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11A029
A Bright Future
by Jim Davies, 1/29/2011
We should not attribute to violent religious fanatics with minds firmly stuck in 14th Century superstition more intelligence than they are likely to have, but one can easily notice a long-term pattern in the way they do their horrid things; and surmise that it may be designed that way. It seems to me that their targets mostly have to do with transportation. Since the 1960s, they bombed or hijacked airliners - quite soon after absorbing the fact that US governments were going to sustain the Israeli State that had dispossessed so many Muslim Arabs. Then they attacked US embassies and bases (in Lebanon and Africa) and the USS Cole, then back to hijacked aircraft which they turned into deadly missiles, and in London and Madrid they bombed trains and buses and last week, another bus in Manila and the external part of an airport, in Moscow. So people on the move seem to be their favorite victims, perhaps because that way they can get most bang for the riyal. We have been forced to go through metal detectors first, now full-body scanners, and coming soon will be government checkpoints at the entrances to airports (just imagine the chaos that will bring!) and at train and bus stations. The effect will be to choke off travel, and hence cripple the world's developed economies; it's very clever. While any government welcomes any excuse to surveil its population more thoroughly, presumably their hope is that populations will turn on those governments at some point and say "Enough! Stop aggravating Muslims!" and so accomplish their objective, of ridding the Muslim world of Western presence. Then having accomplished that cleansing, they will be well placed to set up their theocracies and cement their superstitions into place, and rule on Allah's behalf for ever and ever, Amen. As a long-term strategy, it's not too dumb. Here are two reasons why it will fail. First, there is no known limit to which the US and other Western populations can be pushed by their own governments, before voting for such a radical change in foreign policy. These enemies may imagine that democracies make such changes easily, but they are wrong. "Western" governments have enormous power to influence their populations to absorb inconveniences and hardships, and will continue to do so even as living standards decline; all the while, thoroughly enjoying the power that it enables them to exercise; there is plenty of precedent, starting for example with the War to Prevent Secession. Secondly, we shall beat them to it; for we too have a long-term strategy, and it's not all that long. As we bring one friend at a time to a re-education facility that uses reason to show every individual the real nature of government and of freedom, the number of people unwilling to work for government will exponentially increase - to the point that nobody will, and then it will cease to exist. On that happy day, there will be no US government presence anywhere - least of all in foreign countries - so Muslim fanatics will no longer have a motive to continue. Simultaneously, word of the individual freedoms being enjoyed by Americans will spread, and governments abroad, whether secular or theocratic, will be shaking in their jackboots lest the freedom virus spread their way. As it will.
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