The FBI is warning of al-Qaeda truck bombs in Chicago, and other cities. It seems to me that the main function of the ‘War on Terror©” is to try to instill fear and paranoia in people.
I live and work around and in Chicago. Do I believe we are a terrorist target? More so then if I lived in Boise. Chicago would make a great terrorist target. Am I afraid? No. But there are a number of people who fret and worry about such things. People who are willing to kill America to save it. The “Please take away my rights, and protect me” crowd insist that We are at war© and whatever rights we must sacrifice are necessary to win. When I hear this rhetoric I often think to myself that America is not Walmart, the NYSE, the Pentagon, or the World Trade Center; America is an idea, an idea put on paper in the form of our Constitution and laws. Terrorists cannot destroy them, only we can.
So with all of the people clamoring in fear (particularly right-wing pundits), I wonder what happen to the Land of the Brave? The people who fearlessly conquered the west, who drove the industrial revolution. Have we become a nation of pussies?
So the big news is that al-Qaeda may use fuel trucks as bombs – Ok. I can think of twenty or thirty different ways to sew terror and maim groups of innocent people – and I don’t really think about it much. I’m sure folks in al-Qaeda do. Does this make me concerned? Yes. Afraid? No. Frankly, if I’m on my way to work on Monday and I hear my loved ones have been killed in an attack, I’ll be inconsolable, angry, and vengeful, but the law should be there to control my baser instincts, to preserve our freedoms. And if Monday I’m killed on my way to work? I can only quote General John Stark: “Death is not the worst of evils.”
