Terror can certainly exist momentarily, but our duty (imo) is to resist terror, and to not let it overcome our judgment. Pretending war is something it is not, strikes me as one of the ways a society might collectively lose its mind (and its way).
Terrorists design their operations to strike terror into the hearts and minds of mighty foes. Because the nature of their cause is assymetrical, it's not as if terrorists have any ability to take over the government of the US. They can't (apparently) even kill a good percentage of us. Now while even a very small percentage of deaths is terrible, it's seems to be very stupid to give the terrorists what they want, and make a big deal over the whole thing, publicly. Kill them as singlemindedly as you want in private, and track them to the ends of the Earth, but the idea of elevating their fantasies to a war? That seems like giving the terrorists an easy victory, and I'm against that. Always have been.
We had an article here about the classics- time to look to Apollonious I think...
(although I confess, I only know him through my pal Marcus)
"From Apollonius I learned freedom of will and undeviating steadiness of purpose; and to look to nothing else, not even for a moment, except to reason; and to be always the same, in sharp pains, on the occasion of the loss of a child, and in long illness; " |
