Terrorism's fight-or-flight

Jotsheet ^ | March 17, 2004 | Tom Sherman

[delacoert]

Take a simple concept from high school biology class. The most innate human reaction to a threat is the fight-or-flight response. Given a threatening situation, a human chooses either to confront the source of the threat or to avoid the source of the threat. Fight-or-flight is the foundation of survival.

Terrorism is a threat. Its primary purpose is to instill fear, and the brand of extreme Islamist terror practiced today seems to have little agenda but to instill fear; al Qaeda has no demands, no "note" it sends prior to bombings. al Qaeda kills to instill fear, not to invoke change.

As Westerners, we stand in the face of terrorism. We are threatened. We are in fear. And we are faced with the most basic of choices: the fight-or-flight choice. To fight is to confront the source of the threat, to meet it head-on, and to attempt to eradicate it. To flee is to placate, to appease, and to hope that the source of the threat goes away or becomes unthreatening.

Given this backdrop, terrorism has fundamentally divided the West into those who fight and those who flee. In the former camp stand conservatives and moderates in the U.S., most of Israel, and conservatives in Europe. In the latter camp stand liberals in the U.S. and moderates and liberals in Europe. Westerners are divided by our reaction. America fights; Europe flees.

And we knew Madrid was coming. For al Qaeda, it is not about America, but the West. The question was how Europe would react to "their September 11" when it inevitably arrived. It came, and they are reacting. Fleeing. Spaniards voted out the conservative government that chose to fight with the U.S. and replaced it with a socialist government that vowed to flee Iraq. The terrorists won. They provoked regime change from explosives. They shaped policy. They got their way.

The West must never flee. To flee is to give power to the source of the threat. To flee is to choose defense over offense and to allow one's opponent to control the rules of the game. To flee is weak. To flee is to acknowledge that the threat is too strong.

Europe has chosen. Europe flees. America fights.

[delacoert]

This is a little old, but it expresses a theme in the context of "fight or flight" that I thinks aids in understanding US politics, the "anyone but Bush" insanity/hatred, and even the extreme liberal bias show by the MSM in this election.