

Unfortunately, our 24-hr news “infotainment” industry will not make this reaction easy. If a tiger attacking three people in San Francisco or a suicidal gunman killing eight people in Omaha both become national tragedies, we will have to work extremely hard to demonstrate our lack of intimidation when the news media will surely be pandering to the raw emotion of the event. Commodities traders and mutual fund managers won’t help either. They will react to the events by taking actions that make critical goods more expensive, pinching Americans who really don’t want to be affected by what is really an isolated event that should be irrelevant to 99% of the population. We can do it, but it takes clarity of thought and deliberate defiance of the fear which will sorely tempt all of us.

The other side of the coin is our corporate or national response. If terrorists think they can hit us without being targeted by all our elements of national power (diplomatic, informational, military and economic) they need to be reminded. Our military response should be calculated and unemotional. War is never a pleasant business. We must not continue to try to mollify our consciences by insisting that we couch all our military actions in terms of “nation-building” and “spreading democracy.” But military action is only a supporting effort in the Global War on Terrorism, not the main effort. The main effort must be to engage the hearts and minds of the American people to stand firm against any terrorist attack and keep right on living – in mocking defiance of those who think their criminal actions can change our way of life.

Unfortunately, we continue to regularly reinforce the terrorists’ assumptions that we will bow to their threats of violence. Do you remember the Danish political cartoons that mocked Islam & Mohammed in 2005 and the violent outcry around the Muslim world about them? Do you remember how many U. S. newspapers had the courage to run those cartoons? At least for newspapers with circulations of greater than 100,000, I believe the number was ZERO. The editors who chose to comment on why they didn’t run the cartoons stated that they didn’t want to contribute to religious intolerance. However, the routine printing of cartoons critical of both Christians and Jews belies their true motivations. They were petrified that they and their newspapers would be targeted for violent reprisals by Muslims in the U. S. Whammo! Score another one for intimidation through threat of violence – terrorism by definition.

Next – Wrapping it up!

“Fly high & roar loudly”

dirk