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We thought them civilized, at first.  The Terror.

Even as their inherent barbarism became exposed,
we feared them not, likening them to housecats
that, though tame, still struggle for control of
their domestic territory.  The Terror.

Their mode of speech, for one.  Strange, soft, mewling
tones, pierced by explosive sibilants.  What seemed
feline should have at once seemed mad.

And their propensity for continually moving all
the (outrageously slender!) limbs of their bodies--
this was not the behavior of civilized creatures.
Yet we imagined it (lacking any better analogy)
like the posturing of cats--threatening each other,
or grooming.  Our race still has unconscious behaviors
ingrained from the time before we were sentient.
We supposed the same for The Terror.

And, even in the act of naming them, we triply
revealed our ignorance.  "The Terror", we decided,
was how to translate their name for themselves.
In so doing, we unwittingly determined the course
of the war, and so expended all of our energies
on useless stratagems.

Our first mistake: we thought them a conscious
collective, like ourselves.  For are not all
successful intergalactic races so?  Not The Terror.
They are redundant, fault-tolerant, and
individually unknowing.  The individuals are
petty, opinionated, self-serving, unruly, unrealistic,
and often moronic.

Had we known, we'd have avoided force of war, and
assassinated leaders, or tried to convince the masses
that their government's expansionistic policies
would bear no fruit.

Our second mistake: we thought they had chosen
this name for themselves.  Had we not made the
first mistake, we'd have been less likely to make
this one.  And it was, perhaps, this error that
was our death blow.

When your enemy seemingly acts at random, with
great inconsistency, how can you deal with it?
Perhaps you look for a pattern in the behavior.
But if your enemy names himself "Random", and
you do not see the pattern, then what?  "Terror"
is perhaps not "Random", but the randomness
seemed terrible to us, and did not look too hard
to explain the inconsistencies.  We took the name
as bragging, never realizing that the random
inconsistencies were not part of a larger pattern,
but rather attributable to the variation
of the individuals.

Our third mistake, though, was a pure accident
of language.  Perhaps, we would not have been led
so far astray had not our attempt at translating
their name led to the evocative word "Terror".
Still, how much can we fault ourselves for the
fact that it was in an otherwise forgotten
language their world was named "Terra"?

buzzard