My understanding of terrorism

Since TMAC and I are the only fully-actualized men here who are capable of displaying a range of feelings (you're my boy!), I've decided to write a series of posts titled My understanding of... I had a couple more planned, but I've forgotten what they are now. I hope I remember in time to write them.

So, my understanding of terrorism is as follows. Most (if not all) of the times in war, you're trying to get the enemy to stop fighting. The traditional way of doing this is by killing a lot of their soldiers. This changes their understanding of the cost/benefit of the war, and causes them to retreat/surrender. (Assuming, of course, you don't trigger the deadly "Fuck you!" mechanism which causes them to fight even harder. This isn't the only way of convincing the population to give up, however; dropping an A-bomb can also do the trick, by again changing the perceived cost/benefit ratio.
I think terrorism is another way of changing that balance in peoples' heads, by taking the fight to the people. You can thus win the war, without--pardon the tired idiom--winning a single battle.
If you value a soldier's life and a citizen's life equally, this seems like a good tradeoff. If England could have suicide-bombed Vienna and gotten them to back down then, we wouldn't have had WWI and we would've saved a bunch of lives. Yay!
Unfortunately, terrorism also greatly lowers the requirements for attacking. In a big war, each country involved has either a really strong, despotic leader, or a country's (more or less) worth of support. If someone is in a war, then you know they have at least some popular support somewhere. There is a large number of people who think this war is a good idea. With terrorism, you only need like ten guys who think the terrorist attack is a good idea. Also, in a war, there is a country to attack back, and obviously, terrorism doesn't usually have any retaliatory target. "Bill and Tom just blew themselves up and killed some Americans, what are we going to do about it?" "Nothing, it was just two guys and they're already dead."
So, terrorism costs almost nothing to do. It seems really really hard to defend against and allow non-terrorists to live any sort of normal life. It seems the best idea is to just ignore it, or at least, view it in perspective. We never declared a war on household falls, but it regularly kills way more people than terrorism. Not to be that guy, but when people act scared, the terrorists wins. They're achieving their goal of instilling fear and retreatedness in our citizens without having to fight a real war to do it.
So, I think we should take the cool dude approach. Here's a sample conversation:

Terrorist:"Hey, what about that time we fucked up the Twin Towers?"
Bill America:"What?"
T:"You know, we blow up those towers!"
B:"Oh, yeah, the towers."
T:"Yeah! We killed like 3,000 people!"
B:"Oh, that was you?"
T:"Yeah! Fucked you up!"
B:"You know, obesity killed like 500,000 Americans last year, and we don't even give a fuck. So you got ways to go dude."
T:"Gah! Next time, we'll blow up New York!"
B:"(Distractedly.) Oh, cool. Tell me how that goes. Look dude, I gotta run. Oprah's on."
T:"I give up!"

You see how easy it is? How easy it could be? God, we'd totally win.
Anyways, that is my understanding of terrorism (and how we can stop it.)

Thoughts?

Emotionally Affecting Things

I think I tend towards emotional stability (don't cry over much, stone cold mother fucker, etc.) However, there are a few things that just kill me; if I read/listen to them alone, or Heaven help me, alone and tired, I always at least tear up. I'm not really sure what it is about these things especially, but I am curious to know if other people have certain things that really sadly set them off. If so, I'm curious to know what they are.

Mine are, in no particular order:

1)Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Have you guys heard this?! Oh my God, the fourth movement kills me. When the women soloists come in, it's really nearly the best thing ever. Totally wrenching.

2) http://www.cnn.com/interactive/us/0601/gallery.mine.letter/content.1.html
This is a link to a picture of a note written by one of those miners who died in Virginia. He wrote it on the back of an insurance application after he knew they were all going to die.

3) http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=lowry_24_5
This is a link to an article written by a secular humanist whose wife died of cancer. God, I tear up just thinking about the last paragraph. Also very nearly the best thing ever.