Better To Plan Now Than Improvise Later

To borrow a hoary old line from John McLaughlin, it’s a metaphysical certainty that al-Queda or one of its close relations will try to kill a large number of Americans in a flashy manner sometime between now and November 2. The purpose of that attack will be to affect our elections.

Given all of the above, we’d damn well better start thinking about how we’re going to respond, if our safeguards fail, and the barbarians succeed again. For the record, I agree with Steve: this is a dumb idea. But it’s far better to talk now, and get the dumb ideas supplanted by smart ideas, than to have to figure out our responses from scratch in the aftermath.

I’m not just talking about military responses, either. It’s incumbent (no pun intended, honest) upon all of us to think now about what a pre-election terrorist attack means, and that includes what it means politically, both on a national scale and to us as individuals.

Oh, I know, I can hear the hue and cry already: “This is no time for politics.” “How dare you talk about a what a terrorist attack means politically?”

Sorry, kids, but those are empty platitudes. Terrorism is a political issue by definition. It is violence committed against innocents intended to move other people into doing the terrorists’ bidding, either at the ballot box or in a government office. It’s evil, despicable, unforgivable–and it has worked.

Terrorism has already moved one nation to change its government and leave the field of battle. We dare not allow it to work here, but we cannot discount the possibility, either. It’s time, right now, for all of us to think, and talk, and reach our own level of resolve about how we’re going to react, how we’re going to carry on, and yes, how we’re going to vote if and when more of our countrymen are slaughtered in the name of Islamofascism.

Again: we dare not allow their designs to work here. And so we’d better get ready to foil those designs, now, rather than let ourselves be caught up in post-attack turmoil, when we are psychologically weakest.

After all, no one expected the Spanish Capitulation.