Real Kato Blog: Suburban Terrorism

Lately, someone's been coming through Amy's neighborhood and knocking down mailboxes.

If you drive down Amy's street, you'll see mailboxes lying on the ground, mailboxes strapped to their posts with string and tape, and mailboxes with giant dents in them. The first time it happened, it looked like someone threw bricks. This latest incident looks like it may have been mailbox baseball. Amy's mailbox hasn't been hit yet, but it seems like just a matter of time.

This is suburban terrorism.

It's not exactly an event on the scale of 9/11, but it feels like terrorism, because we're being threatened in our own homes by an unseen enemy.

Of course, if I were President Bush, I'd go to some random house in Durham, move into it, and ground all the teenage boys that live there. You know, I'd fight the vandals on their turf so they can't attack us on ours. Never mind if those boys actually had anything to do with our vandalism. The war on vandalism has many fronts.

Oh, and I'd make sure to tap all of Amy's phone calls too.

After the foiled airline terrorism plot in London, Bush made the statement that the "war on terror" is far from over. That is somehow supposed to be a justification for the continued fighting in Iraq... as if trying to police a sectarian civil war had anything to do with fighting terrorists.

You know, I'm not sure I see how the war in Iraq is supposed to be won. Do we think honestly think that several more years of military presence is going to make Shiites and Sunnis get along? I can see why more and more people are calling the war a fiasco.

The scarier thing is, I don't know how we're supposed to win the so-called war on terror. When will this "war" be over? When there are no more terrorists? Exactly when is that going to happen?

If you remember the novel 1984, you'll recall that there was a never-ending war, a government that spied on its own civilians, and a lack of basic civil liberties. Do people not see the parallels here?

At least one person seems to get it... the federal judge who ruled the warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional, Anna Diggs Taylor. Of course, now she's getting death threats from right-wingers, and comments like, "When the terrorists strike, I hope they bomb her first." Hmm, anonymous death threats... that makes who the terrorists in this case?

Bush said she "doesn't understand the world we're living in". No, George, you don't understand it. You don't get how your actions are fueling the cause of terrorists all over the world. You don't get how the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in Iraq could have been better spent on securing airports, seaports, and borders. And you don't get that when we talk about defending freedom, that includes freedom from the tyranny of our own government.

And can't you do something about our dang mailboxes?

Permalink