*Pornography

YT

When Ted Bundy was busy raping and murdering his victims, I was a youth in my salad days. If there was a big media celebration of his fame during his trial, I missed it -- I was out of the country. By the time I came back, he was just a tidbit of cultural literacy, and it took me, actually, a few years to figure out what exactly he’d been up to. Oh, another serial killer. Ho hum. I display a shocking indifference and lack of curiosity – almost Bush-like … almost Reagan-like – to details that don’t add something to my worldview. What, more evil and chaos? Knew about that already.

But eventually the info dribbled in, and a sort of picture was completed. Here’s what I took away from Ted Bundy. When he was a twelve year old boy, wandering down some country road or alley or some such, he chanced upon a box, filled to overflowing with glossy pornographic photos. He was a twelve year old boy. That means innocent. But he was, after all, a twelve year old boy, and no one was watching, so he did what we might expect. Stowed beneath his bed, perhaps - or in back of the garage – or in a tree. Who knows – but he would return to those images, time after time. Images of a man and a woman, having sex. How interesting. But images, also, that he cared not to look at – disturbing, disgusting, to his young eyes. Two men and a woman, or just women, or just men … or something that resembled but was not sex … or creatures other than men and women. And so on. Disturbing. Disgusting.

But time passed for young Ted, and the familiar images no longer satisfied his eyes. And he looked at those other pictures. And time passed, and those images also were not enough. And he took to the night time streets, peering into windows. Which wasn’t enough. And he entered houses. Which wasn’t enough. And he raped. Not enough. And he killed. It wasn’t enough, but it was all that was left.

It started with a box by the side of a road.

There isn’t anything more fragile, more delicate, than the sexual instinct. It is the most easily diverted of currents. What touch, what word, what look it is that sets it in a new course we cannot say. But it happens, and more and more, nowadays, what with so many words and images and touches in our society. And our interest, as children, which runs for the most part to our playmates – our same gender playmates – has to make a leap across a great and perilous divide, at a certain age. When we ourselves are become fully sexual beings, part of the maturation process is to shift some significant part of our interest away from our same-sex pals, and onto that other sex. If this shift doesn’t happen, we retain our childish interest in our own gender, but that interest now has the added dimension of sexuality.

Don’t like that theory? Well, maybe we’re just born this way.

In any case, sexual energy can be attached not just to genders, same or opposite, but to virtually anything. Leather and rubber and shoes and chains and I don’t even know what all. Not my thing. Ted Bundy fixed his on death.

Let’s shift the scene, away from America and the West, to the Middle East. I recall reading of the fourteen year old Moslem boy who wanted to be a suicide bomber because he wanted the virgins. It’s one of the really sad things I’ve heard. That poor boy. How desperate. Maybe some folks don’t know, but I do, how powerful these instincts are. In his wretched culture, the only hope he imagined he had, to vent this energy, was to murder and die. So, is Islamist culture a Ted Bundy culture? I wonder – being me – if his shaving off his pubic hair, in preparation for meeting his virgins, was really a sexual, rather than ritualistic act. Well, again, not my thing.

Again, in August of ’04, the terrorist “Mahdi Militia” gang of Muqtada Sadr took over the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf. They got their asses handed to them for two weeks, then fled under a negotiated withdrawal. (I can say “asses,” right?) The point? As Austin Bay reminds us, Iraqi police “found pornographic magazines left by Sadr's men inside the mosque.” I can only assume that these people, these gangsters, think of themselves as the army of Allah. Even if they’re just pigs, they must think of themselves that way. Yet there they are, busy masturbating inside a most holy site of Islam. Couldn’t wait for their virgins, I guess.

We are, all of us, every one, regardless of culture - austere and repressive or permissive and profligate – subject to instinct and its passions. Some have more, some less. Some are born and some made to be eunuchs … I won’t say they’re lucky, but they must have fewer distractions. In any event, it’s something that has to be dealt with. Jesus could still the storm. We have to suffer its surges, calmly or in panic as the case may be.

A final little tale. In 1993, Westley Dodd was hanged. At various times he'd found young boys by the roadside or in parks and picked them up. Raped and murdered three of them - hanged one of them in his closet - kept polaroids, to aid his memory. Well, he finally got justice. Hanged. No cameras allowed, though. A year or so prior to his execution, I saw a Frontline documentary detailing his case. I watched it with a sort of remote horror. But I was moved during his interview by the deadness in his eyes. People who torture little boys to death have dead eyes. But I, idiot that I am, was moved so much that I sat down and wrote him a letter. Sent it to him care of the Washington State Department of Corrections. Never got a reply. But a few years after his death, I heard about his last words. He said, “I was wrong when I said there was no hope, no peace. There is hope. There is peace. I have found them both in the Lord Jesus Christ.” I wept like a baby when I heard that.

But outside the execution area reporters heard the father of two of the victims release a slow, long hiss. We weep for him, too.

The waters are muddy, you see. Somewhere the Bible assures us that though our sins are as scarlet, we shall be white as snow. White as snow? When so filthy? Dodd loved to be interviewed. Maybe it was just more pornography for him. In prison he took to writing anti-molestation pamphlets. Gee, thanks for the advice, Westley. “I believe what the Bible teaches," he told a reported toward the end. "I’ll go to Heaven. I have doubts, but I’d really like to believe that I would be able to go up to the three little boys and give them a hug and tell them how sorry I was and be able to love them with a real true love and have no desire to hurt them in any way.” How shall we take this? There's something so wrong, so creepy about that image. That he could ever touch them again. You'd think there'd be a restraining order, even in heaven. But no. Forgiveness has consequences, too. In so many ways, forgiveness is the opposite of justice.

No, the story’s not over. A few years after that, I was the guardian of a boy from Juvenile Hall. The most damaged person I’ve ever known. Upshot: in the course of some conversation, I mentioned Westley Dodd. “Oh, Westley Allen Dodd,” he said. A fan, apparently. I told him the story I’ve just related, and he was moved.

What I like to think is that, for all the evil of the world, for all that there are young boys found on roadsides by monsters, and just as there are boys who find on lonely roads boxes filled with images, and in the finding, are lost – so might there be words, mere words that carry within them enough truth and sincerity and love that their memory echoes unceasingly, sometimes soft and sometimes loud, but somehow, finally, sufficient to make a difference. I like to think that my letter reached Westley Dodd, and made a difference. I like to think that my words and everything they embodied somehow eventually made a difference to that boy that I once knew. I like to think that these words, or others in my little blog, might make a difference. But rarely can we know of such an effect. No tragedy, in not knowing. The tragedy lies in not speaking.

Eve was tempted by seeing that the fruit was good to eat. The lust of the eyes. Pictures. We are saved by the hearing of the word. The Word. It’s probably a coincidence, an artifact of my glib mind, this conflict between image and word. But the Islamists, like all of us, have the images. And we’ve seen what images do - there is no difference between us and them, in this.

They do not have the Word.

Let the terrorists be saved, and I will weep for joy. But they are not saved, and I do not weep for them. I hiss. Ah. So many tears.

J

*islamism Uber Alles

YT

Just another of my sententious truisms: There are five world religions. Christianity (yee-haw!), Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. I will brook no quibble, that Judaism and Hinduism are not world religions (Judaism seeks no converts and Hinduism is primarily a national religion, like Shinto – and if so, why exclude Confucianism?). Just shut up and play along. 

