How sad that last story is still relevant.
Yup. Homeland Security and the TSA are still in business, so obviously the answer is “well over a decade, and with either major political party in power.”
The funniest slapdown of the “War On Terror” came from John Roger’s (“Leverage”) blog Kung Fu Monkey
No false bravado and it’s not that I don’t take terrorism seriously. I do, which I why I voted for the guy who believed in securing our ports and fighting terrorism with criminal investigation methods – which is, if we may remind everybody, how this particular plot was busted.
I am just not going to wet my pants every time some guys get arrested in a terror plot. I will do my best to stay informed. I will support the necessary law enforcement agencies. I will take whatever reasonable precautions seem, um, reasonable. But I will not be terrorized. I assume that the terror-ists would like me to be terror-ized, as that is what is says on their nametag, rather than, say, wanting me to surrender to ennui or negative body image, and they’re just coming the long way around…
I am absolutely buffaloed by the people who insist I man up and take it in the teeth for the great Clash of Civilizations – “Come ON, people, this is the EPIC LAST WAR!! You just don’t have the stones to face that fact head-on!” – who at the whiff of an actual terror plot will, with no apparent sense of irony, transform and run around shrieking, eyes rolling and Hello Kitty panties flashing like Japanese schoolgirls who have just realized that the call is coming from inside the house!
I may have shared too much there…
And now these guys. As the initial “OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD THEY CAN BLOW US UP WITH SNAPPLE BOTTLES!!” hysteria subsides, we discover that these guys had been under surveillance, completely penetrated, by no less than three major intelligence agencies. .
This is terrorism’s A-game? Sack up, people.
You move on, building a better international society so that luddite fundamentalist criminal gangs/cults of personality are further and further marginalized.
Or, if you don’t understand 4th Generation Warfare at all, you move on, bombing the shit out of nation-states and handing your opponents massive PR victories. Either way, you move the fuck on.
Maybe it’s just, I cast my eyes back on the last century …
FDR: Oh, I’m sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we’re coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How’s that going to feel?
CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We’ll be in the pub, flipping you off. I’m slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I’m sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.
US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike … NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about … NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!
… and I’m just a little tired of being on the wrong side of that historical arc.
In case anyone else missed it when the free version went live, it’s online at GQ.
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