My husband called me here at home to tell me about the attacks in London. In addition to terror attacks being something that compel attention, if only to keen over the victims because of the soul-rending horror that no one deserves to have as their last moments, London is the first home I can remember. It constitutes my archetypal image of Home. To me an attack in London is an attack at home.
After I hung up the phone I went to look at the television news. The carnage, although only hinted at by the images of that bus and the array of rescue materiel, is dreadful. I won't imagine being trapped in a tunnel during an explosion. After listening to the first reports, and getting annoyed with CNN with an American git's television interviewer's inane questions to a woman almost caught by the bus explosion ("So you didn't see any actual victims?"), I skipped around a little and landed on Fox. Like the others, I turned that one off too after a newsroom shouter (since they weren't out reporting anything) started in about how no one can now question but that we are at war.
"Dear Fox News: Hysterical hyperbole doesn't help."
I don't think we're at war. (The Iraq situation isn't under consideration re: the London tragedy) The situation we're in is being put at risk by fanatical sneaking low-life mass-murderers: The Manson family with mega-buck backing.
The differences between being in danger and at war are of scale: relative numbers, organization and capabilities.
I understand that there are many fanatics willing to enlist as sneaking torturing low-life mass-murderers, but in the overall scheme of things, the attacks they are able to muster, while utterly dreadful and shocking, are relatively small and of limited effect (except for those whose lives were trampled, torn, smashed and burned). This isn't to discount the variety of ways they can disrupt our lives by stalking society, only that what they do is episodic.
I understand that the fanatics have organization, but it is riven. The lucky strikes they make aren't organizational lucky strikes, they're secretive lucky strikes.
I know that they have capabilities, otherwise the wouldn't be able to acquire the materials with which to make their strikes, but, given enough money, anyone can buy 'fireworks.'
Determined garden-variety criminals can make the same kind of splash and wreak similar havoc.
By stating over and over that we are at war, the people saying such things are honoring the sneaking torturing low-life mass-murderers who have robbed people of lives, security and loved ones. Organized criminals have done the same. They're all crooks.
Warriors are people who stand up in public for what they believe. They are on the front lines, wearing no disguises and hiding behind no masks. They bare themselves against the enemy with no pretense about who they are, or their intentions. I've spent my life with these people, I know the difference.
People who plant bombs in subway tunnels -- or who fly airplanes into buildings -- are chickens regardless of whether the perpetrators die. Criminal chickens. They deserve to have their organizational necks wrung.
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