Each of these systems has had, at various periods in its history, secular power. That such power has been abused, in each instance, is beyond debate. (Buddhism? Has there never been a Buddhist army?) So what?

Come on. Which one of these things is not like the others?

Judaism and Islam have a powerful commonality. Both were, um, developed by their respective prophets, Moses and Mohammad, as theocracies – as systems of social governance. But with Judaism, the system improvised by the rabbis has long since supplanted the sacrificial plan outlined in the Torah. Okay, blahblahblah, get to the point.

Islam thinks it needs to rule the world. It was invented by a conqueror during the glory days of his expansion, and he imagined that it must always be so. Egypt was a Christian land ... conquered by Islam. Syria was a Christian land ... invaded by Islam. Asia Minor ("Turkey") was a Christian land ... taken over by Islam. 

Well, bully for Islam, of course – survival of the fittest and all that. But when the Temple of Solomon was razed and lawful sacrifice became impossible, the Jews adapted, and made a sacrifice of their good works. (Hope that works out for you, fellas.) When Islam lost its Caliphate, well, they’re planning on just getting another one.

Whenever a religion thinks it needs to be a government, nightmare follows. The Aztecs. Not so horrifying, the Puritans in Massachusetts – much more decent than ignorant opinion would have it (thanks, Mencken), but The Scarlet Letter wasn’t an entirely unfair portrait. And what’s this thing about burning women with PMS at the stake? – I think I heard something like that. 

The Roman Catholic Church – I have no problem with it, but when it thought it was a government ... well, the Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis Sanctum Officium did have its excesses. In the last century, Nazism and Communism exemplify the problem: absolute systems, with all the answers, which claim to know the meaning of history. Noted for an excess of enthusiasm, with regard to genocide.

Which brings us, again, to Islam. Islam needs to be a government. It divides the world into two parts, Dar al-Islam, and Dar al-Harb -- the House of Submission, and the House of War. (Hmm. Now let me ponder upon the matter ... where do I fit, in this scheme?) That Islam has been quiescent, in this essential, for the past few centuries, reflects no change in philosophy, but only its failure to master modern technology. Oil has provided a remedy to that backwardness, and now Islam is poised to regain its footing and resume its advance.

Europe was a Christian land ...  America was a Christian land.

J

* The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

YT

Because biden is the worst president in world history, including the most depraved emperors of Rome ... well, there is no need to finish the sentence.  Because there is no america, currently, look at what happened, a mere few days ago.  Hamas atrocities that are not actually uncommon, as in islamist Africa, with truckloads of machete carriers hacking village christians to pieces -- and school girls kidnapped en masse and made to be sex slaves -- but that's in AFRICA, and so nobody cares, but a few.  

But Hamas screamed out of Gaza like the locusts of Hell, to torture babies in front of their mothers.  Etc.  Such ... what word, what word ... atrocities? antics? islamist rituals? ... shit in the FIRST WORLD is unheard of in living memory for, say, our young Gen Whatevers.  Beslan -- HERE, HERE -- doesn't touch it.  The odd bomb here and there ... well, not here ... in markets and transportation stations and synagogues and such like -- hardly anything more than that annoying spate of tranz-murders from a vague number of months ago (did we ever get to read that girl's tranz-manifesto?  HER, HER)

Still and all, Israel is not here, so it's just the Viet Nam war on our Zeniths and our Trinitrons (those were "T.V.s").  Over there.  Tsk tsk.  

Truth be told, hurray for Hamas.  Well done, boys.  Excellent planning and execution.  Pre-printed placards, false uniforms of police and army, all the better to attack women and children, big bad wolves after little girls.  Where did they get all those wonderful rockets?  Iran, of course, but the smuggling ... worthy of Chinese slash Cartel fentanyl-traffickers.  And the years of prep, re the tunnels.  (These will be of historical interest someday, like Churchill's War Rooms, under London.)  Really top drawer, Hamas.  Where is your supreme leader, that he may be lauded?  Yemen, I hear, a land notable for its naphthalene (ironically, a pest-repellant).

So islamism's repose into quietude has bestirred itself, like Cthulhu from the Abyss.  Where next might they insert themselves?  Into what festive milieu might they intrude? - gate crashers of the most religious sort.

A Thanksgiving Day parade, of course.  Something big for Christmas.  Madison Sq Garden on NY Eve.  The Super Bowl.  Tens of thousands of, well, what?  Americans?  Are any left?  Citizens?  That's a joke.  Because, along with the 100s of 1000s of, what are they being called?  "Refugees"?  From what?  Widespread war in Latin America?  Drought and famine?  The word, Dear Reader, is "illegals".  Along with those indigent and unvaccinated "migrants" (although, technically, "migration" entails both coming and leaving, like seasonal swallows or caribou) -- along with these, I say, will come the cuckoo-bird terrorists, home to our nest.  They don't even need tunnels.  Step right in, boys.

Do you imagine the fat beached whale carcass of biden's america is not the most savory temptation for the Heroes of islamism?  america is MUCH more of a whore than Israel is.  Come'n git us, allah et al -- our women are sluts and our men are women, and golly do we need to be taught the lessons you teach.  

Well.  I wouldn't even have bothered.  It's so obvious.  But I'm predicting Thanksgiving.  How long is that parade -- I mean in distance, not duration.  I don't have the tech savvy, but I'm sure they could get the whole length all at once.  Last year's attendance was 3000000.  A target to shoot for.  

DISCLAIMER: Dear stupid biden FBI and biden Homeland Security Office Department - instead of targeting catholics and parents, you should have been resigning in protest.  You are shameful and incompetent to a degree that amounts to being traitors.  (Just you biden corrupt ideologues and cowardly careerists, not your honorable co-office workers.)  Of course the complete accuracy of my self-evident prediction will raise red flags.  Let them stand for your condemnation.  You are betraying scum.

J

Dr Nidal Malik Hasan, MD

An unsurprising name. Yesterday he expressed his understanding of the Hippocratic Oath, and of Islam, by gunning down as many unarmed people as he could. Islam apparently takes human sacrifices. One early report had him as a convert. Now he's said to be of Palestinian heritage. Hardly matters. Nidal, in any case, is a name that means "struggle," as in Um Nidal, the heroic mother of a heroic suicide bomber from Ramallah. You'll have to pardon me. It's just that they're so dang heroic.

Hasan ... or Nidal ... it's hard to know exactly which is his last name ... suffered some "harassment" because of his exercise of his faith. His free expression included aggressive and provocative attacks on American policy and society, to distressed combat soldiers just returned from the field. So harassment may not be quite le mot juste. He used his office of trust to proselytize for his religion. Defrocked, disbarred ... what's the word for doctors? -- when they're kicked out of the profession? No matter. It didn't happen to The Struggler.

Here now in Obamerica we are too evolved to report on the ethnic appearance of kidnappers or gunmen or other entrepreneurs. So we most certainly will not be expecting to hear about disgruntled military persons who post comments such as that infidels should be beheaded and oil poured down their throats. Well, we might hear about them after they do something newsworthy, but I mean ahead of time, like, proactively. That would be profiling.

There's not really a lot to say. America is the real terrorist. We're committing a genocide against moslems and islam and arabs and shit. It's the oil. And the spices. Well, whatever it is that arabs have and we want. Submissive women.

