So, what is the top news story today?  General Petraeus, troop withdrawal, Sara Hammon running away from a perverse polygamous sect, oil prices at an all-time high.  (Read: Iraq war failing but corrupt administration continuing to lie, Christians are crazy, and oil companies are stealing from us.)

What about the 600 pounds of explosives found in a busy marketplace in Ankara, capital of Turkey?  Terrorist groups are trying to blow up fellow Muslims!  Think of what they have in store for the infidels…

Combined with the foiled plots in Denmark and Germany, the latest in Turkey makes three in less than one week. 

I found what I thought to be a good article on terrorism post-911 published in popular press [http://www.bet.com/News/September11SixYearAnn.htm].  The article starts out asking if we are safer.  It then lists a few foiled terrorists plans from just the past year, including the planned attacks of buildings in Miami, Chicago, and of Fort Dix in New Jersey. 

Then I looked at page 2.

It offered the other side of the coin:  what if our post-911 aggression caused the hatred and resentment that fueled the planning of these foiled attacks?  Apparently, and I quote, “Lawmakers, defense experts and others” believe that “U.S. Military intervention in Iraq and other parts of the world has only made America more vulnerable to foreign resentment. Resentment, they argue, breeds terrorism, which is why there are so many attempts to kill Americans.” 

Then follow quotes from Hilary and Obama (nevermind that she voted for war and Obama had the luxury of not serving in the Senate in 2002 when the Iraq Resolution was passed) where they say that war in Iraq is hurting America’s reputation and fostering resentment towards us.

All these foiled terrorism plots are our own fault.  If we were just nicer to the Islamofacists, then they’d be nicer to us! 

So how does that account for the fact that Turkey, Germany, and Denmark were just targeted this week?  Or that there was an explosion in Istanbul in 2004.  Or the 2004 attack in Madrid?  Turkey, Germany, Denmark, and Spain—at their peaks—deployed 2, 0, 430, 1300 troops respectively (at the time of the Denmark threat, only 55 active troops were in Iraq).  We’ve had more support from Poland, Australia, and South Korea. 

Or is the lesson that we should all be nicer to the terrorists?  Send them fruit baskets and lollypops and they’ll change their minds about our corporatism and materialism and gluttonous, heretical culture. 

It’s my guess (and I am extremely qualified to make wild guesses) that the average Muslim citizen cares about his family, finding work, and having a goat or two and probably could care less about a culture half way around the globe.  Just as the average American citizen cares about his family, his bank account, and having a Big Mac or two and couldn’t care less about what gods they pray to in India or Japan or anywhere else.  Those average Muslim citizens might get peeved hearing Americans call Islam a religion of violence or say things like all Muslims are Allah-crazed lunatics.  About as peeved as Americans get when we hear the Islamofascists call us swine and infidels and our women whores. 

The point?  That “being nice” to terrorists isn’t going to turn them into average Muslims, concerned with making a living and taking care of their family.  Same way how “being mean” to us isn’t going to turn us into no pork eating, praying five times a day, Christ-renouncing Muslims.  However, there is a chance, I think, that if we are “mean” enough to the Islamofascists, if we beat them at their own game (which is violence), then they might start to focus on stability and prosperity on their own soil, instead of chasing the elusive white whale of American infidels.