Posts
The Sitting Duck Syndrome — the terrorist’s real
objective
If you’ve ever dined with a
seasoned police officers, combat veterans or anyone who had once been the
victim of “surprise violence,” you know the routine. They will insist on
picking the right table and sitting in the seat with the best view — and maybe
the best access to an exit. If they’ll even go into a movie theater, they’ll
probably pick the back row. They never want anyone behind them. They don’t want
surprises.
When they were on duty, they were
prepared for violence. “Surprise violence” is what haunts them when they’re off
duty.
And it can haunt them for the rest
of their lives.
The people that a terrorists kill
when they set off a bomb or open fire in a school, theater or shopping mall are
really the secondary victims. The intended victims are the people who watch the
news and experience the repeated coverage of the deadly attack. The goal is to
inflict the fear of surprise violence on everyone else. The goal is to
terrorize an entire population.
And it’s frighteningly effective.
On July 17, 1984, I had been back
from Vietnam
for more than 15 years and was busy advancing a career in journalism. But on
that day, “surprise violence” enveloped my world and my psyche. Nothing had
happened to me directly. But on that day, a troubled man named James Oliver
Huberty walked into a crowded McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California,
armed with enough firepower to execute 21 customers and employees and injure 19
others.
