19 September 2006

Context

Religious fanatics attacked me yesterday, using all the media at their disposal.

A friend found herself doing something she had not done since the 10th of September 2001. It rattled her, and to a degree, it upset me, too. I don't trust my emotions as much as I once did. I had the willies that season, but I felt nothing that day. Nothing at all, except a joy at being alive. Maybe it would be a good day to work from home, she suggested.

I checked my calendar and found that I have to visit one of the targets today. Shoot. Did the Greek kings in Byzantium feel this way as the Turks worked for years to erect the siege works around their city?e

Then I got a note from a friend of a friend, at sea someplace. He quoted a Canadian source who claimed Abu Dawood, the successor to the murderer al Zarkawi had announced that “Final preparations have been made for the American Hiroshima.”

He apparently called for Muslims living in the US to leave the country without further warning, since the operation is nigh. There was some useful information in the warning, which is sloppy tradecraft. The leader of the attack is supposed to be a naturalized US citizen named Adnan el Shukrijumah, better known by his nom de guerre "Jafer the Pilot." He was raised in Brooklyn and educated in physics in southern Florida.

The Pilot is supposed to be leading a group who are masquerading as Christians, and have adopted Christian names.

I'm going to be on the lookout, since there seems to be a fair amount of masquerading going on. Earlier in the day, I quit one of the newsgroups I have belonged to for years. It used to be a password-protected and sober stream of useful information on the intelligence community.

Something had changed. The tone became shrill. Correspondents were posting political screed masquerading as cultural context in the continuing crisis. The latest was the vilification of the judicial branch, and bitter position papers better suited to the Federalist Papers than useful tradecraft on more effective spying.

The last straw was the furor about the Pope.

Someone assailed the Pontiff, based on the history of the Church. Something about kettles and pots and soot, went the argument, and cultural relativism. It sounded anti-catholic to me, the sort of sentiments that had finally gone out of fashion around the time of John Kennedy's election.

Not that I am opposed to people saying what they want. I just don't have to listen.

Most folks did not listen to what the Pope was actually saying. He is not used to what passes for journalism in the electronic age. He used the remarks of the 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel Palaeologus as a teaching point about Europe, not Islam, and it was not intended as a broadside against the Arab street.

The Emperor was near the end of the line for Byzantium, and had been a captive of the Turks in his youth. His perspective, however antique, may have some relevance.

Pope Benedict the XVI is quite capable of doing so, if that is what he intended. He was actually assailing the secularism of the West, and the collapse of the intellectual rigor of Europe, which appears to be surrendering as fast as it can.

Even his apologies, carefully parsed, regret only that the Muslim press misunderstood his meaning. I like the Pope. He is the last world leader who actually looked into the eyes of evil incarnate.

All the rest of what passes for leadership in this sad world are poseurs.

The Pope is opposed to religious extremism, and has said so often. But he is also no fool. He is posing some interesting questions, and permitting some old and secret documents to be released from the Vatican archives. He is much more robust in that regard than his saintly predecessor.

His questions merit some discussion. In 1995, Saudi money funded the building of a $50 million mosque in Rome, just the range of a rocket-propelled grenade from St. Peter's Square. No Christian churches are permitted in Saudi, of course.

And so far six churches in Gaza have been burned in the whipped-up response to the Pontiff's distorted remarks, and a nun murdered.

I am no Catholic, and my preference tends more to painting myself blue on the solstice and going out in the woods. But I like the cut of Benedict's jib. It is long past time to put things in context and say enough is enough .

I hope you will agree that we have not arrived in the 21st Century in order to participate in the dress re-creation of the 14th.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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