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April 03, 2004

Back to El Drawing Boardo

Looks like yet another terrorist attack in Spain:

The Web site of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo is reporting that an explosion has taken place inside a building in the Madrid suburb of Leganes.

An Islamic militant allegedly related to the March 11 train attacks threatened earlier to blow up the building.

So much for going the political route of capitulation and appeasement.

I think the problem here is that people, for some reason, think that this is a war of regions, rather than of civilizations. It's not about us getting out of the Middle East. It's not about us being simply Jewish, Christian, atheist, or other.

It's about us not being a particular variety of violent, fundamentalist Muslim.

They don't want to kill me, you, and your friends and loved ones because of what we are, but because of what we are not. Because we aren't sinners in the hands of an angry Allah.

This driving philosophy behind groups like Al Qaeda is not something we can just educate against or something that will go away if we offer to play nice and share our peanut butter sandwich with them. It is a cancer spreading among humanity, and it must be destroyed. Before it destroys more of us.

I see no reason to wait to see a mushroom cloud rising over downtown New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Miami, or Denver before we realize that these assholes are playing for keeps.

I fear too many people have forgotten the horror, fear, and anger of September 11, 2001. I fear that when the next, bigger attack comes - and I believe it will - there will be proclamations of America losing its innocence, of why didn't we see this coming, of why weren't we protected better, of how could anyone do this to innocent people.

The answer will be the same as it is today: because we have short-term memories and the deaths of 3,000 of our countrymen and friends pale in importance to Janet Jackson's bare breast on national television.

So, why? How?

Because we let them.

Let's not do that.

Update: CNN has more. Looks like terror suspects holed themselves up in the building, and threatened to destroy it.

Update 2: Zombyboy has similar thoughts over at his blog. Honest, we didn't plan this!

Update 3: ...and more from Dever, who should work hard to make the upcoming RMBB 3.0.