Untitled Document

28 April 2004

Caprice

It could be a day with a Pacific theme. If it was warmer I would don an aloha shirt to celebrate the Mutiny of Her Majesty's Ship Bounty in 1789, and the setting sail of Thor Hyerdahl from Peru to drift across the Pacific, as pre-Inca voyagers perhaps drifted from South America to Polynesia. But it is not. It is cold again and there is an overturned car on the northbound expressway and the commute is going to be awful.

Kon Tiki's voyage was slow, too, and took nearly fifteen weeks to float more than 4,000 miles like a cork in the gentle insistent grip of the Humboldt and South Equatorial Currents. It would be a comfort to start a long sea voyage without a radio. William Bly began one of the most extraordinary small boat adventures in history when Fletcher Christian cast the long-boat off the oak flanks of the Bounty.

Hyerdahl went onto his raft in 1947, celebrating a sort of playful heroism that had not been seen in the world since the guns went quiet two years before. I yearn for a world like that, filled with possibilities and not angry young people. But I am struck by caprice. The dictionary defines the word as "an impulsive change of mind," or the "inclination to change one's mind impulsively."

Or it can mean a sudden, unpredictable action, change, or series of actions or changes: i.e., A hailstorm in July is a caprice of nature.

Like the series of events that have brought us to the situation in Iraq. Capricious on our part many are saying, but we must remember that the militants declared war on us a long time ago, long before any capricious decisions to invade Afghanistan or Iraq to salve our pain and anger at the monstrous string of escalating crimes against us.

It is Saddam's birthday today, and I hope he is having a pensive time of it at Baghdad International Airport, if that is where he still is caged. The airport used to be named for him. I hope he is thinking of the world he left behind. There are others who are thinking around the world. In addition to Falluja and Najaf, there are Islamic militants fighting in placid Thailand.

Perhaps it is caprice or perhaps it is planning, but word came last night that heavily armed assailants detonated a bomb near a cluster of foreign embassies in Damascus. There followed a massive fire-fight in the Syrian capital between state security forces. We should not for an instant forget that the Jihad is against all infidels and secular apostates.

The Bad Guys have struck far more often in the Arab homeland than they have in the West. It is easier, of course, much simpler to blend into the population. As they have in Falluja, and in North Africa, and of course in the mother of Jihad, Saudi Arabia.

This latest attack was probably not an act of caprice. The Jordanian Security Service rolled up a plot in Amman last week with crisp efficiency. Syrian television showed some B-roll footage of a room filled with rocket-propelled grenades, gas cylinders and bags of yellow powder. The targets were in the diplomatic quarter of Damascus, and thus at least loosely related to the greater struggle. Current Syrian President-for-Life Assad is the last Baathist standing, and thus must go.

I have a lot of respect for the Jordanians. The Hashemite Kingdom has survived since the sundering of the Transjordan in 1947. It has coexisted with That of course is why the The Security Israel and Syria as neighbors, and steered a pragmatic course. Their Security Service is very good indeed. I know some people who have worked with them before. In fact, it was the Intelligence headquarters that was the primary target.

People talk when they are in Jordanian hands. The angry young men began to spill their guts almost immediately, and detailed the whole thing. Jordan and the Hashemites were considered prime targets in the war against crusaders and infidels and secular fellow-travelers.

The fact that they were talking so furiously and so truthfully probably made the al Qaida handlers order the Syrian operation to go ahead, ready or not, since identity information was probably already disclosed. So off they went last night and the plot was foiled in a furious night-fight in an ancient city.

That is all good. But this latest wave of attacks show some interesting wrinkles. The Bad Guys are including some nasty stuff along with the conventional high explosives. The chemicals they found in Damascus had a similar role to play as the ones they found in Amman.

The operation against the Jordanian Security Service shows learning and sophistication. Six cars were pre-staged to a safe compound a few minutes away from intelligence headquarters.

Each vehicle would have two or three fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades for those in the vanguard. Their job was to hit the security barriers and kill the guards. Following up into the breech would be a large van with reinforced fenders. It was intended to drive to the middle of the compound and detonate twenty tons of explosives and chemicals.

The Jordanians proudly showed off the rows of plastic jugs. The Bad Guys intended to pollute an area as big as a square mile, weather depending. This is new, although we have been expecting it. A sort of terror gift that keeps on giving.

Meticulous planning. They even specified the sort of cars that would lead the attack. The planners specified Chevrolet Caprices, big heavy American cars that could really take a hit and keep on coming.

I used to own a Caprice. It was a tank. I loved it. I wonder if the instruction manual told them to de-activate the airbags.

The sudden deployment when you are ramming a barrier can ruin your aim.