>>Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o'nights.
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.<<
-- Julius Caesar, Act One, Scene II.
I have been reading the various expressions of angst, soul-searching, and so forth all over SI since September 11, 2001 with various degrees of bemusement, detachment, alienation, alarm, and countless other minor emotions.
Would that what was motivating bin Laden was anything so simple as US policy in Israel, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
Would that the solution was as simple as supporting a Palestinian state, or becoming energy self-sufficient.
Maybe - and the finger-pointers will never quit finger-pointing with this one - maybe at some point in the past it was that simple.
But I do not believe it is that simple now. We are certainly past the tipping point.
We are not being punished for our sins of omission or our sins of commission. (Parenthetically, I am told that Dante did not believe that those whose sins were unintentional were condemned to hell. I can't confirm this.)
We are witnessing the outpouring, the flowering, of a movement, the Islamic Movement, which, as you say, objects to removing Islam from civil life and the public square and relegating it to the mosque. They believe that Islam must be part of every day life, part of government, part of the public square, that all of life should be lived according to Islamic principles.
At its worst, civil society will look like life under the Taliban, at its best, like Iran. When all Islamic nations are freed of the infidel (that's you, me, and the Israelis) they will then get rid of the moderate Islamic governments and then unite all Islam under one leader - whose name, we can be sure, is in the fantasy of bin Laden - - bin Laden.
The fact that their children suffer due to Saddam and other mad men and not because of us does not matter, because Saddam is Islamic, and we are not. Therefore we must be responsible for all evil.
This isn't a secret, and it's not a surprise.
And "sorting out bin Laden" is, I believe, not going to be as easy as you seem to think.
As for me, I'd far rather think about satellite internet, and space exploration, and the Internet, and all the other exciting things we have to look forward to, and not be dragged down by some idiot Luddite. But we don't seem to be given any choice in the matter.
Yes, I sympathize with him. Every time I use a plastic spork, I sympathize. Every time I throw away more volume of paper than the meal I ate, I sympathize. I never got used to the 20th century, and it's already the 21st. But killing people is not the way to stop the rush of time. Canut tried commanding the waves to stop, but they did not listen.
From a poem I wrote, long ago - "You can't put out your hand and stop the rushing waves of time."
We don't feel it is our job to make the world a better place because we know our limitations. We can't tell other people how to run their lives. We can't pick governments for them. It's ridiculous. If any American president or diplomat ever thought he could help another country decide how to govern itself, he was a madman or a fool.
It's like the poor children you anguish over. The only way you know they will be raised right is to do it yourself - - otherwise, you simply have to allow others to muddle through and offer help and hope for the best. |
