Charlie pleura

I have only a couple of things to say about yesterday’s attacks in Brussels.

The somewhat detached observer/analyst in me is thinking that, in terms of return on investment, the bombing of Zaventem airport and the Maelbeek metro station would please any VC. The vermin who planned these attacks—like the ones in Paris last year—are really quite clever, achieving maximum impact for the minimum of investment.

Think about it—for the price of a few mindless (but fervent) fuckwits and the latest in plastic explosives (available pretty much at any convenience store in certain parts of the world), you kill a few dozen ordinary infidels (because everyone who doesn’t subscribe to your particular belief set is an infidel), close down the airport and transport system for some indeterminate time, and then you sit back and watch your enemies do the rest of your work for you.

You get them to impose more and more authoritarian and intrusive measures while chasing their tail looking for you. And the ordinary people get less sleep, expend more energy looking over their shoulder and generally live their lives bowed under the weight of fear.

And it’s working. They don’t have to defeat armies, they can go straight to the hearts and minds of the people. Costs a few of their own followers—but they’re cheap, disposable and replaceable. Eat all you want; we’ll make more.

Their goal is to make the cities of the West look like Ramadi, Mosul and Derna. In every possible respect.

That said, the human being in me is just bone tired of all of it.