I had a professor once, Dr Baruk abd-al-Malik. An admirable man. Coptic Christian, from Egypt. Had a tattoo on his wrist, as all Copts do, of a cross. A tradition, so that if they were kidnapped as babies and made to be moslem, they'd know something of the story. My point? It must be that the world is horrible, in which we must act honorably. Hardly anyone is always wrong. Kidnapper child molesters have many good points, as do sex offenders with multiple dead and rotting bodies stored in various places about their homes. How do these guys afford such nice houses? Anyways, sometimes we do have to be judged for our worst moments.

Hasan lived. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to hang him. If ever. Allah's will be done. Gog is great.


J

Again

As I continue to assert, I'm immersed in a project and just don't want to disengage even long enough to chat for a few moments with you, my good buddy. Now don't be like that. But here's a little something from a couple of years ago, back when we still thought it was okay to try to save the world from tyranny. Ah, how young we were. Now we can shake our heads at the idea of our fond folly. We've come to our senses, and find there is no danger at all, and never was. We are the enemy. Thank you, Obama, for continually pointing that out on the world stage. Helpful.

And to drive this salient and salubrious truism even deeper into our hearts, there's this:

Submitted for your consideration,


How I love that young man.

It seems so familiar. What is it? I've, I've seen it before, I know. Oh. Yeah. Now I recall.

It's the fingers. The awkward gentleness of the hands. Where can I touch that won't hurt? Nowhere, really, but we have to do it. And we can't see his expression, but we know, we know the look on his face.

Beslan.

Beslan. As a tourist spot it makes a great train station.

But people of a certain description looked upon it as a marvelous land of opportunity. Here's what they did with the school's gym:


That's an explosive charge hanging between the hoops. Hope nothing happens.



Oops. Hope it wasn't on purpose.



Well, maybe she's crying about her job?



Oh.







How we cling to each other.



And to God.



Does it do any good?


*****


Beslan

Such passion is normal, and stirs the
blood like wine – think of it as exercise.
And yes that is blood, but after all, death is just
a part of the great circle anyway.
And it’s an interesting anatomy
lesson – look at the ears, look at the spine.
And look at the foolishness in the fingers of his right hand.

Well, no matter: because there is no evil,

this

never happened.


[9/7/04]

______



Sometimes I do go a little mad.

Forgive me for that, will you?


J

*Madrid, March 11, 2004

Five years ago today, ten Moslem terrorist bombs -- which is to say, ten bombs -- blew up four rush-hour commuter trains, crippled Madrid's light rail system, paralyzed the nation, injured 2,000 people, killed almost 200 more. There was some confusion as to the number of dead ... misidentified body parts and so on. Forty million Spaniards grieved. We grieved with them. Because we knew.

The terrorist Basque separatist group, ETA, was blamed at first. The usual suspects. But a spokesman denied all responsibility. Why would a terrorist group go out of its way to deny responsibility for a successful bombing? Is it some sort of integrity? It's true I'm a bastard, but I'm not a son of a bitch. Well, turns out, we now know, the sons of bitches were islamists. (A logical formula: not all sons of bitches are islamists, but all islamists are sons of bitches.) When surrounded by police, some of the sons of bitches sent themselves to Hell by exploding a few spare bombs that just happened to be lying around in their apartment among the pornographic magazines. Time weighs heavily on their hands while these islamist Mohammads are waiting to explode.

The Norwegians -- of all people -- had known for two months of a planned attack against some nation during its election season. They had intercepted documents outlining a strategy to break up the alliance in Iraq by attacking its members ... starting with the one with the least resolve. Spanish opinion was ninety percent in favor of Iraqi oppression (you may rephrase that statement, if you find it biased), so with hindsight we see that Spain must have been the intended target.

In the days following the bombings, over 11 million Spaniards -- nearly 30% of the population -- flooded the streets of various cities, vowing to the dead that "we will never forget you." Such a vow of fealty. As a direct consequence of the bombings, the Socialist Party upset expectation and was swept into power in the March 14 elections -- unquestionably because of the terrorist action. The new leftist government promised to remove all 1,300 Spanish troops from Iraq. And did. Some campaign promises are sincere.

Outcome of terrorism? The Socialists and terrorists won. Even dead terrorists can win.

The monstrous Madrid bombings occurred 912 days after 9/11, on 3/11. The inhuman Jordan bombings occurred 11/9 of 2005. The horrific Bali bombing occurred one year, one month and one day after 9/11. This is how the adolescent mind works. Hmm. The leftist PM Zapatero pulled thirteen hundred Spanish troops out of Iraq -- the last 260 on April 28, 2004. Let's see ... 1,300 is six and half times the number of dead in Madrid ... six point five ... six and five are eleven! Let's see ... the digits in the date 4/28/2004 add up to 20 -- one hundredth of the 2000 injured.... Urgh. Um, the digits of 260 and 28 add up to 18, and one plus eight are nine! Ha! This must, somehow, be significant. If only I were adolescent enough to see precisely how.

But the exploding Mohamed of 9-11 (Flight 11), and the exploding Mohammad of the London Metro bombings (the Edgware Road train), and the exploding Mohammeds of the Jordan bombings (Days Inn and Grand Hyatt), and the exploding Mohameds of the Madrid bombings, and the exploding Mohammad who financed the Bali bombing -- I do seem to notice some ready connections, here.

Spain promised never to forget its dead. As to this, I cannot say. But the dead were killed by Moslem terrorists to get Spain out of Iraq, and that aim was achieved. The way I see it, the dead have been dishonored. Spain was once a nation consumed with the idea of honor -- or is that just a fiction of novelists and historians? I believe there is such a thing as a national character -- a sort of demographic mean of the psyche. I could get very complex here, with references to the Romans and the Moors and whatnot. Why bother. I'll keep it simple, by pointing out that it took a certain character to drive the Moors out of Spain and back into Morocco -- the Reconquista. Just so, if the Spanish character allows itself to be driven by fear out of Iraq, it can be driven out of Spain -- a Re-reconquista. Oh ... did I mention that the Moslem terrorist islamist Madrid bombers were Moroccan? This must, somehow, be significant.


J

*Hariba

Hiraba. Arabic for "waging war against society." Assassins. Fire setters. Well poisoners. Hmm. Assassins, who kill not for military but political purposes. Fire setters, like, say, with bombs. Well poisoners ... sort of a chemical warfare, wouldn't you say? Hariba was once, in Islam, counted as among the gravest possible sins -- a war against God. It includes the killing of the resident and the wayfarer -- noncombatants, that is.

The muharibun exist in order to destroy or spread ruin, and hariba was once, in Islam, considered so "serious and repugnant" that those who practice it were never to be granted quarter or sanctuary anywhere. Never. Anywhere. They are mahdur ad-damm, whose blood must be shed. Their crime was called fasad fi al-ard: "corruption on earth".

The Islam that makes this distinction is an Islam that we might respect. It is civilized.

