Bloglash
: It’s typical blog behavior to point out that Matt Welch found this first: The blog backlash continues, this time from ex-Suckster Tim Cavanaugh in OJR. And you have to give it to him that he does capture the blogsters’ endearing habit of praising each other like ladies at a tea lunch (and then snipping behind each others’ backs) as well as our utter dependence on real reporters in real media getting real facts for us to blog and blather about and, finally, our uncanny ability to spread like kudzu.
The weblog is not the most useless weapon in the War On Terrorism. That title is still held by the nuclear submarine. But it is precisely their unconventional methods that make the war bloggers enemies to be feared. Like Al-Qaeda, the war bloggers are a loosely structured network, a shadowy underground whose flexibility and compulsive log-rolling make them as cost-effective as they are deadly. Kill Glenn Reynolds and a thousand James Tarantos will rise in his place. Try to apply the Powell Doctrine and the war bloggers will elude our grasp. Ignore them and they’ll use our own weapons against us.
Of course, ego gratification being the primary goal of any blogger, I’m pleased as punch that Cavanaugh includes me in his broadside. Just so long as they spell the url right.
Happiness is a warm gun
: The FBI released tapes of five would-be suicide terrorists today. Crackpot creeps. One of them is highly dramatic, sinking his head in his arms, then fondling, hugging, and kissing his big gun; this is what he thinks a Jihad fighter looks like. Then, when he believes his 45 seconds of fame are over, he breaks character and grins like a ninny: a bad actor in a home video. Death is a game to them. Sick fun, sick f’s.
Terrorism: domestic and imported
: The timing of the arrest of four former SLA members is likely coincidental (I rarely see conspiracies; I believe the world is rarely well-organized enough to conspire) but it is illuminating, nonetheless, given our current war on foreign terrorism. This takes me back to the ’60s and ’70s to recall our own domestic terrorism: the SLA, various ’60s radical groups, the Black Panthers, the FALN. There are differences: The issues allegedly being fought over were American issues; most of us were not targets and thus did not live in fear; the scale and scope was much smaller; the criminals were not so alien. The biggest difference is that that terrorism of old was aimed at dividing us; these acts of terrorism today have united us. Yet the essence of all this terrorism is the same: This is violent fundamentalism, committed by people who believe they are so right that they will commit any wrong, people who will utterly abandon civilization as they purportedly fight to save civilization from itself. None of these people are freedom fighters. They are criminals.
