Are we Giving the Terrorists They Want?

Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British
government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the
TSA and its European counterparts didn't engage in pointless
airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the
press didn't write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn't
use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we'd reacted
that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.

It's time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does
not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are
things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of
them involving intelligence and investigation -- and not focusing on
specific plots.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to
refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims
stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1
billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and
about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority
of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally,
and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism
to advance political careers or increase a television show's
viewership.