ESR's Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto

[MaggieL]

OK, taking it one step at a time:

1) Terrorists commit violent acts directly and deliberately against noncombatant civilian targets to advance their political aims; a violent vehicle with a propaganda payload.

2)The terrorists then conceal themselves among the shelter of *another* noncombatant civilian population, and then paint the unintended results of any response aganst them as indiscriminant slaughter of innocents by the victims of the original attack, their fault for not bowing to the terrorist's agenda in the first place.

3) To then criticise the victims of the original attack for their failure to embrace the intended propaganda effect of the original attack as "narrowminded" or "blind" is to intentionally work to advance the goals and increase the effectiveness of the original attack, no matter how much self-righteous hand-wringing accompanies it attempting to achieve distance from complicity in the evil of the original attack.

What an arrogant, cowardly, cynical shell game: kill one batch of innocents for publicity, kill another bunch as camoflage, and then blame it all on your enemies.