A conversation about Mice and Terrorists.

Last night, I killed our first mice invader of the season. He made some noise at the entry point. I knew he was there. I was alerted he was around. I set the trap, he entered again, 15 minutes later he was dead. Done, just like that.
That wasn't my tactic last year, and we had too many by the time I decided to get on the job.

Last year I tracked a few, they would go in and out of the house. I killed the odd one, but I spent a lot of time doing it, and it seemed if I killed one, there were two more. I felt good when I finally took one out, but at the end of the day, there were more each day and I couldn't keep up with them. They came and went as they pleased. Near the end of the year, I found some old traps I had lying around, I set them in the most likely spot, and I wiped out the entire population in about 3 days.

After last nights successful kill, my wife wants me to find the hole they come in and close it off. I could certainly do that. I might even end up doing that eventually. But what would that mean, if I was successful in closing that hole? It would mean those same disruptive mice would be out there, looking for another way in, a spot I don't know about, and then would get in and cause havoc before I figured out they were there.

For now, they come in the hole I know is there, I set the trap, they take the bait I know they will take, and they die. The odd one still will evade the trap, but the majority will fall right into it. And in the meantime, I'm not wasting time chasing my tail, looking all over for mice. I am doing productive things to stop the odd one who is smart enough to avoid the trap. If I don't get that one, it means I need to be better at it. Not that my system of controlling the problem wont work.

Terrorists are like mice. They aren't very bright, and they are easy to catch. If you know where they are and let them come to you. They will. If you keep them out, they are much harder to control and find.

When they caught the "mastermind" of the Paris attacks on Thursday, where did they get him? Paris. Yes, that's right. They got him right at home. If he had returned to Syria, or god knows where in the Middle East, would he still be at large? Certainly he would. He would be "in the wind" as they say on the cop shows.

Ask yourself this: Why did it take so long to get Bin Laden? Simply, because he was hiding out in caves in places that made it impossible to find him. He could still plot destruction, every bit as much as if he was inside our borders. But he was impossible to track and stop. So, what is better?

Do I think that within the refugees from Syria, there are some hidden terrorists? Probably. A few. So what? Let them in. Track them on the way in. Follow them. The ones who appear to be dangerous, don't let on that you know they are. Put a team on them. Make sure you don't lose their trail. Let them lead you to all the ones who are already here who you can't currently find. When they take the bait you can set for them, lock them all up. Or just kill them if that is practical. But don't exclude them. That is completely the wrong way to go about controlling them.

I say, let them all in. At least on the way in, if we are good enough, we can figure out who the terrorists are and watch them. Track them. If we can't even do that right, then we have no shot of ever thwarting them. 
Think about this. How hard is it to track terrorists around the world? Very hard. How hard is it to track them when they are in your city? Not hard at all, if you really want to and put in the time and effort.  And the second they leave the house with a device that can get them arrested, you stop them in their tracks.
I want all the terrorists to come to my country. All of them. I want to know they are here when they come in, and I want to know that they can't leave without me knowing about it. In that way, I have control of their whereabouts, at all times.
And when the time comes that I need to remove them, like the mouse in my house last night who is now dead and gone, I can just execute, and move on to the next one who wants to invade and destroy my way of life.
My theory is this: Do I want to send 100,000 ground troops to fight on the ground in the Middle East? No. I don't. Nobody does. Forget everything else, but just think about how costly that actually is. We could take that money, and manpower, and simply use it to protect ourselves here and stay 100% on top of the terrorists in our own cities and neighborhoods. And from a strategic, intelligence standpoint, that will lead us to the real troublemakers at the top of the terrorist food chain. In so doing, that will also weaken them on the battlefields of Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq or any other region they choose to ravage and pillage. 
The fact is, we have a bigger problem than refugees who might be terrorists. The guy they killed on Thursday, they knew about him all year, and fucked it up. If they had just been on top of him, Paris never happens. We should spend a lot more time and effort stopping the ones we have than worrying about the ones who might be coming, who we can log and get on now if they come.
The reason that the Paris killings happened are not because they have Muslim extremists in their country. It happened because the Belgian and French security forces dropped the ball and didn't do their jobs. There will always be extremists in any country, refugees or not. As long as you know who they are, where they are, what they are doing, and when they are going to act, you can stop almost every one of them, and break the entire organization. It's just like the Mafia. Knowing how it all works, who the players are, and what they are up to, you can stop them if you want to.
But what you can't do is think you can stop them from existing or populating your environment. That is the foolishness of small minds. It's just too bad that the majority of the politicians these days are dumber than the mouse I killed last night. They have fallen right into the ISIS trap. Like the mouse I killed last night.