Thursday, August 10, 2006

So How Many Terrorists Are Left, Again?

ABC News's "The Blotter" reports on the next Osama bin Laden, or should I say the next al-Zarqawi: This one is Pakistani; his name is Matiur Rehman:

Pakistani officials tell ABC News a new terrorist plan to attack the United States and Europe is being organized by a shadowy Pakistani, who is the keeper of the log of recruits who attended al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Pakistani police and military officials identify the man as Matiur Rehman, whose role as al Qaeda's planning director was first revealed by ABCNews.com earlier this year.
[...]
U.S. law enforcement officials tell ABC News there has been great concern since last March about a "Pakistani" network that could attempt multiple international attacks.

Rehman, along with his deputy, another Pakistani named Qari Hassan, are believed to be keepers of the "Directory of Jihad," which officials say contains "thousands of names" of young militants who trained at al Qaeda camps and have since dispersed around the world.

U.S. law enforcement officials confirm al Qaeda kept extensive recruitment records, many of which were recovered after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Rehman, now in his mid-30s, worked as an explosives instructor in the al Qaeda camps, according to Pakistani officials, who say he has been deeply involved in most of the major terror attacks in Pakistan in the last few years.

So when will the children on the right who say the solution to terrorism is to 'kill all the terrorists' realize that such a thing is simply not possible, because, as Athenae at First Draft points out, the number of terrorists is not finite:

And we will not be able to keep them all in one place so we can kill them all at once.
[...]
And it is time that the people pushing that ridiculous argument -- basically, that other people's kids should do the tough job of killing bad guys in a country we don't have to see reduced to rubble if we can just shut off the TV -- realize how morally bankrupt and criminally delusional it is.

It's one thing to push a strategy. There are any number of reality-based ways of fighting terrorism -- look at the Brits making arrests, for example, with law enforcement without invading Venezuala just to engorge their national cock -- and people can argue the merits of one over the merits of another.

It's another thing entirely to pass off bar room bravado about how "we" are fighting "them" over "there," when "we" generally cannot find "there" on a map or pick "them" out of a lineup, and know damn well it isn't going to work. Killing other people's kids to satisfy your need to have something to say over a beer or on Tweety's show of an evening is a form of sickness I have no words to describe.

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