Taliban militants killed six Americans, including a young female diplomat named Anne Smedinghoff, 25 year old foreign service officer with the US State Department. Also dead are three US military, two US civilians and an Afghan doctor. The people died after being purposely targeted by an explosion while travelling to donate books to a school in the south.
The young diplomat from Illinois is the first American diplomat to die on the job since last year’s attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.
Officials said the suicide car bomber purposely came at the people just as a coalition of souls on this educational mission rolled by on the road… farther ahead in the caravan of vehicles was the governor of Zabul coming to the same school event.
Terrorism of this kind is not just the irreligious murder for the sake of murder. It is meant to frighten others into obsequiousness, groveling and apology. It is meant to make others walk on eggshells. That groveling may take place amongst the vulnerable poor and better off may be true for a time.
But historically, terrorizing idealists who murder to murder, overlook several negative outcomes that are assured; two are these: trying to gain and lay claim to and demand obedience in far more territory than they can actually govern in manpower. And, those intent on the low-tech high body count of terror, consistently overlook that murdering persons who are loved by others, actually raises the avenging sword against terrorists a thousand times harder and utterly relentlessly by those with often superior training and superior weaponry.
It can be said that killing creates a grotesque merrygoround on which riders are murdered, murdering each other, and replaced, murdered and replaced, murdered and replaced, ad infinitum. WHile the music bangs on. While the brass ring is forgotten.
Pax.