Bin Laden’s whole game plan is to turn the people of the democratic world against their governments. He thinks democracies are weak because their people, who are more easily frightened than their governments, can bring those governments down. He doesn’t understand that this flexibility—and this trust—are why democracies will live, while he will die. Many of us didn’t vote for Bush’s government or Blair’s. But we’re loyal to them, in part because we were given a voice in choosing them. And if we don’t like our governments, we can vote them out. We can’t vote out terrorists. We can only kill them.
Eugene Volokh responds: “Can, should, and will. As they say, except for defeating the Nazis and the Japanese, killing the rapists or murderers who are attacking you, stopping North Korea from overrunning South Korea, and a few other things, violence never solved anything.”