I will come back to Churchill in a moment, but what has prompted this Blog, is the Christmas Day attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 bound for Detroit Michigan.
I have not commented on this before now, since there were enough articles and talk shows that mirrored my thinking - i.e. that the time has come to get tough with the Psalmist Extremists.
Indeed, that time came with the levelling of the Twin Trade Towers in 2001.
But since that attack in 2001 we, in the West, have gone off the rails in our misguided attempt to defeat Terrorism.
This is most visible in the areas of flying and trade in that we have turned legitimate travellers into mere objects to be prodded and probe at will and have thickened our borders to the point where commerce has suffered greatly.
Below the radar, with the new Super Security Departments, our countries are becoming more and more police states.
In all of this, we have turned ourselves inside out and by so doing have allowed the Terrorists to win.
In all of the articles I have read on the subject, one article in particular stood out. This is an article that appeared in the National Post on January 9 under the authorship of George Jonas.
Here are some direct quotations from Mr. Jonas' article entitled 'Our Own Worst Enemy' wherein he focuses on air travel:
- Terrorists don't have to blow up anything to win. They win by reducing travellers to Alcatraz inmates.
- Letting ourselves be body-scanned without profiling passengers' ethnicity, religion, and behaviour is a waste of time.
- Medieval minds - roasting puny penises, in preparation for virgins - are turning our airports in replicas of Devil's Island.
- Fighting terrorists wisely means paying them whatever attention is commensurate with the danger they represent, no more.
- Islamists can bring down a planeload of vacationers - or even an office tower. That's all they can do.
- They cannot endanger us as nations or societies.
Projecting 'Jonas' beyond just what has happened to air travel since 2001 I believe it comes down to this: Like a mosquito, the terrorist can only annoy us, he cannot change us - either as an individual or as a society. We can only do that to ourselves and in fact we have been doing just that in the face of Terrorism.
Sadly, then, since 2001 the Terrorists have been winning.
Now back to Churchill, at a time when his Island was facing nightly attacks by the German Luftwaffe, here is what he had to say:
- We will have no truce or parley with you (Hitler) or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst and we will do our best.
Unlike the Obamas of this world, Churchill did not talk about negotiating with the devil and nor did the people of Great Britain. They went into the shelters at night and in the morning came out, buried their dead, dusted themselves off and went to work.
We need to do the same.
The Terrorists cannot defeat us with their bullets - but they can defeat us through instilling fear in our hearts and we are the only ones that can defend against that.
Let them continue to do their worst and we will start doing our best. We'll call them what they are - spineless terrorists who prey on the weak and defenceless.
But we won't cave into fear by turning ourselves and our societies inside out.
That is not to say that we do not defend ourselves against terrorism. Of course we do, but we do it through profiling and through undercover work to the point where we know who and where the terrorists are.
Going back to the airport analogy; we need to nail the Terrorist before he buys his ticket.
The time has now come when we all must march right through the airport without scanning, without prodding and without being made to feel like a criminal.
Terrorist - you do your worst and we'll do our best...
As I see it..
'Galagher'
