"We Will Never Surrender"

The entire premise of the Islamic random murder campaign is that we in the West are weak - that our comfortable lifestyles and permissive society make us plump, complacent, and spineless, and our media is their mightiest weapon. In short, that it is easy to defeat the West.

Wrong on two counts.

First, the pace of the campaign is too slow to have an effect. To foster the contagion of fear, the probability of being affected by an attack is far too low. All that planning, months and months between events. It's not very effective. Not that I am surprised given the evidence of how rapidly fundamentalist Islamic states develop. While there can be little doubt that the intellectual horsepower exists within these states, that capability is hardly useful if spent arguing about how many of Allah's virgin's can dance on the head of a pin. Or placing the blame for an inability to control one's own sexual urges on the object of one's desire.

Second, these attacks are not evoking fear responses at all. Steely resolve and the natural response to protect one's loved ones is the response they are receiving. I am not fearful of these sociopaths - each attack ensonces more fully my desire to personally dispatch them to paradise.

They have violated one of Sun Tsu's rules of war: do not underestimate your enemy. Their events, while having the sharp edges the media appreciates, pale in comparison to the scale of many natural disasters.

I already ignore the media spin, as does most of the blogging community. That community grows stronger and more influential in our society every day.

I notice that the skys remain full of jet aircraft. I used public transit yesterday. I bought gasoline refined from mid-east oil the day before. Life goes on.

Thanks to 9/11, Bali, Madrid and now London, the political pressure I am applying to my government is not to give in to your demands, but rather to go full out to exterminate your asses.

I suggest al-Qaeda gives the entire matter a rethink. They cannot win, and will not win.