- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
In the modern world, it is simply an impossibility to inhibit or track coded communications. There is simply too much data flying around to spot a cleverly hidden message. I can think of dozens of ideas off the top of my head, and I haven't even spent years of my life filled with religious fervor and wanting to bring down the West as many of these clever people have done.
This whole notion is kind of like the false argument that we shouldn't elect Obama because he'd be as risk for assassination. American presidents don't avoid assassination because nobody wants them dead, they do so because the secret service people are very good at their jobs. Likewise terrorist plots aren't inhibited by an inability to communicate them, but by a lack of means to accomplish them.
I wonder sometimes if America filled with a bunch of fear-filled cowards afraid of their own shadows. Somehow lots of us have bought into the idea that we are somehow invincible. Could it be our entertainment which often features a single person wiping out an entire army of bad guys but never getting hurt? Who knows... but whatever the reason, this wishful thinking is not a luxury we can afford to enjoy. We are vulnerable, and we should accept it and deal with it. Toughen-up, you armchair warriors afraid of the sight of your own blood, because your ham-handed attempts to accomplish the impossible are actually putting all of us, yourselves included, at greater risk.
By all means, we need to prohibit the spread of dangerous weapons, and engage in the kind of detective work that actually has a chance of stopping this kind of thing before it happens. But I for one am fed up with this monster-in-the-closet mentality, and I strongly hope that the rest of the hand-wringers in this country grow a metaphorical pair and join me in refusing to live their lives in fear. The vast majority of us all aren't going to die in a terrorist attack anyhow, the end will much more likely be in a very pedestrian way like an auto accident, from obesity related illness, or even inglorious colon cancer. Won't it be sad when that day comes and people will have wasted their lives worrying instead of enjoying themselves?
