For years now the U.S. as a whole has been swayed into gearing its fear of, and anger for "Terror" (I hope that irony calls to mind a timeless quote) towards a specific profile: Islamic Extremists.
However there are two inherent problems with trying to profile a Terrorist. First is the public's inclination for oversimplifying matters as complex as Terrorism; second is the fact that you can't physically measure someone's beliefs by the way they look.
As a result of our attempt to profile Terrorists, a public fear of Islam, as well as those typically associated with Islam (people of Middle Eastern descent) was sparked and fanned, then later used to encourage the onstart of two wars, one of which basically had nothing to do with Terrorism.
There are at least two things fundamentally wrong with this. The first, and possibly most important, thing wrong here is that living in fear spits on the sacrifice of every American soldier who fought/fights for our freedom. They fight, and some die so that we can be free, and live our lives in peace. To be ever-fearful of the next attack undermines their every hardship. In order to best support the troops, we the people need to keep our heads cool and rational, so that we may best guide their hands.
The second issue here was the downright un-American act of judging folks by the way they look. Decades of civil rights movements have fought to wash away such dirty regressivism. Alas, sometimes reality does more for an ideal than the ideal could ever do for itself. This, JihadJane character is just another in a growing line of atypical terrorist profiles acting out against U.S. best interests.
What we are being forced to see now, is that Terrorism has no country, no religion, and no genetic makeup. We must see the root of such radicalism for what it is, and definitely for what it is not. It exists in the extremes of human society but we must tread very carefully in directing our fist before we end up punching ourselves in the face. Terrorism is about as defeatable as war itself. After all, what is terrorism but specific kind of war?
If you ask me, trying to stomp out terrorism with force is like trying to step on a bar of soap in the shower, or like trying to cut water with a knife. The best way to "kill" it is to eliminate the conditions that encourage it, and to teach those prone to its system of beliefs out of being terrorists. I'm not a fool though; where it must be fought, it must be fought. However, we cannot depend on fighting alone to fix this problem.
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