snakes on a plane // stark realities : just a few quick thoughts

Arrests in London in regard to the newest bomb plot are only another reminder of how the administrations in England and in the United States have failed to protect the people they were pledged to represent. We are worse off and more vulnerable for them than we are safer. The two administrations have failed to address root causes and in fact have only encouraged the attempts of more such attacks.

Bush, in his usual politically charged way, made a statement to the effect that this was "a stark reminder that the nation is at war with Islamic fascists", meanwhile, all this statement did was give the terrorists even more status than they deserve and remind anybody who wants to be reminded just how misguided our priorities in fighting the "war on terrorism" have been.

If you're one of those people who might think about being a terrorist, how much more status than what your life is at the moment, must it be to be told that an entity that you hate is at war with what you are to become, considers YOU a huge threat. Meanwhile, the rest of your life resembles Luke Skywalker's at the beginning of Star Wars. No prospects, no job, the ragged edge of nowhere but suddenly you can be thrust into "the middle of it all". I really believe that the rhetoric of it all should be toned way down, as I've said before, and the fact that it hasn't, only is suggestive of how political this war is at home, in regards to how it plays in Witchita rather than in what can be used in the hysterical calls to action of radical imams in the squalid outliers of obscure Pakistani cities and elsewhere across the Mideast, London and Paris.

This is not an ideological war, this is a police action taken to eliminate the threat posed by people who sought to murder other people as some kind of "statement". Murder is murder, in the end, the motiviations are just a curiosity or, in this case, something that should be examined to assess the threat of further action by similarly willing people. Or at least that's what it should be.

Unfortunately, George Bush and the cartel he's got, have expressed a willingness to make this an ideological war, and in doing so, have only encouraged the identification of a great many people, on both sides, with those who would do murder and have revenge for any number of reasons.

Meanwhile, as I sit here listening to Blossom Dearie sing the BEST version (even better than Astrud Gilberto's) of "The Shadow of Your Smile", I see that another suicide bomber had the satisfaction of ripping dozens more bodies apart in Najaf, killing 35 or so of them in that Shi'ite holy city to the south of Baghdad. This is simply another stark reminder of how by placing our priorities in Iraq we have only encouraged and helped incubate the expansion of terror networks around the world.

It's just another story that twins too sadly with the plot exposed in London.

Apparently all the strife of today will not prevent George Bush from appearing at a Republican fund raiser, just as planned, later today.