Terrorism and the mind

TIME’S Nancy Gibbs wakes up to something that has long been obvious to anybody who really thought about it.

Even as the President weighs how to fight the wars he inherited, he and the entire U.S. security apparatus will have to figure out how you fight a war against an enemy you can’t recognize, much less understand. In that sense, the war on terrorism has left the battlefield and moved to the realm of the mind.

Clerics have always understood that they play with people’s heads; that’s why they are so frantic to get kids into church while they are still, literally, babes in arms.

That’s why they never stop reminding their congregations that they are all no damn good. A healthy, self-confident adult doesn’t rely upon ancient goatherds or upon their invisible friend to do his thinking for him.

They cannot control men until they have succeeded in destroying their self-confidence and -respect — and that is a mental triumph. It has always been a head game.