Breaking horns on terror

Antonio Machado, one of my favorite poets, wrote:

De diez cabezas, nueve
embisten y una piensa.
Nunca extrañéis que un bruto
se descuerne luchando por la idea.
(Proverbios y Cantares, XXIV)

Which is to say:

Of every ten heads, nine / charge and one thinks. / Never be surprised when an imbecile / breaks his horns struggling for an idea.

On the subject of terror, we have a lot of people in Washington crashing around breaking their horns and too few thinking. Here are two thoughtful articles, available without subscription from the magazine Legal Affairs. "What Would Allah Do?" discusses a re-doctrination strategy that may sometimes work. "The Dread Pirate Bin Laden" proposes a legal redefinition of terrorists as "pirates," which seems to me brilliant. There is already established international law on piracy, and terrorists fit the definition beautifully (except of course for state terrorists, which nobody is going to prosecute anyway).