It's about controlling language, and so controlling perception. The lefty I've been, uh, commenting with wants to call Mr. Bush a terrorist. "George W. Bush has killed a lot more people than Osama Bin Laden." Well, this is, as a matter of fact, true. We've killed a lot more muharibun than they've killed soldiers and civilians. Well, soldiers, anyway. What that means is we're better at fighting wars than OBL and his mufsed fel-ardh. This is a good thing. But my lefty immediately added: "George W. Bush is by far the more effective terrorist." To which my response was, "I think you mean 'monster,' or 'fiend.'" Words have meaning. A terrorist is not just any bad thing, or every bad thing, but a specific bad thing.

The same with jihad. In Moslem terms, jihad is always a good thing. We should recognize this, regardless of our real opinion. It’s called prudence. Tactful speech makes allies. If the issue had been framed in terms of universal enemies of mankind, rather than religious warfare, it would have been possible to find common cause with any theoretical moderate Moslems. Probably too late, now. But it’s not too late to correct the vocabulary, regardless of whether or not it’s effective. Words have meaning. And the terrorists are not jihadis. Simply not. They are brigands, muharibun. If their society converts to their way of thinking, hariba will become jihad. But right now, the word still means what it means.

Now if we could only get the lefties to think of the Crusades as a good thing.


J

Clouded Hills

I have no roots in England. My people separated from theirs 1600 years ago, and had no further intercourse save Viking rape and occasional trade. But in a larger sense, we're all the children of England. Her language is our own, even if we are new to these shores. More importantly, from her institutions grew our own, focused, more than anywhere else, on freedom. No matter where our own particular ancestors hailed from, we have duel roots, and for all that we are united now only by language and distant history, we should care what happens there.

The calm springtime breezes of Oxford now carry the muezzin, the five-times call to moslem prayer, broadcast via loudspeakers from the stately minaret of the Oxford Central Mosque. No different than church bells, you suppose? Could be, but this is a land of churches. Yes, mine is a specifically conservative argument. Any other, liberal argument would lead to the extinction of the old and the evolution of the new -- which in this case would be back to the old ... Islam, the religion of locusts, which consume everything in sight. Who knew? -- Mohammad is Abaddon.

Unreasonable? -- to allow bells but forbid amplified chanting? Do we fear the intrusion of the alien? It's not that. It's that they have come to a new place, and by forsaking the old, they must expect to forsake some of the old ways. The guest does not dictate, just as the host does not oppress. But when a way of life is threatened, we are not urged to turn the other cheek. Remember, the Bible does not forbid war. God, indeed, commands it. My point is not to urge for war, of course, but to remind those who need it that ownership brings privileges. Citizens make laws. Tourists follow them. As for religious freedom, the call to prayer is just that, a reminder. Are there no digital watch alarms, to beep at the appointed times? So to insist that this Eastern custom be imposed upon a Western land -- it is a kind of imperialism. Who'd a thunk it.

The bishop of Oxford, the Right Reverend John Pritchard, blithely instructs his flock to "enjoy community diversity." He is a close colleague, of course, of the Archbishop, who urged for the institution of Sharia law in England's green and pleasant land. After all, what is truth? And so we know what lord they follow -- like Pilate, they worship the spirit of the age.

The Right Reverends are not alone in their interfaith outreach ... or would it be extrafaith? Assistant Secretary-General of the esteemed and increasingly dominant Muslim Council of Britain, Inayat Bunglawala, made his instructions to the bishops clear: The "call to prayer will be part of Britain and Europe in the future." As much to stop the tide. Thus, knight takes bishop. Checkmate.

How, how to respond, to treachery and cowardice? Minarets? Dark, satanic mills, rather. Blake got it right:


Bring me my bow of burning gold;
Bring me my arrows of desire;
Bring me my spear; O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.


Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem. Not Mecca.


J

Again

YT

Something about that last photo op. It seems so familiar. What is it? I've, I've seen it before, I know. Oh. Yeah. Now I recall.

It's the fingers. The awkward gentleness of the hands. Where can I touch that won't hurt? Nowhere, really, but we have to do it. And we can't see his expression, but we know, we know the look on his face.

Beslan.

