Terrorism, to put it mildly, bothers all of us. What bothers us even more is the sheer stupidity of the terrorists. Why are terrorist so stupid? We are talking, dumber than Donald Trump and reaching the Vatman levels of stupidity. Why the sudden disdain for the intellect of terrorists? It all started back in 2001, but since the mainstream media ensures we have the memory of a goldfish, let's review the recent tragedy in Paris. Now before you jump to your feet and talk about Lebanon, just listen. Middle Eastern countries always get attacked by terrorists and Lebanon has no options on Facebook so I cannot make my profile look like their flag, meaning they are really irrelevant. Also, death tolls matter; death doesn't.

Going back to Paris, ask yourself what is one of the first things you would have done if you were going to carry out this attack. Chill out NSA, this is just a hypothetical exercise. As a normal human being with enough sound faculties to carry out an attack on this scale, you would obviously not be carrying identification with you, right? I mean, you are strapped with AK 47s and grenades so surely having identification on your person in case the cops stop you should not be your main concern. What is your plan if you are stopped by cops anyway? 'Here's my identification, officers. The guns and grenades are just for protection, lol?' Is that your argument for carrying your goddamn passport with you on a terrorist mission?

One of the suicide bombers in Paris conveniently carried a Syrian Passport with him because obviously he wanted to go back to Syria immediately after his suicide bombing mission. He wasn't the first though. Remember, the Charlie Hebdo attackers? One of the 'masked' gun men also carried an ID card which he left in his car, because why not, right? What was the point of the mask then you may wonder, but these are just terrorist things. Now, a rational person at this point will also ask how a suicide bomber could have blown himself up but left his passport intact. Well, the answer lies in the precedence set back in 2001.

After the 9/11 attacks, the passport of 'Satam al-Suqami was reportedly recovered "a few blocks from where the World Trade Center's twin towers once stood"; a passerby picked it up and gave it to a NYPD detective shortly before the towers collapsed. The passports of two other hijackers, Ziad Jarrah and Saeed al-Ghamdi, were recovered from the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, and a fourth passport.' This conclusively proves that the most resilient material in the history of the world is whatever your passport is made up of. That's why the government ought to build everything with whatever they use for making passports, but that's again another story. Of course, air passengers must have their passports, so we shall ignore that incident. What we will focus on is the positive side here: The twin towers may have been vaporized because turns out jet fuel does melt steel beams but the passports were not damaged. Evidence unlocked.  

The lesson here is twofold though; one is about why terrorists shouldn't carry passports and the other is how strong passports are. The third lesson and an important one is that the passport only matters to prove the link that the terrorist group is aiming to establish.

That is all that matters. The day right after the Paris attacks, the ISIS released a video statement. With heavy make-up, beards and traditional terrorists clothes (by the way BBC and CNN, Syrians don't really dress like the Afghans and we get it, they are bad bad muslims), the ISIS declared in no uncertain terms that they had done this to Paris because why the hell not? With all the Russian bombing and US' unforgiving offensive, we really wonder how ISIS gets the time to shoot, edit and prop themselves for their videos, but let's stop asking questions. So while terrorists need to stop acting like tools, governments too can pay heed when intelligences agencies warn them in no uncertain terms, like Mi5 did right before the attack on Paris. It's a strange world we live in these days. Thank God we have our passports to fall back on when stuff hits the fan.

Cartoon: Ehsanur Raza Ronny