March 11, 2004

When the War on Terror Goes Wholesale

spainbodies.jpg
Counting the body bags by a train track in Spain.

The argument used to begin at least a couple of days after. Now it begins when the updates on the body-count are still coming in:

“The Basques did it.”
“It was the ‘Arab Resistance.’”
“No, the Basques!”
“Nope, al-Qaida.”
And then, with mind-numbing predictability comes the ever-popular “U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ‘It's too early to tell. We're not ruling anything out.’”

Humm, that idiot, as seems to be the case with US Intelligence officials, has certainly got all his bases covered. I suppose he spoke “on condition of anonymity” to avoid being revealed as a dumber than your average oxymoron.

Would it be too much to suggest that, in the future, we all save a lot of keystrokes, bandwidth and mental cycles by stipulating here and now that IT DOESN’T MATTER ‘WHO’ DOES IT!

What matters is the mindset out of which it is being done. It is the mindset that is the enemy, the mindset that compels, as it did on 9/11, the wanton killing of innocent people by cowardly actions (and suicide, make no mistake, is the ultimate cowardice).

I’ve witnessed firsthand this mindset incinerate 3,000 innocent lives in a few heartbeats. It is a mindset that has no place in this world. It is a mindset that needs to be eradicated from the Earth down to the last jot and tittle of its genetic material. It is a mindset that must be erased whatever it takes --- WHATEVER it takes.

Of late, I’ve encountered the following statement about 9/11 several times: “It was evil but it was brilliant.” (Or words to that effect.) This statement usually masks a kind of fascinated admiration with the terrorist mindset, a kind of breathless excitement that anyone could do such things, could have such... such “commitment.” This statement is drivel.

The terrorist mindset is no more to be admired or suffered to live than the flickering thought patterns that wink and die in the neural networks of a scorpion. Indeed, the scorpion may possess a higher kind of morality than a terrorist. The spider, at least, kills out of a need rather than a twisted compulsion. The spider, at least, does not know what death is.

The terrorists who slaughter the innocents in Madrid or Iraq or New York know well what death is. They are stimulated by what they do. It, pay attention, turns them on. They are serial killers working without a daily bag limit.

Terrorists do not kill from necessity or defense as soldiers do in battle. They kill away from battle -- as far away from battle as they can get. They kill because their faith, be it political or spiritual, is too weak and enfeebled to exist by merit alone -- it must be forced on the unwilling by random fear. And the way to create that fear is to kill as many unarmed, innocent and unprepared people as possible at a place and time where there is no warning. If they can escape to kill again, fine. If they cannot, killing themselves is the other prefered way to avoid responsibility.

The leaders of our countries will say, as Bush and Aznar and others already have, that this will “never work;” that Terror will never succeed. But they will be wrong.

Terrorists will succeed. Terrorists have succeeded. Terrorists and Terror will continue to thrive and to live ...until... until there is a stark moment of decision that comes to all the people of the Earth that wish to live lives free from terror.

At that moment, we will cease hearing from the current crop of bland pap peddlers such as John Kerry and his ilk about the need to “understand.”

At that moment, we will no longer credit the pundits and columnists who whine and report on the “oppression” and “despair” from which all this springs.

At that moment, we will begin to see very real and immediate demonstrations, on the home soil of every government on Earth that supports these insects, that there will be a heavy at-home price to pay for indulging or promoting the sick mindset of terrorism.

At that moment, there will be an abrupt end to this dilly-dallying discussion of “Who did what to whom when and why and with what,” as if the whole problem were just a night-out at a Clue Party.

At that moment, the war against terrorism will move out its retail phase and go wholesale.

Where will that moment occur? It will happen here. In the United States. It will occur in New York, or Washington, or Los Angeles, or San Francisco, or Seattle, or Chicago. Or all of the above. It will be worse than 9/11.

When will that moment occur? That Spain is about to have an election might give you a hint. “What?” you say. “Before the elections in the United States? When the Democrats have a chance to put in a man who will be kinder and gentler on global terrorists; who will feel their pain and listen to their grievances? Surely these terrorists are not stupid.”

And at that point I would know you have failed to understand, in any manner, the mindset we are dealing with. But I will understand that coming to such an understanding is not an easy task. Nobody can really understand what goes on in the mind of a scorpion. Killing it is the only thing to be done.

Do I dread the day when the next strike on America happens? I dread it deeply.

But what really frightens me is what happens on the next day.

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Posted by Vanderleun at March 11, 2004 11:27 AM | TrackBack
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