A Blind Ostrich

A blind ostrich might as well leave its head in the sand.

There is an interesting editorial in the Detroit Free Press today that discusses the evil terrorist acts that took place in Mumbai last week.

Surprisingly missing (or maybe not so surprising after all) is any reference to radical Islam, or the jihad. Given that those terms are omitted, it should not be surprising that this final paragraph is included:

As with the 9/11 gang, it's not clear just what the Mumbai terrorists hoped to accomplish, other than death and destruction. It would serve them and all like them right if this latest horror spawned a truly global, concerted effort to hunt them down and bring them to justice before they can act again.

If someone is unable or unwilling to properly define one's enemy, should it be a surprise that the person might also be unable or unwilling to define the goals of one's enemy? And, if the motive is too difficult to be detected, how likely is it that the next plot might be sniffed out?

Forgive me for not being overly encouraged by a charge called by people standing with such unsure footing. It seems to me we are more likely to catch the next band of Islamic terrorists by complete accident than we would ever be by heeding the rhapsodies of the willfully ignorant. This is the sort of thinking that helped us arrive at a system that mandates 80 year old ladies be searched in airports at the same frequency as Arabic speaking middle easterners.

Don't get me wrong, I would applaud the global effort that the Freep pines for, though it will never come. I just hope that whatever global effort is cobbled together, such as it ever exists, will be led by someone not quite so constrained by fear or blindness as are those brave journalists down at the Freep.

When I need someone to make public classified operations designed to track down and kill terrorists, I'll call me a journalist. When I need someone to announce to the world how our government is secretly tracking terrorists' funding, I'll call me up a journalist. But, when I need someone to lead the charge against terrorists, I hope you don't mind, I'll put my faith in someone a bit more determined to, you know, actually fight terrorists.

I'm funny that way.