Deconstructing Michael and Janeane ...

... is not hard, but I thought I'd have some fun doing it anyway.

Janeane Garofalo on Sean Hannity's radio show recently agreed with Michael Moore's assertion that the terrorist threat is overblown (as I first mentioned here). They basically say that your chance of being blown to smithereens by a terrorist act is only slightly more likely than the chance that J. Lo will stay married to Marc Anthony. Ergo, the war in Iraq is the military equivalent of using chemotherapy to get rid of the flu.

However, you don't have to be a geopolitical scientist to figure out that the terrorists really aren't trying just to kill people. Really. If Osama bin Laden and company had wanted to simply kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11, any city would have done the trick.

No ... terrorists want to terrorize. They want to flip economies upside down and send world leaders scurrying for their teddy bears so they can achieve their own ends. Dead people are just a tool, a means to an end.

Theoretically, a terrorist could kill no one and still terrorize. They can bomb buildings and gum up computer networks without hurting a soul, all toward the same end.

Hitting the World Trade Center was not merely for theatrical display or concentrated casualties. A hit at America's financial center sends shockwaves throughout the whole nation and the whole economy and, thus, the economy of virtually every nation on the planet.

Moore and Garofalo either don't get this or think that there are worst things than rattling the nation's economy and stability. You wonder if it's the latter.