Sending a Message
My friend Yo, a print colleague on the other coast, commented the other day that he'd had a recurrence of sadness over the terrorist attacks last year. No, he said, it wasn't seeing those horrifying pictures of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers again. He didn't see them during the anniversary broadcasts; he didn't even watch television, nor did he read much newspaper coverage. I didn't want to watch, he said, because the pain was too great the first time. As far as reading, he thought that there really wasn't much to say that hadn't already been read.
So what prompted the renewal of angst? I asked. He responded, I think it was the fact that we never really did anything about the people who attacked us. Sure, we went into Afghanistan and unseated the Taliban regime, scattered Al Qaeda through South Asia and the Middle East, but we didn't go after those who were truly responsible. I don't mean Iraq, he added. Saddam is a psychotic, a mass murderer, but he wasn't the one behind the attacks. He's got plenty to account for, but not this
Yo was talking, of course, about Saudi Arabia. Their society is not only primitive, it's depraved. Remember, he asked, how the Saudi morals squad stopped people from rescuing those 17 girls from the burning school because the girls' heads weren't covered? To me, he continued, his voice lowered with unconfrontable injury, that anyone could interfere with the rescue of children from a fire is beyond reason. Such an act is so perverse that the people responsible forfeit all rights, even to live.
The problem with the Saudis, he continued, is that this perverted mentality is institutionalized. The country is run by the royal family, a bunch of inbred cretins who have redefined ostentatious greed with their pools of oil money. They remain in power because they pay the religious fanatics not to oppose them; part of the deal is that these sub-human anti-progress extremists control the religious and educational institutions, in the name of god. They are the ones who breed the young of Saudi Arabia -- and two-thirds of the country is under 20 -- to hate everything sentient beings appreciate. Freedom, intellect, the arts, creativity, humanity.
So what do you think we should do? I asked. There was a long silence; I almost thought the connection had been lost. My friend, he began, you've known me a long time. You know that I am not a violent person. I don't believe in war or capitol punishment. But if someone threatened my family or my friends, I'd act. And now I feel threatened. I'm not talking about revenge, but about what we can do to prevent something like this from happening again, which seems inevitable if we don't act to thwart it.
There was another pause. You also know that I'm not one who believes in sending a lot of messages, but this time I think it's necessary to send one loud and clear to those people who think that wholesale murder is all right, especially those ready to kill themselves in the act. I think we have to make hike up the cost, so that they know that it will be more than just their own miserable lives that will be part of the price.
My plan is simple, he continued. We do some research. We find out all we can about the families and friends of the 15 Saudi hijackers. Then we fly into Riyadh in force. We round up 200 of the closest relatives and associates of each of the killers. We line them up against a wall, and we shoot them. The children first, in front of their parents. The parents last.
Whew! I exclaimed. I didn't think I would ever hear such a thing from you.
I didn't either, he agreed, but I never thought that human beings could do what they did last September. And I don't like the fact that they got away with it. The people who created those monsters of 9/11 are alive and living well. They are even heroes, of sorts, and that is terribly dangerous. Others who would rear their children the same way have to be shown that such behavior has an unacceptable price.
In my mind's eye, indeliberately, I conjured up flashes of horror, of women in arab garb, screaming over the dead babies at their feet. Then I saw an image of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center Tower. With deliberate effort, I was able to push the picture from my thoughts. I thought about the tens of thousands of relatives and friends who lost people that morning. The terrible wound to our social psyche that will never heal. And the trillion-plus dollars lost that might have been spent on vaccinations, books, and seed grain.
I wonder if it would work, I offered.
Yo sighed, It would be a start. It would wipe out 3000 people who made life what it was for the hijackers, and who might be growing others to perform similar horrors. And it would certainly give others pause, in Pakistan, Malaysia, and throughout the Middle East. They might buy the notion that the U.S. is satanic, in their terms, but they aren't going to risk their families and friends just to say so in a limited act of terror.
I'll sign on to the concept, I said, so long as we can come up with a good carrot, too. Maybe we should distribute a half-billion notebook computers with Internet connections to young people throughout the Moslem world. Let people see for themselves that we are better than we are bad, that they have been fed a crock of lies. Maybe we can start a revolution against the mullahs.
Maybe, my friend said.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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