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Is it just an accident?

I’ve been wondering for some time if the reason why Airlines are such a target for terrorism has more to do with their symbolism to the third world rather than their availability as targets. To the third world, a jet aircraft represents a lot more to people than a way to get around.

It represents freedom in a very real, very tangible way. You can talk to me about flags all day. You want a ‘symbol of freedom’, watch a 747 leave LAX while you stand underneath the flight path. You stand there watching this massive aluminum machine climb up, pulling in its wheels, the flaps retract and then it goes above the ‘marine layer’ and off to “who knows where”.

Your mind always stops and asks: “ I wonder where it’s going”.

You want to get deeply depressed? Watch a 747 leave when everything is going wrong in your life and you cant go anywhere. You can really learn to hate 747’s that way. But remember, you live in the modern world, you might have a bad day here and there, but your worst day will not suck as bad as the best day of the folks in the third world. I’m not saying its justification for terrorism, I’m just saying that to you it’s an airplane, but to some people, it might be much more than that.

What better way to express your anger at the world and your lot in it, than to destroy such a large symbol of freedom? Or better yet, use that symbol to “show them” or to somehow use this symbol to “get even”.

Revenge. It goes through the soul like a burning road flare goes through nylon carpet.

So its possible that terrorists like to destroy airplanes or terrorize their passengers, because of the symbolic value they represent, their inherent ‘freedom” rather than the yield of death attacking them may generate.

The 9/11 attacks were as much about the symbolism of the attack as the effectiveness of the mission.

So, is an airliner a symbol or just an available target? I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I probably should think about it some more before I say anything. But what made me thing about this idea was that today, someone decided to take an SUV and to start mowing people down in the Jewish section of San Francisco.

Use a car to terrorize?

Why Because of the effectiveness of the weapon? The yield?

Or…

Because of the fact that of all of modern civilizations inventions, none of them symbolize personal freedom more than that realized by someone sitting behind the wheel of their own car?

I’ll show you...I’ll get even with them. Let me shove their "personal freedom" down their throats. I’m going to run down every “Jew” I see, you just watch....

If you grow up in LA like I did, and you are well immersed in “car culture” you know that cars mean something more to people than simple transportation and that people often change their personality when they drive. Cars are like alcohol, they reveal a persons hidden subconscious nature when they are placed behind the wheel. I cant tell you the number of meek unassuming women I’ve know who drive like a fighter pilot when they are behind the wheel of their car. People can be “mean drunks” just like they can be “mad drivers”.

Of course, you’ll notice that our perpetrator didn’t go to the Vietnamese neighborhoods in San Jose to “get even”, He didn’t go to Oakland or Richmond, or out to suburban Contra Costa County. He went to the one place in the Bay Area with the largest Jewish population, in the most tolerant city on the face of the earth.

So is he just another “Angry young man”? or is it part of a bigger pattern?

Well, I’ll bet that its just one guy. It is also part of a bigger pattern, but I think this just an unfulfilled malcontent taking out his frustrations in the only way he felt would bring him honor.

Terrorism? Yeah, but on a very personal basis.

As far as his association with Fremont goes, Let it go. Fremont is the capital of Afghani life in the US and from reports I’ve read, he is an afghani so its not a surprise and not an indication of a bigger problem. It would be odd if he wasn’t somehow associated with Fremont.

I lived there for years and the afghani people I found there there are wonderful.

I use that word “wonderful” deliberately. Here is a picture from the community from the invasion of Afghanistan thanking the President for his actions.

The people of Fremont know what we have done for Afghanistan, and they are grateful (and how soon the rest of us forget).

This guy is a whack job who is not representative of the community I lived with in Fremont, so be careful with your paintbrush.

But somehow I do wonder about the psychology of using a car as a weapon of revenge.

Posted @ August 29, 2006 11:07 PM | Current Affairs

Posted by: Greybeard at August 30, 2006 07:37 AM

Posted by: Michael at August 30, 2006 06:01 PM

Posted by: frank martin at August 30, 2006 07:29 PM