WTC Bombing

[Rob Schaap <bantam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sprach David:
> ... Those who are my enemy are attacking the underlying
> platform that both you and I depend upon.  If you do not agree, you
> are my enemy.

Responded Jim:

> that's exactly the way zombie-fanatics like Osama bin Laden think.
> Anyone with doubts is a heretic and thus an enemy. Given what you said
> elsewhere in this missive (that I elided) those heretics should be killed.

I have to agree with Jim; David is letting this ghastly moment run away with
him.  I think the likes of bin Laden and 'the leaders of the civilised world'
have more in common than many might think.  Both *know* what's right, what's
best, and what must be done - and if you know what the other side is certain
about, that other side becomes more than usually predictable.

Why did intelligent, well-prepared murderers leave all that evidence lying
about (I mean, have a brawl with a motorist, then leave evidence, including a
how-to-fly video fer-crying-out-loud, in the car, which remains parked exactly
where said motorist saw it parked!)?  Maybe it was to point the almost
inevitable hawkish reaction where it was intended.  Maybe the idea is
precisely to lead the US (indeed the whole core) to do things that will
fragment those countries in the Middle East ruled by western-inclined parties
to such an extent that they may fall under more Jihad-inclined control.  Maybe
the idea is to prepare for the Day Of Reckoning - unite the peoples from
Kashmir to Casablanca, from Khartoum to Kazakhstan (and maybe Malaysia and
Indonesia, too) - against the Great Satan.

Zealots think like that.  And those who seek to bring on Qiyamah (the ultimate
night of power and fate), yet ignore the Qu'ran's teachings that the decisive
power is that of Revealed Truth alone, in the hands of peaceful believers, are
no different from those who anticipate the Final Reckoning of Revelations, yet
ignore the Commandment 'thou shalt not kill'.  Most Muslems are not like that.
 Most Christians are not like that.  But no doubt many can be turned by
trauma, and, of course, by the type of rhetoric David feeds us here - which
leaves them nothing beyond 'With Me Or Against Me' in the self-fulfilling
prophecy that attends militantly monotheistic final-reckoning-mongering.
Before David gleefully shouts that some occasionally dominant strains of
'scientific-Marxism' shared this trait, I'll agree.  So what?  It's wrong.

To know the future is to lie.

But zealots can know their kind when they see them, and that allows them to
play each other like fish on a hook.  Which is terrible, because both sides
want the same thing: a Cleansing Fire.

And, unlike David, most here realise that fires leave only the ashes of what
might have been.

Here endeth the sermon.

Cheers,
Rob.