Who's really helping the terrorists?..

I have that habit I sometimes feel really ashamed of. There's no point in trying to conceal it, it still shows, like the proverbial needle in the sack. I mean that I read the news. And what's worse, I think while reading...

The last piece of news that made me think was this article about that nutjob from Nigeria trying to blow up the plane. Immediately I can see that traveling by airplane is going to become even more embarrassing and bewildering experience. And boy, was I right!..

As you can see from this article, there already is confusion. They detained that guy for having runs, for crap's sake! Oh, sure, they said "Ooops! Sorry?" but I doubt that it helped much. Would you be satisfied with some lame-ass apology after you've been dragged off the plane (after flying across the Atlantic and half the US) and interrogated, having bad food poisoning just to spice it up?

But of course it will not end there. Airline security circus must go on, evidently. Already there are reports about security checks being made more strict, airlines refusing passengers their basic rights (like going to the toilet during the last hour of the trip) and possibly banning usage of everything electronic while on board the plane. And now Obama is pledging that his administration will not rest until they find all of them bomb plotters. Blah, blah, blah...

So what will it mean to us? Well, there will be a new ban on some stuff, I guess. As many people have pointed out, the most dangerous items will be pants... after all, that Nigerian guy concealed something in his trousers!.. Well, something apart from the usual contents. So there'll be more searches, maybe some tugging on dangly bits. Maybe body cavity searches as well (Anal probes, anyone?). Definitely more restrictions and definitely more stupidity. Oh... and maybe some war is in order, a small and quiet one. It won't do for a Nobel Peace prize winner to start a war so shortly after they licked his... oops, recognized his achievements (or lack thereof) in bringing peace to this world.

And all this frantic activity (security measures, not the Nobel-licking) just serves to prove one point: No matter how successful was the attack, if they scare the living daylights out of you – they win. One clumsy banker's son just managed to disrupt Western economy more than a hundred of gun-toting guerrillas in Iraq. In all that security hysteria we seem to forget that the main idea behind terrorism is terror. Once you scare your enemy they cannot act sensibly. They're reacting out of fear, wetting their pants, whining, lashing out blindly – but they do not think. And they lose...