Flirting With the Daily Pineapple

I have questions.  Correction: I have a lot of questions.  They are the kind of questions that I know I am not supposed to ask.  Some of you will think that I should be rewarded for asking these questions by receiving a daily pineapple for eternity, if you know what that means (I find that most don't).

Please, don't think I am trying to change your opinion.  These are honest questions.

What is the difference between war and terrorism?

I remember after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there was some discussion on this topic.  The voices that I heard at the time seemed to agree that terrorists attack civilian targets in order to create fear.  Honorable war practices involve attacking military targets, trying to prevent collateral damage. 

What are we doing in Iraq and Afghanistan?

We have thousands of our men and women in uniform over there fighting every day.  The casualties, for whatever reason, do not seem to be interesting enough to merit mention in the mainstream news, but they continue to mount.  Exactly who are we fighting against?  There isn't much in either country that could be described as a legitimate military--and whatever legitimate military there is are on our side.  If they aren't military, doesn't that make them civilians?  Crazy civilians, but civilians nonetheless.

I do not think that our military could be accurately described by anyone as terrorists.  Again, I ask, what is the difference between war and terrorism?  Is the difference solely the usefulness of the term for propaganda?

Is the shooter at Fort Hood a terrorist?

He fits the profile.  Shouting "Allahu Ackbar!" doesn't help his cause if he did not want to be seen as a terrorist.  Oh, and he tried to contact Al Qaeda shortly before his attack.  That sounds like a terrorist.  In his defense, he attacked a military base.  That sounds like war.  He seems to have acted alone, though.  That sounds like a lone wacko.

Aren't all the terrorists really just a bunch of wackos anyway?

There is nothing sane about terrorism anyway.  They fight a fight that everyone knows they can never win.  And supposedly they do it for the promise of seventy waiting virgins in heaven--except there is no claim that is going to happen in the Quran anywhere.  So, they are just wackos.  Just because they group together doesn't change that fact.  If they aren't lone wackos, they are groups of wackos.

Does fighting a fight you know you can never win make you a wacko?

If it does, doesn't that make us wackos, too?  The "war on terror" is just like the "war on drugs."  We can fight it all we want, but there is no way we can win either one. 

Who, exactly, is the enemy in the "war on terror"?

I know some people would say "Muslims."  I don't think that's fair.  I'm no Muslim, but I interact with Muslims regularly enough that I can say that Muslims are just like every other religious group: some of them are weird, but most of them are very nice people that I wouldn't have any qualms with sharing a pizza with.

Some people would say "Muslim extremists."  Who defines "extreme"?  No matter what your theology, there is always someone with a different theology who believes that yours is extreme.  That's how religion works.

Neither of those categories are sufficient, anyway.  What about Timothy McVeigh?  That guy was a terrorist if there ever was one.  It seems to me that the enemies are "wackos" plain and simple.  Our enemy is anybody who is crazy enough to think that they should go around killing people even if it results in their own death just because people disagree with them.

Where is the danger?

Remember the "shoe bomber"?  You know, the idiot that tried to blow up a plane by hiding explosives in his shoe?  He's the reason that you have to take off your shoes and do the semi-nude chicken dance before you're allowed on an airplane.  He was no threat.  He was a wacko, for sure, but he was too stupid to be a danger to anyone.  So, where is the danger?

I think the danger is with the "real" terrorists--the wackos who want to kill us for disagreeing with them and are capable of doing so.  Osama bin Laden, Timothy McVeigh, and Nidal Malik Hasan are the types of terrorists that are dangerous--not the shoe bombers of the world.

What makes some terrorists dangerous while others are not?

I see an obvious distinction between the dangerous terrorists--the ones worth thinking about and all others.  It seems to me that the distinction is that the dangerous ones are trained by the military--our military.  Our biggest threats are the ones that our government has developed!  Bin Laden, McVeigh, Hasan, and even Saddam Hussein were at one point our allies.  Our government created them.

Right now, our government is training thousands of soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Our military is training their entire armies.  What happens when the government loses control of them, the way they eventually lost control of these other guys?  Not all of them will become wackos, but some of them already are. 

Do we really need to worry about terrorism--or just our own government?

Just a few questions that crossed my mind today.