So I've bumped it up, again, from September, and before. Because we have to remember.


~~~~~


A Reminder:

Beslan. As a tourist spot it makes a great train station.

But people of a certain description looked upon it as a marvelous land of opportunity. Here's what they did with the school's gym:

That's an explosive charge hanging between the hoops. Hope nothing happens.



Oops. Hope it wasn't on purpose.



Well, maybe she's crying about her job?



Oh.







How we cling to each other.



And to God.



Does it do any good?


*****


Beslan

Such passion is normal, and stirs the
blood like wine – think of it as exercise.
And yes that is blood, but after all, death is just
a part of the great circle anyway.
And it’s an interesting anatomy
lesson – look at the ears, look at the spine.
And look at the foolishness in the fingers of his right hand.

Well, no matter: because there is no evil,

this

never happened.


[9/7/04]

______



Sometimes I do go a little mad.

Forgive me for that, will you?


J

Logic

Everyone will have heard by now about hapless Gillion Gibbons, English school teacher subject to 40 lashes and six months in a Sudanese prison for allowing her second graders to name a teddy bear "Mohammad". Pardoned later, and spent only a week or so in jail before being deported. Even the genocidal junta in Sudan didn't like that kind of publicity.

I however only just heard about the "Qatif Girl". A twenty year old woman sentenced in Saudi Arabia to 90 lashes for being gang-raped. The technical charge was dishonoring Islam by being alone with a man. She must not have had a very good lawyer, since technically she couldn't very well have been alone with just one man if she was gang raped. That just doesn't make any sense. In fact, her lawyer must really have sucked: when the woman appealed, she got a hundred ten additional lashes added to her sentence, and another six months of jail time. Why so lenient?

The brazen slut should have kept her yap shut. You can just tell so much about the whore from her photo. Bitch. Look at her, the slut. The way she's showing her fingers like that. I bet she has long nails. Whore. And the white of her eye. Makes me sick.

At first it seemed a little unreasonable -- 200 lashes for being raped. But then I thought about it a little, and it gave me an erection. So now I get it. Beating up these woman and gang raping them is really hot and sexy. That Islam is the bomb. How could I have missed it all this time? My bad.

On a related note, a Colorado couple is suing the state police for returning their marijuana plants dead. They have a licence now, you see -- too late some might think, but that's a technicality. And Raging Grannies is suing the city of Ferndale, Michigan for citing them for honking their horns -- for peace -- as a protest against the Illegal War in Iraq -- you know, free speech and political expression. Sheesh. Isn't it obvious?

I'm going to start expressing myself politically by raping and flogging strangers. If I do it publicly, it must be okay. I have a trained logical mind. And a new-found sensual interest.

Speaking of impeccable logic, here's an item of interest: The Mexican pop star Sergio Gomez, of the band K-Paz de la Sierra,

was kidnapped last week in Morelia, Michoacan, and tortured to death.

Gomez is just one of a handful of Mexican musicians to meet such a fate recently. It seems that drug gangs "adopt" a favorite musician as a sort of mascot, whom rival gangs may then execute -- posted on the web with appropriate soundtrack. Huh. That seems sort of weird, doesn't it. Oh. Wait. I'm getting an erection.


J

WMD Control

There were no WMD! None! So Bush lied. Boo! Boo Bush!! Bush lied and stupid soldiers died! Uh huh. ... You say what what? There's a but? Oh. Well, then. Never mind.

Y'see, WMD were found. Some number of times, actually. And we've actually heard about it, if we have. Makes you wonder how many times it needs to happen, before they get it. It's not as if we didn't have cause to worry. And was there something especially law-abiding and honorable in Hussein’s character, that would make anyone think that in this one particular he would honor his surrender treaty, his agreements and the sanctions? He’d bribe officials, harbor terrorists and blast away at our planes on a daily basis, but he made sure to get rid of all the WMD?

Most recently, five hundred shells, with “degraded” mustard or sarin nerve agent. Oh, but look! Degraded! Well, yes, they were old. But they were kept, too. They don’t rise to Baathist-FDA standards for quality and effectiveness? I’m sure Saddam would have fired off a very stern memo about that scandal. But it has been reported that he made sure that fresher supplies were on hand. These of course wouldn’t count, because they weren’t already mixed together. Precursors don’t count. ... Shut up.

Sarin and mustard gas are not the WMD we were so afraid of? Well, I wasn’t afraid at all, so I’m not sure which “we” is meant. Must be the same “we” that Bush lied to about there being WMD. Oh. No, must be the same “we” whose fears Bush played on. And it is true that these are not, like, um, James Bond nuclear bombs-n-stuff … giant Soviet-style arsenals with millions of missiles all lined up and pointing at Wichita Falls. I don’t suppose Dr. No was a Baathist. No, these crappy old mustard gas bombs are not impressive at all -- like World War One stuff -- and hardly anyone died in that war, as I recall. Oh. Well, I might be misremembering myself, but even so, we wanted something that made a big explosion or something. Not just some sneaky little gas that only kills Kurds.

And after all it’s only 500 shells-n-stuff. We went to war over 500 measly shells-n-stuff? What harm could 500 crappy little shells-er-something do? Ah. A math question. So let’s look at it. Let’s extrapolate from one little factoid at my disposal -- that Saddam killed five thousand Kurds with two such shells. Oh. Well, considering how many people there are in the world, the fact that 500 Baathist WMD shells could kill only one and a quarter million people -- that’s nothing. That’s fewer than the abortionists get in the good ol’ USA every year. A drop in the bucket. And who would they kill? Just some Jews. And of course more Kurds. Maybe those dirty Iranians. Hardly any Americans -- just the ones who don’t belong in Iraq anyway -- the stupid ones, who joined the militaristic military. Boo! Boo on America and it’s imperialist militaristic military! Hurrah for Kerry and Gore and, um, Dean and Murtha! And, uh, Hillary? -- I can't quite tell. But hurrah fer them other guys!

Oh, excuse me while I wipe myself off. In my enthusiasm I seem to have lost control of my bladder, and I have also inadvertently evacuated various other sacs in my body. It must be that I love truth so much.

So that’s one thing. The fact that there most certainly were WMD. But that’s not the main things. The main thing is that it never was about WMD. It was always about the enemy who would use WMD if he had them, and would use something else if he didn’t. We recognize their argument as a typically Liberal one. Gun control. There are no bad people, only bad weapons. Or something -- I’ve never quite followed their reasoning. If Saddam had no weapons of such and such a description, then he could not have been a threat. If Americans owned no guns, then violent crime would virtually disappear. That’s their logic, insofar as I can puzzle it out.

My logic is that if you get into a fight, you have to win it. I don’t mean some ridiculous ego-driven shoving match. I mean something that’s real and serious, where the lives of your sons are at stake. Do not engage, unless you’re there to win. And to me, the holiday from history that we luxuriated in during the hopefully-past clinton years was just an extended Act break in the drama that Bush I co-authored -- an over-long intermission in a distant theatre of war. It was an oddly attenuated Phony War, where we let the monster gambol across his northern hills, lopping Kurdish heads as a child cuts down dandelions. For shame.

So the Iraq War was just unfinished business. WMD had nothing, nothing to do with the necessity of finishing it. Terrorism was far more relevant, but even that wasn’t quite it. Vietnam was more relevant still, with its bastard children of Lebanon and Sudan -- where we cut and ran. But even this, for all its bad example and invitation to contempt, isn’t the real reason. The real reason is that if you leave a blood-enemy free, he will find a way to kill you. Or rather, kill your children.

We own guns, if we do, for a reason. Self-defense. We use them against people only to preserve our lives and what is ours. But if we have no guns, we will use whatever comes to our hands, to protect ourselves. Knives and stones and sticks. The world is the horror that it is not because of weapons, but people. Hussein was just such a horrifying person, and to imagine that he would not use his petrowealth for violence, just as he used it for bribes, is irresponsible. Just as the islamists attacked the Towers two times, and learned from their mistakes, so did Hussein once hire an attack on the very person of an American president. Would he not try again? And as he attacked some number of times his neighbors, would he not try again? -- seeing the cowardice and venality of Europe, and the irresolution of America?

