The Threat Is Now Local

[Diva]

From my Daily Update on Nov. 2nd, 2001

"The worst part is that these 'sleepers' could have been living here for a while. Living the 'American dream' so to speak. And now they want to destroy it. California has a laid back mentality. The people here will go to Temple/Church and 'do the religious thing'. But dressing up and dragging your ass outta bed early to listen to rehashing of the Bible is a far cry from getting up one morning knowing that you're going to kill people who you may know all in the name of some fucked up religious afterthought that they don't even practice. The hardest part is that we have so many good hearted people of Middle-Eastern heritage that will ultimately bare the burden of hatred that these fiends have wrought upon us. The black and white line has been smeared, the ultimate payback just isn't feasible. Honest, hard-working men and women have been murdered in our country because of their racial background. They win when we begin to fear each other. This country was built upon the idea that we treat each other as equals. I know we're a far cry from that. But hatred will only destroy the dream. Just because a generation falls short of the dream doesn't mean the next one will fall at the same place. Maybe we'll do a hail Mary and drop kick that fucker through the goal posts. Maybe. Some day...."

[Amaurote]

Spot on. In a strange way, I actually feel a certain sense of pity for the 911 terrorists: I hate the abominable sin, but not the abominable sinners; at least, not since the truth emerged about their lifestyle in the years leading up to the holocaust at the World Trade Centre.

Attar is a case in point. Half of his life was spent preparing for an act of total negation; he was forced to live in the midst of a beautiful, flourishing culture which his Wahhabism repudiated and his personal inclination detested. He could have commanded a massive salary for his flight skills, but he chose to die in a futile, nugatory act of Terror. There's at least one account of a session he had in the Flight Simulator; the trainer asked him to invest some more time in the machine, whereupon he began kicking the wheels of the simulator like a demented automaton.

That speaks volumes. Ascetic mortification, like Daniel the Stylite, surrounded by a sensual world his narrow little weltanschaaung refused to comprehend, and sought to destroy; and reduced to miserable, pinched self-hatred when he considered the future instrument of his own death.

I've thought about reading the Koran in the next few weeks; I think I will. I doubt I'll find any references to an eternal houri-ridden paradise in return for the perpetration of mass genocide, though...

[Diva]

We all have choices to make. I don't give a flying fuck what happened to any of those terrorists throughout their upbringing. I lived the all too typical dysfunctional family life. When we are children, we are responding using the environment in which we live in. But then we grow up. Religion is not a group effort. It is personal. When you die... Whether it be alone in a pit or with 89 people surrounding you... you go the rest of the way alone. Whatever your religion, the story is the same. There's no 'Im With Stupid' shirt to wear. With that in mind, the idea that these grown males heeded to another's rules based on no text to support their theory only proves one thing: They were mindless, hateful, loathsome creatures who took lives for the sake of another male's glory. Too bad the simulator didn't pop it's wheels and crush the infidel.

[Amaurote]

Originally posted by Diva
We all have choices to make. I don't give a flying fuck what happened to any of those terrorists throughout their upbringing. I lived the all too typical dysfunctional family life. When we are children, we are responding using the environment in which we live in. But then we grow up. Religion is not a group effort. It is personal. When you die... Whether it be alone in a pit or with 89 people surrounding you... you go the rest of the way alone.

Agreed; I tend to feel a certain sense of compassion for those who deliberately throw their lives away in the defence of an imagined injustice - the IRA, for instance. I find it easy to condemn the individual act which leaves a pack of semtex in a dustbin in the middle of a city centre, but much harder to condemn the violent divisive provincial politics in Northern Ireland which causes it. I try to imagine what it must have been like to grow to adulthood in a State where nationalists and loyalists live in conditions of ethnic separation more akin to the former Yugoslavia than a 21st century Western democracy, and the sense of injustice that must have arisen from being treated like a second-class citizen (worse, subject) in your own country, to be policed by what you perceive as a foreign standing army, and to have your democratic right to vote nullified by the gerrymandering of Lloyd George, nearly eighty years before this century even began. This doesn't make the act of violence any harder to condemn; but it does render the act more understandable.

