Unintentional terror target

Whenever any kind of bomb goes off, there is likely to be collateral damage. At least, that’s the case with our bombs, since we’re not trying to hurt the innocent when we drop them.

With terrorists, it’s sort of different. The randomness of the victim’s identities is sort of the point. The more random, the more a bomb is likely to spread terror.

But at least in the case of these intended bombings, it seems highly unlikely that the whackos intentionally tried to damage Paul DeMarco’s campaign for single-payer health care.

And yet, what are we to think when the British National Health Service intentionally recruits foreign doctors, and they turn out to be terror-minded?

Well, I’ll tell you what I think: Keeping our current system is no way to avoid that problem. If you don’t think we’re drawing a lot of foreign medicos to this country, you haven’t been to a major hospital or to a local doc-in-the-box lately.

This is not to cast aspersions upon physicians with accents. It is to say that as long as we remain the kind of country that attracts the educated and ambitious from abroad (we can agree on that, can’t we, even though a lot of y’all out there don’t want to attract folks to come pick our strawberries?), we will be vulnerable — unless those societies over there change.

Hence my preference for offense over defense in the war on terror. And in baseball, for that matter — I certainly prefer batting to standing in the outfield. Don’t you? Sure, we have to play some tenacious D, but it’s crazy to let the bad guys be the ones batting all the time.

I want us to remain a free and open land of opportunity. That means encouraging other countries to be the same.

2 thoughts on “Unintentional terror target”

  1. bud

    we will be vulnerable — unless those societies over there change.
    Hence my preference for offense over defense in the war on terror.
    -Brad
    I agree 100%. Let’s play a little offense against the terrorists. Step 1 would be to withdraw our military forces from Iraq where they are doing absolutely no good fighting the terrorists. They’re basically just policing a hopeless civil war and trying as best they can to maintain a bit of order. It’s a hopeless task that inevetibly gives moderates in the region the wrong impression. They believe we’re over their simply as conquerors. Since that is not our motivation we need to show the Muslim world how good our intentions are. That is easy to accomplish simply by pulling our military forces out of the country. They could then be used to go on offense against the terrorist threats Brad is so worried about.

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