But perhaps you disagree. Perhaps you’ve never had an enemy. Maybe you’ve never been assaulted. Your life might have been particularly blessed. Odd, how our life experiences can lead us in just different directions. Because I look at the violence of the world, and believe evil people are the cause. Others may think it is only a particular type of WMD -- of sufficiently recent manufacture, of sufficiently explosive power -- that is the great and sole peril. I believe this is a view that lacks congruence with reality. I fear that the only corrective to this failure of insight is that some saddam comes up behind you and stabs you in the back, or hits you on top of your head with a big stone.

Hard lesson. Let’s resolve to learn from past mistakes, rather than only from future ones.


J

An Ethno-Genetical Explanation

Here's an explanation of sorts. Of a certain religio-ethnic group -- which it would be insensitive and racist to name -- "a minority of no more than 11 percent is responsible for more than 70 percent of the birth defects in Yorkshire. " It would be racist because these certain persons who all adhere to this heretofore unnamed and in this paragraph unnameable confession have a skin tone of a somewhat more fuscous hue than that historically to be expected of the Isle of Albion. To equate such heritable physical traits with a religion which claims itself to be a Universal Faith -- and which forbids on pain of death any possibility of conversion to another religion -- is rank insensitivity, regardless of the truth of the matter. No, none of this can possibly be relevant to the question at hand, which I, as the author of this paragraph, am uniquely positioned to claim deals with birth defects. My, that was awkward.

This certain group to which I alluded in the previous paragraph enjoys the benefits of a rural and traditional culture, transplanted from the bucolic hinterlands of sultry Pakistan (which Proper Noun shall not be construed to be an indication of race or ethnicity), which highly prises the tried and true practice of endogamy. "In some families in my street," asserts one Nadeem Aslam, "the grandparents, parents, and the children are all first cousins -- it's been going on for generations and so the effects of the inbreeding are quite pronounced by now." This excellent outcome has many manifest benefits, too numerous to rehearse here, but none of them racist.

It would be the most grotesque distortion of fact to attribute the observation of the practice of endogamy (slandered by bigots as a sort of incest) to "Islamophobia" -- a calumnious neologism which refers to the putative fear and indeed hatred that Moslems supposedly have of all non-Moslems. This is a canard, propagated by agenda-driven ideologues to defame the Universal Faith. Probably, it's the Jews behind such lies. The fact that the standard word which refers to non-Moslems is kuffar, meaning "infidel filth," is merely an example of the poetic and transcendently metaphorical eloquence of the Koran. Only a bigot could think otherwise.

Given then the countless benefits of incest, so that all your grandparents are also your first cousins -- as are your parents, to each other, and to their own parents, and to you and your siblings, who are also your cousins as well -- it is no wonder that heroism and sublime self-sacrifice have come to characterize the practitioners of the Universal Religion of Peace. I refer of course to the recent attempted car bombings outside a Piccadilly club on ladies night. One car bomb goes off; then, later, after the crowd has gathered to inspect the outworking of the condign will of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, another car filled with nails and gasoline goes off. Divine. Sublime. Neat. Sweet. Petite. The Addams Family.

No wonder suicide bombing seems like a good idea to them.


J

Exports

The whole of the Arab world has an economy smaller than that of Portugal. Portugal may be doing pretty well nowadays, but it's no superpower. Doesn't speak well for all those hundreds of millions of Arabs, does it. You'd think they'd stop having such a backwards system after all this time. If Ireland can do it, they should be able to. Ireland never had an empire. The Arabs most certainly did, and still do. But it's an empire of backwardness.

The Arab world has, as a whole, oil. A legacy resource. Not earned, not the result of any virtue in the occupiers of the land. Inherited. No shame in that. But what has been done with this geological largesse? Where does all that windfall wealth go? Wasted. Frittered away. There is shame in that.

Yes, the Moslem sphere, like most of the rest of the world, has been colonized. How is that a bad thing? America was colonized. Canada and Australia were colonized. These nations are paradises compared to so much of the rest of the world. Hmm. Must be race, then. Those Anglo-Saxons are the master race, apparently. Wish I was one. But at least I have benefited from partaking in their superior, master-race culture. What? What? I'm wrong? It has nothing to do with race? Okay. But what does it have to do with? Culture? Okay. Those Anglo-Saxons have the master culture.

I jest, of course. Not "master". Just most likely to create prosperity.

Nations export whatever they have a lot of. Peru exported guano, and when they used it all up, they exported abalone, and when they over-fished they exported coffee -- then drugs. Et cetera. A colonial and short-sighted mindset of exploitation -- first imposed, then self-perpetuated. Japan, like Switzerland, is not overly-blessed with resources. They export the products of thrift and intelligence. Mexico is blessed with resources, but it has a culture of backwardness, so that its wealth is wasted. Mexico exports its excess population. The ancient Greeks had an infertile and unfavored land. They exported oil, though. Olive oil. If life hands you olives, make olive oil. But what they really had a lot of, and what they exported, was their culture. That's what the USA is exporting nowadays. Its culture.

Well, Moslems have a culture. Alas, its current phase seems to require that it export terrorism and conquest. Nothing unusual there. Japan did the same thing in the first half of the last century. Japan grew up though. It got civilized.

So there's hope. Maybe Islam will become civilized, and live in peace and harmony with its global neighbors. Maybe this will happen without the response the world needed eventually to make with, say, the Nazis. Maybe Islam can reform itself, without having to be humiliated and utterly crushed. Maybe God or Allah will smile upon the sultry lands and raise up wise and moderate leaders, who will invest the wealth of their nations in building a just and equitable society, where merit brings prosperity and there is an Arabic Dream that is equally as beautiful and promising as the American Dream. The American Dream, shared now, or envied, by the whole of the civilized world. No, not the licentiousness of its culture. The promise rather that the future can be better than the past.

That's the answer then. When these countries look to themselves for hope, rather than fleeing across the harsh frontiers or the wide seas -- when wealth is seen as a thing created from ingenuity and as a blessing to be wisely shared and shrewdly invested, rather than squandered ... then their exports will be lawful and they will be possessed not merely of a culture -- cannibals have a culture -- but of a civilization in the highest sense of the term.

How can such a thing be made to happen? Conquering Iraq doesn't really seem to be the answer -- surgery is a response to cancer, not the cure. Opening our borders seems like a foolish thing to do. Thus neither strength nor weakness will do. Is there some third option? If only wisdom weren't such an arbitrary thing. If only blessings had some origin other than only our ancestors, or geology, or some other unpredictable and uncontrollable source.

I don't know. What are you looking at me for? I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud.



J

More Ideas Than I Can Understand

What was all that hijacking in the '70s about? It was about one thing only: keeping Arabs (read Islam) relevant. Without terrorism, Islam would be utterly unimportant to the whole non-Moslem world. Islam has two things only. Oil, and terror. Nothing else. Well, history -- but what is history?

Without oil, the Arabs would just be Africans. Africa -- the continent that no one cares about. Am I wrong? Nigeria provides us with more oil than does Saudi Arabia. Why don't we care about Nigeria? Well, I'm sure there must be Nigerian terrorists. So we must care a little. But the Arabs, the Moslems, have a genius for mayhem. Everyone notices genius. That's what the Moslems have made themselves. The outlaws of the world. Well, at least they know who they are. That's a good thing.

Islam has been seeking its identity for four generations now. Since the ’30s it has emulated the Nazis and the Soviets, or a secularism or nationalism, as with Nasser -- all unnatural transplants. All those Moslem decades of flirting with alien isms turned out to be years of famine and drought. They where trying to be what they were not -- Western. Now they have turned to their roots. Such barren and infertile ground, though. What could possibly grow in it.

The Islam that we are coming to know seems to be insane. It cannot make a distinction between what is offensive and what is incendiary -- a distinction that is diagnostic of our civilization. What is there that is not an insult to Islam? -- when every non-Moslem must believe their prophet is a false prophet. Mohammad, PBUH, the false prophet. Blasphemy of course, but such is the belief of every non-Moslem. Likewise, every non-Moslem must believe that Allah is not the true God. Every non-Moslem must believe that Mecca is not a truly holy city. Every non-Moslem must believe that the Koran is a mere collection of poems -- many of them plagiarized.