This is pretty much the way I feel about Attar: as a genocidal terrorist he should have been snuffed out long ago; as a product of a warped, fanatical Wahhabist sect he is more understandable as an individual. The key difference is that it's possible to negotiate an end to violence with European terrorists, who generally have fixed political ends: the IRA are quiescent now that many of their demands have been met, and ETA will probably have a separate Basque State one day. You can't negotiate with Al-Queda: they see the Western World as a counterfeit kingdom, and - short of complete subjugation to the Wahhabist Way of Life, which even the Iranians anathematize as extreme - they will continue killing people. I seriously doubt whether they will ever stop, even if the White House pulled US troops out of Saudi Arabia. That's why, even as an antipatriot, I have no hesitation whatsoever in supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

[Diva]

Choices. That's what it comes down to. I can't post the pictures that would show the supporters. I can't because it tears at my heart. They burn my flag and blame us when they murdered over 6000 people on our soil. I'm not talking about the ones forced to show 'civic pride'. I mean the ones with hate in their eyes. People defect all the time. Hell, they even kill themselves rather than do such horrific deeds. These terrorists stayed true to what they believed. While you find human traits in these murderers, I do not have the luxery of pondering excuses for their actions. You see, I have to sit and think which bridge I can cross over... open work mail with latex gloves... and look into my mailbox and wonder. And then I have to do the hardest thing of all. I have to live my life. Place aside these fears and move on. And do so knowing this is the picture of celebration:

http://www.nochicktrix.com/fun/oth/vb/me/yankee.jpg

[Amaurote]

It is sickening, but the people raising those placards are generally ignorant of the true situation, partly as a consequence of their own poverty, and partly as a consequence of their own warped religio-masochistic culture: Shi'ia Islam is based around the death of Hosein, for instance, and their entire tradition derives from a delusion of unique persecution. Their hatred of the West is based partly on historical facts and partly on historical myth: the USA hasn't propped up a right-wing military dictator in over 20 years, yet they seem to imagine that Saudia Arabia, with its Shi'ia dominated educational system, is a sort of Middle Eastern version of George Orwell's Airstrip One. To make it worse, they've imported secular Western anti-Semitism, in the form of the Tsarist-invented Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Mein Kampf: hideous. In fact, the grim image you've attached includes a reference to the CIA piloting the planes into the World Trade Centre: this is a classic piece of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. The Wahhabists now imagine that the genocide in New York was perpetrated by a mythic conclave of the Elders of Zion sitting in the Oval Office, presumably in the hope of winning over world opinion to a Crusade against Islam. This is the sort of paranoid mindset the West is currently dealing with.

They don't see the major facts: the USA, for instance, always supplies more overseas aid to Third World nations than it officially admits. They don't appreciate the folly of Yasser Arafat in turning down the last Barak peace offer. The dissent in Pakistan has nothing to do with the USA, and everything to do with a populace which is ruled by a tiny, Westernized elite: one of the prerequisites for becoming a bureaucrat in Pakistan is a knowledge of English. As a result of this, the Governing classes in the country are culturally and economically estranged from the people: it's a little like Tsarist Russia in 1916, lost in the middle of a major war and utterly unable to command popular support.

I wouldn't dream of defending their terrible crimes: again, as with the average psychopath, I sympathize with the person they were, in the context of the poverty and injustice that created the monster they became; but, as the monsters they undoubtedly are, I look forward to the day that they no longer exist.

http://www.worldtrek.org/odyssey/mideast/042600/images/weeping_bg.jpg

[Jake]

Amaurote, during a time when tempers are flaring and people want heads to roll {myself included} it is refreshing to see an honest well thought out view.

I don't have the strength to personalize nor humanize these terrorists. I'm glad that you have surmounted this rage.

Welcome to the forums. I think you'll like it here. I certainly enjoy reading your responses. They're a great group of people. And the Diva is the heart and soul of it all. She's one of a kind!