Thinkage [updated]

"Allow me to quote that classic philosopher known as The Poster for Death Wish 2: 'First his wife. Now his daughter. It's time to even the score!'  Well, in the wake of a terror attack, Step One is to forget about 'the score' completely... "That scoreboard, it turns out, is nothing more than a manifestation of the most primitive, violent, reptilian part of your brain. Seeing someone wrong you and then letting it slide -- letting that 'score' stay in their favor -- is almost physically painful. So, yeah, if SEAL Team Six had exploded bin Laden's skull on September 13th, 2001, we would absolutely have still gone to war. We'd have still been 3,000 deaths down on the scoreboard. No way we'd let that go.

"So the next time you turn on the news and see that terrorists have blown up 10 children with a car bomb, that's the first step: Realize that the scoreboard lies. It will tell you that winning the game means dropping bombs that you know full well will splatter ten times as many children as collateral damage. The score -- the real score -- would then be:

Violence Against Children 110, Humanity 0"

-- David Wong, "6 Ways to Keep Terrorists From Ruining the World"