Disbelief is denial. Denial is an insult. The world is guilty, then, of the thought-crime of insulting Islam. The remedy, to that growing body of radicalized and empowered Moslems, is -- well, stoning is too inefficient. But Iran is getting its nuke.

The enemy? Well, the one who does the actual killing is Moslem. So far they congregate in Iraq, although they erupt like carbuncles in India and Sudan and Pakistan and Spain and London and Bali and ... well, and everywhere. The enablers, the fifth columnists seem to be everywhere as well. Who then is not the enemy? In this case, my rather literal mind must conclude that it is the enemy of our enemy that is our friend. That would be, um, us. Sort of a “either with us or against us” thing. How Bush-like. How Christ-like.

Nazis were a national phenomenon, with, of course, international sympathizers. Islamism is an international phenomenon, with sympathizers utterly prevalent in Western media and bureaucracies and institutes of higher learning -- or I should say, of liberal education. Hm. I wonder what course we should pursue. If only history held some answer, some salubrious example that we might follow. Maybe there’s some professor who could instruct us. Perhaps there’s some journalist who could inform us.

Otherwise we will be lost. Because history is such a bore. I can’t even remember last year -- after all, it’s gone. Imams? The Flying Imams? Didn't that used to be a TV show?

There was a time when those eastern lands were not dry as old bones. And the thing that sprang from that earth, rode horses and wielded swords. What can grow in the heartland of Islam? Only, it seems, Islam, as it originated. No alien isms can be grafted onto that tree. It is sui generis.

Their most recent riding forth? They call it jihad. It's actually hariba -- war with humanity. Do you think it will get better? They're getting the bomb. After they use it, what will grow? Mutations, I suppose, are their own sort of sui generis.

Current -- I do not say modern -- Islam has oil, and it has terror. Nothing else. Oh, it has history, such as it is. But who doesn't? Well, the West doesn't, in that it's turning its back on history. Urgh. This is becoming confusing. Maybe there’s some media outlet that will explain it to me. Maybe some religionist will call me to prayer, and do my thinking for me. Maybe oil will set the world on fire. Maybe nukes will.

No. I was wrong. It’s not confusing at all.



J

I got yer horn of Africa right here, mister.

ustules dripping with infection. Ralph Peters, on the other hand, has a perspective that is quite unsettling: "The new year is off to a bad start for Muslim extremists and their admirers in the media: After only a few months in power, the Islamist regime in Mogadishu collapsed overnight as Ethiopian troops drove out the fanatics."

But ... but how is such a thing possible? Aren't those islamists unbeatable? Peters assures me otherwise: "Unconvinced by Western myths that military force is useless against terrorists, Addis Ababa's troops intervened to support Somalia's internationally recognized government against the jihadis. The no-nonsense use of force worked."

Nevertheless, I am convinced that war is not the answer. Couldn't we have negotiated something? Now that the islamists have been driven underground, where they will concentrate on terror rather than Sharia, can't we negotiate with them so that they come back into power? Um, the reason this would be good, is, uh, oh! it's good because forced Sharia law is so much better than terrorism. Yeah. Well? Isn't it? Actually, I, and all right-thinking peace-loving liberals -- that is, all intelligent people -- think that we've fallen into a clever al-Qaeda plot. For the islamists are so much better at terror than at running countries. See? ... Y'know, we should help people fulfill their destiny. It's good karma.

Peters, a very unevolved man, disagrees with my impeccable logic: "Now the media line is that it was all a plan, that the Islamists intended all along to fight a guerrilla war. Sure, right. We've heard this one before, folks: The same pundits argued that Saddam never intended to fight a conventional war, but had always planned to hide in a hole in the ground while his sons were killed so he could eventually be dragged out by our troops and hanged by his own people."

Well, first of all, Mr. Peters, I am offended by your snide racist tone. Clearly you are a homophobe, and don't think I don't see the sarcasm, big man, because I do. You can't pull any fast ones on me, mister man. I have audited classes in literary criticism at a major Ivy League University, and I'm trained to identify subtle textual meanings. For example, did you know that Juliet was having a lesbian affair with her nurse? I must confess that this insight is not original to myself, but once it was pointed out, why, it was so very obvious. And Hamlet's problem wasn't with his father -- although all our problems are with fathers, right, girl friend? ... no, his conflict was that he refused to accept his homosexual yearnings for Horatio -- and don't get me started on Horatio! Oh, that Shakespeare -- the world's greatest feminist playwright. Well, not as great as Gertrude Stein or Gloria Steinem (same initials!) but who could live up to that standard, am I right, sugar? So you will see that I'm effeminately qualified to opine on matters of foreign affairs. In fact, foreign affairs are the best kind! I remember one fling I had with a beautiful Thai boy, so sweet and golden, like honey ... but that's another story.

Oh, it is a dark day indeed. The tacit will of the International Community has been flouted! Why, even Peters laments this tragedy: "Somalia's homegrown fanatics and their al Qaeda allies are on the run; the Ethiopian military is hunting down wanted terrorists ... and our enemies have lost a safe haven, a money-laundering capital, a smuggler's paradise and a launching pad for subversion."

At least we can agree on the facts. Western Imperialism and the White Man have again wrought their evil in the world. I'm not quite sure what Peters means by money-laundering. How can capitalism be clean? And "subversion" -- I'm abashed to confess that I've never quite understood the definition of the word. It just sounds like a sort of humming or buzzing in my head. The closest I can come to conceptualizing it, is by remembering the Salem Witch Trials. Did you know that Eugene Debbs was wrongly imprisoned? And Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent, of course. Oh, the Rosenbergs, the poor, poor Rosenbergs, martyrs to the glorious cause. And tens of thousands of oppressed women starved to death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Damn that Bush.

"The ideal of a perfect, eternal victory -- to which the media hold those who battle terrorism -- is an unfair standard. A win that overthrows a terrorist regime, whether in Afghanistan or Somalia, is worth the fight, even if the enemy can't be completely eradicated. Desperate terrorists struggling for survival are always preferable to a terrorist regime in the capital city." That poor deluded fool. He just doesn't get it.

Oh, I'm exhausted. I can't go on. I know, you're devastated, but I am, after all, only human ... "huMAN" -- what a sexist word! But so typical! Huge man. Ugh. Of course all the big macho he-men pretending to be masculine, whatever that means, are all so huge, with their strong horny hands and their hairy bellies making me feel so dizzy with their hammers and hard hats. Well. The strain of focusing my searing intellect simply drains me. Believe me, lover, I don't mind being drained now and then, but I'm more into being filled up if you get my meaning and I'm sure you do. Yes, I know ... I'm so witty. I'm a one-man Algonquin Round Table. Mostly Dorothy, but there's room in me for a couple of men, too. Ah! I'm doing it again! Somebody stop me! Save some for Rosie! I just love The View. Isn't that Donald Trump a cad? Who does his hair, for heavens sake? He looks like a melted Conan O'Brian. Ghastly. Still, I wouldn't kick him out of bed -- not for a million dollars. Oh! I've done it again! A play on words! -- did you see? I'm very clever.

I'll stop, before you die laughing. Until next time, I remain,

Your Humble Author,

Helmut Crisp

PS -- Mark Foley ... not because of that silly thing about the boys. Who doesn't love boys? No, it's being Repugnantan ... yuck!

Idiocy

No, not idiotic, but idiocy. Historian Joseph Ellis says: “It’s a ridiculous question: ‘What would George Washington do about Iraq?’” Ellis then proceeds to answer a convenient rephrasing of the question: "Can a powerful army sustain control over a widely dispersed foreign population that contains a militant minority prepared to resist subjugation at any cost?" My! Goodness! Ha! See! Why, that’s just like what Washington himself faced!!! And of course now the answer is so very, very obvious!

“Time and space were on [Washington’s] side. And no matter how many battles the British army won, it could not sustain control over the countryside unless it was enlarged tenfold.... Eventually the British would recognize that they faced an impossibly open-ended mission and would decide to abandon their North American empire.” !!! See?!? Git it??? We’re the British! Understand? And the British LOST!!! See?

