Fear Them!

In a previous post (The GOP Religion) I talked about how the GOP is a lot like the religious right. The recent back and forth between Dick Cheney and Joe Biden caused me to think about how both the GOP and religion use fear to push their agendas.

Consider the fear theme that ole grumpy Cheney keeps pushing. Those bad terrorists are still planning to attack and kill us nice, sweet Americans! And, according to ole grumpy, we must attack anyone who looks like a terrorist with everything our military can muster. Because someone wearing explosives in their panties is a sicko deserving of our wrath.

Then there is religion, especially evangelical Christian religion. First of all, you must be saved. Saved from what? Why Hell, you sicko! If you don't accept Jesus as your personal savior (never sure what that really meant) you'll burn forever in the fires of Hell. So come and join our religion and you'll be safe. You'll go up to heaven where you'll have 72 virgins at your disposal. Oh wait, that's the OTHER religion pushing that. Christians will just sit around and sing all day -- forever!

Cheney and his GOP flunkies really love to push the fear factor. They figure that if they can scare the crap out of us, we'll accept the GOP as our Savior party. And we, as dumb American sheep, go along with it. Terrorists are the worse thing that ever happened to America and we have to pull out all the stops to stop them, Cheney shouts. Never mind that more people die from the flu every year than from terrorists.

Now I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything about these wackos. I've heard it said elsewhere that we need to make the terrorists inconsequential. In other words don't forget about them but at the same time don't give them what they really want. And what they want is us quaking in our boots at the thought of what they might do to us. Here's ugly old bin Laden hiding in a cave somewhere in Pakistan having the U.S. jump every time he speaks. Well, ignore him and let him rot in the cave!

These terrorists are nothing more than low life criminals, like Timothy McVey, Richard Reid - the shoe bomber - and the Christmas underwear bomber. Throw them in jail and forget about them! As for the others, strengthen police and undercover work and nab them before they do the dirty. As for our military, let them fight legitimate wars not police actions.

Guerrilla tactics, such as the terrorists employ, are not designed to win anything. Their sole goal is to terrorize and as long as we stay scared of them, they gain the upper hand. If we treat them like annoying mosquitos, then they fail and slowly die of old age.