Just say no to the notion that terrorist kills civilians means we must set our hair on fire

Today’s terror attacks are further evidence of what I recently said. I don’t understand the Middle East and I don’t think anyone does, even those who were born and raised there. 

As part of his impersonation of a world leader, Putin intervened in a civil war in Syria. When my Unelected President is asked about our getting involved in Syria in my novel of that name, he rejects the idea out of hand. The novel is set in the period January through April, 2013.

If I write a sequel, getting into the period where Putin decided to prop up Syria, President “Mike Medlock’s” response to hand-wringing about Russian influence in Syria would be, “He can have Syria. It’s the same mistake they made in Afghanistan. The Middle East is a tar baby and the Russian people will suffer from Putin using that civil war as a way to what a big shot he is on the world stage.”
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Here are two items for Putin’s Syria highlight film. One of his was planes getting shot down by Turkey and the other his ambassador to Turkey being assassinated by a Turk aggrieved by Russian military action again one of Syria’s many enemies, the Turks.
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There is an old saying that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” e.g. The USSR in world War II in Europe.

But that saying does not apply in the Middle East. Logic does not apply in the Middle East. Consistency does not even apply in the Middle East.

Every country in the Middle East, including Israel, has been our enemy at times and our friend at times. For example, Israel spied on us, they attacked our ship the USS Liberty, they defied UN Security Council resolutions that we supported regarding settlements, etc. I believe every single president since Israel came into existence has been extremely angry at the Israeli government at one time or another, most epically Carter and Obama.

There are no good guys in the Middle East for us to back therefore the best policy is to stay out except to deny nuclear weapons, or the money to acquire them, to all of them who promise to use them against us. At present, IS and Iran need to have their income and net worth adjusted downward to the point where they lack the ability to inflict federal level harm on America.

By “federal level” harm I mean to exclude the various lone wolf and small group attacks on soft targets. There is little we can do to stop those and it is a huge mistake for us to do any more than make incremental improvements in border security and international intelligence sharing. Otherwise, it’s a local police matter.

One of the three reasons terrorists do what they do is to provoke an overreaction. (the other two are revenge and recognition) The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were such overreactions. About half my facebook friends seems to fall for this.

I keep pointing out that more Americans are killed by cows than terrorists on average and people keep responding with utter irrelevancies like the intent of the terrorist as opposed to the innocence of the cow.

The issue is death, not motive. It’s like cause-of-death insurance, which is a scam.

If you have dependents, you need life insurance to care for them if you do. The AMOUNT of coverage you need is entirely dependent upon the FINANCIAL NEEDS of your dependents and has absolutely nothing to do with HOW you die. Whether you are killed by a cow or a coward shouting allahu akhbar, you’re dead. You are no more dead when killed by a coward than when killed by a cow. Your dependents need no more money to live on if you are killed by a coward than if you are killed by a cow. Yet it actually makes more sense to make cow-death avoidance a top national priority than it does to prevent terrorist attacks on American soil.

America should take what cost-effective steps we can to extend the lives of our citizens like reducing smoking, getting recommended vaccinations, avoiding bad neighborhoods, and so on. If there are cost-effective steps that can be taken to reduce deaths by terrorist, we should take them. But at present, reducing smoking beats the hell out of “extreme vetting” or even profiling, which I support, in terms of bang for the buck in preventing premature deaths.

The lone wolf terrorists in America and around the world and their recruiters are trying to get your goat to make you overreact and overreact is exactly what Trump promises to do and Bush II did. The correct policy with regard to San Bernardino and Orlando and the like is to ignore them, stop giving such criminals the publicity they seek. Instead a great many Americans, including Trump, are letting these losers get their goat and waste billions more overreacting to them.

Probably we who are bright enough to understand this should stop being so nice to the morons who want to waste billions of taxpayer dollars chasing a bunch of losers for whom the 72 virgins will be their first date.