Alas, the analogy is false. The “militant minority” in the American colonies was in fact the operative government of the land. The militant minority in Iraq is a criminal and terroristic insurgency acting in truly vicious opposition against the civilian population and the established government, however operational, of Iraq.

The American ‘occupying’ army of ‘subjugation’ in Iraq is, in effect, functioning as a subservient arm of the Iraqi government. And while the terrorists are “prepared to resist ... at any cost”, the same cannot be said of the colonials. They were prepared to surrender; happily, circumstances did not require it.

Ellis demonstrates a heroic ignorance of history’s successful campaigns against insurgencies. An army most certainly can “sustain control over the countryside”, without enlarging “tenfold”. Abrams’ policy in Vietnam did just that. The communists were entirely cleared out -- until they invaded the South again with Dhemocrat complicity and approval in 1975. Ah well, screw the South Vietnamese. Let them be put in re-education camps. Let them perish as boat people. Let them spend a generation in abject oppression. Let Cambodia go insane. Elect Pol Pot as Secretary General of the UN. Impeach Nixon! Down with America! Up its nose with a rubber hose! Them southeast asians ain't even white.

Ellis fails to understand that whereas the colonials yearned for freedom from the symbolic oppression of the British, the Iraqi people have already been freed from the actual and murderous oppression of the Baathists. Mad bombers yearning to re-impose murderous oppression is hardly analogous to Minutemen revolting against taxes. Is there any symmetry here at all? Aside from the fact that an American army is involved in both cases, the situations could hardly be less alike.

And while it is correct that the British seemed to face “an impossibly open-ended mission” -- mercy! one might almost say they had no exit strategy! -- the Americans have a very clear and entirely different mission: assist the Iraqi government until it is secure.

To get it so very wrong, one might almost suspect that Professor of History Joseph Ellis had, oh, say, an unstated and corrupt agenda, which compelled him to grossly misconstrue and twist the facts so that they appear to support his bias. But that’s ridiculous. I mean, he’s a big-time historian who won the Pulitzer Prize, which goes only to really honest and smart guys, like them reporters there on that fancy-pants paper that leaked all them government secrets a while back, remember? That’s a good thing, to leak security programs during time of war. So, like, what I was saying about Ellis is that he must be right. So that would make me the idiot.

God, I’m so stupid. I wish I was a Lefty, so I could be smart and popular. I bet the chicks would totally be into me too then. That'd be so cool. Maybe I’ll grow a ponytail. Maybe I’ll buy a teeshirt with Che looking heroic. Maybe I’ll get a yin yang tattoo and pierce my nipples and start smoking reefer. That’s what the kids are calling it, right? Reefer? Tokin a dooby? Puffin the ganga? Yeah, I’m totally down with blazin some herb. I’ll blow a stick of squidge. Blast off! Alice B and me are havin a tee party. Groovy. I’m hep to that jive. I dig. I dig peace. Yeah. I’m cool.

Dude. What was I saying? Something about ... um ...

... uh ...

um ... ridiculous ... uh ... ... idiocy ...



J

Side Show

Ali Al Massedy, who videoed Saddam’s hanging, said, “I saw fear. He was afraid.”

Do you see it?
Yes. Of course. It’s not terror, not dread. Fear is exactly what it is. And yes, fool that I am, I do feel compassion.

He is numb. He is fighting to contain his bowels. He is aware of the air passing through his nostrils. His testicals have drawn up into his body. The corners of his mouth pull down. Time is slow, but there is so little of it. The rope of the noose scrapes his ear as it passes over his head -- it is rough, and it roars like the end of the world.

The platform gives out under him.

He dies instantly. His body twitches.

When the execution was over and the witnesses had returned to the Green Zone, they were met with cheers. Massedy stated, "All Iraqis will be happy from the north to the south to the east to the west."

They have a right to rejoice. It means something to them. Saddam was responsible for the deaths of one and a half million people. Every Iraqi will have known someone who was raped or tortured or killed. Compassion for Saddam would be taken by them as a profound moral corruption. Ding dong, the witch is dead. But the east has many witches.

He was clutching a Koran. You can’t see that. Its comfort can only have been emotional. There was no spiritual relief. We know this because of his final words. "He was saying things about injustice, about resistance, about how these guys are terrorists."

A blustering fool, then. A bitter old man stupid with indignation. On December 13, 2003, when he was pulled out of the pit he was hiding in, the first thing he told his captors was: "I am Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq and I am willing to negotiate." Yesterday in the looming presence of the gallows he said: “Iraq without me is nothing.” Perhaps those were his last words. The reality was that Saddam, without Iraq, was nothing.

He died an unrepentant fool, too possessed by arrogance and narcissism to meet death with even a shred of real dignity. He had only the dignity of contained fear.



J

Rope

Saddam was executed today. I heard it on the radio. The Shiites are firing celebratory rounds into the air. The Sunnis are exploding themselves in marketplaces. The Kurds are going about their business, building a free and just society. The lefties are clucking their tongues and saying Saddam was murdered. Really. I heard it with my own ears. The rightwing fascist bloodthirsty monster bigots, such as myself, feel no need to have an emotion. Justice is satisfying only sometimes. Frequently it is just ugly.

I take no pleasure in the destruction of human life. The pleasure that I might take can only be in the balancing of the scales. It is an abstract, but I live much more in the world of ideas than of practicalities -- despite all my usual protestations to the contrary. We cannot escape our temperaments, any more than we can escape our fate.

Saddam has gone down into the dust, and further, into Hell. Good. But that "good" is not an emotion. It is the successful outworking of an equation. As I have elsewhere said, justice is an appropriate and equal response. Take a life unjustly, lose your life. That seems like perfect justice. Other cases, such as rape, seem more problematic. Rape, and be raped? I expect that would involve some variation of sodomy, which is not an equal response, for all that it may be appropriate. Rape, and be castrated? Rape, and be stoned? Rape, and be forced to marry the woman? You see the problem. But the death penalty is ideal.

As for Hell, one might wonder how eternal torment is an appropriate response for finite wrongdoing. There are lots of ways to answer that. I'll keep it simple. Some people have garbage for souls, and they belong in the garbage heap. The suffering isn't environmental, it's existential. They are made for the fire. That brings into question the nature of a God who would create souls only that they might go to Hell. The short answer is that, per the biblical tradition, that is just the case, and if you don't like it, you don't like reality. And keep in mind that the only sense of justice that we can have, is the one that God made us to have. The longer answer is that everyone does indeed have free will, and some people use that freedom always to rebel and never to repent. Their condemnation is as complete as their rebellion. Infinite.

What does this have to do with Saddam and his execution? He's just another example of what's wrong with humanity. He had power, and he used it only to glorify himself. Whatever theology you might happen to subscribe to, you can see how wrong that is. Power is a responsibility. Whatever our complaint with God is about the corruption of this world, there is a more visible cause of pain. Leaders must be accountable. If they do not lead in a democratic manner, then only rougher justice can ever set things right. The danger to an absolute ruler is that his reign can be abreviated only in disgrace. Once off the world stage as an actor, he must become a pathetic freak or a pitiful watchword. In this instance, disgrace was consumated in death.

Today, one of the former princes of the world has taken his final fall. It was short, with a sudden stop. The process of justice was long, but its end will have lasted the breadth of a heartbeat. And then silence.


J

"Another crazy night..."

Moved to 9/07.


J

Enemies

That their garb is different than ours is incidental. That their language has more gutterals and more aspirants is an accident of history. That their skin or their features might have a different quality is meaningless.

That their laws forbid the free practice of any faith but their own is a choice they have made, arising from their character. That their own faith demands that the whole of the rest of humanity be converted, subjugated or slain arises from the nature of their hearts.

That they crossed over many lands and the long waters of seas and oceans, to attack us unawares as the brigand sets upon the wayfarer ... well, this more than anything else tells us who they are.

In so far as it is possible, live in peace with all men. But when peace is made to be impossible, what shall we do? First, we must not forget. Peace has only one end -- war. War has many ends. Only victory will be acceptable. It will be achieved only with sufficient resolve.

Where is courage to be found?

J