by CKR
I’ve read this three times now, and I don’t think I’m missing anything.
My best scenario is that there’s a lot of laughing at the National Counterterrorism Center this morning.
“And then I told him (gasp, gasp, hiccup), I told him that my doomsday scenario was that everybody goes around stabbing everyone else! It’s right there in the article!”
Coffee spurts from explosively-opened lips. Some in the background roll their eyes.
Been there, done that. Someone asks enough stupid questions with enough stupid assumptions behind them (like that the Muslim world is collectively deranged), and you go very serious and tell them yes indeed, your worst fears are true.
Imagination (at least David Ignatius’s) has declined a lot since the end of the Cold War. Maybe it’s been frittered away on horror movies or just subject to the bureaucratic least common denominator. Here’s what we used to think of as a doomsday scenario.
People going around stabbing each other is a police problem, David Ignatius! If someone did that at the mall, the mall might be shut down for a while. Not Doomsday!
Ignatius tries to make his article sound serious. “Let’s start with the nature of the threat.” But he never clearly enunciates the threat, much less comes up with appropriate responses.
My doomsday scenario is that they’re passing around the article at the National Counterterrorism Center and saying, quite seriously, “Good job, David!”