For terror, what does winning look like?

Anti-Muslim protests over the weekend in France

Anti-Muslim protests over the weekend in France

In November 2001, the Los Angeles Times ran a short piece compiling uses of the phrase “…then the terrorists have won.” Hawkeye football earned a dubious mention after a letter to the Iowa City Press-Citizen claimed that long security lines at Kinnick Stadium were “letting the terrorists win.” The New York Times opined that the terrorists win if we “don’t send the marching band from Frank Scott Bunnell High School in Stratford, Conn., to the 2002 Rose Parade.” Disrupting Big Ten football was probably not the impetus behind the September 11 attacks, or behind the series of massacres and bombings in Paris Friday. So why kill all those people? Now that we have been at war with terror for 14 years, we should probably be able to say what the other side’s objectives are. “They hate our freedom” is not a goal we can stop terrorists from achieving. For the Islamists who keep killing civilians around the globe, what does winning look like?

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Close Readings: Michele Bachmann declares End Times

A rare image from Stars Without Makeup catches Michele Bachmann without her prosthetic eyes.

A rare image from Stars Without Makeup catches Michele Bachmann without her prosthetic eyes.

Our fine furloughed friend The Cure sent me a link to this radio interview Michele Bachmann did with a show called Understanding the Times, in which she declares that we are in “God’s end times.” “Maranatha come Lord Jesus,” the Minnesota congresswoman said, “His day is at hand.” You can read a distilled version of her gibbering godspeak here. “Maranatha,” by the way, is an Aramaic expression that either means “our lord has come” or the imperative “come, lord.” It is also a brand of nut butter. Close reading of Bachmann’s particular brand of nut butter after the jump.

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