The GOP solution to fighting terrorism

Is, paradoxically, to enable terrorism.

New York Rep. Peter King on Good Morning America:

"You are saying someone should be held accountable. Name one other specific recommendation the president could implement right now to fix this," host George Stephanopolous said to King.

"I think one main thing would be to -- just himself to use the word terrorism more often," said King, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee.

The whole idea behind terrorism is that its really not an effective means to "change the way we live" by force. Rather, terrorism gets us to change things by ourselves. It tempts us into over reacting to every incident by starting a war, or bombing someone, or having a terrorism alert meter, or suddenly thinking its OK to torture people. So this whole emphasis on a "war on terrorism" and opening a new front in the war on terrorism in Yemen is quite literally empowering the enemy. The more we inflate them, the more we enable their only real means to affect us - fear, and thus the more tempting terrorism becomes because we have made it more effective. Its a positive feedback loop that starts with idiotic government officials and the mainstream news cycle.

The truth is, all of the terrorist incidents against Americans over the last several years could have been prevented had we just not allowed guys to get on airplanes with knives or bombs. That's it. The Europeans, Pakistanis, Yemenis, and others have a different set of problems than we do here in the states. Our terrorism problem is far easier to manage because very little of it is actually home grown. And furthermore, if we really wanted to save American lives, we'd declare a War on McDonalds, not a War on Terrorism.