Over two years ago I wrote a post about Mohammed Atta’s eyes. In it, I quoted an airline employee who waited on Mohammed Atta early on the morning of 9/11, and described him thusly: It was just the look on … Continue reading →
Disagreements on how to deal with suspected or actual terrorists who are in our custody rest on some basic assumptions, legal and otherwise. The first of these is whether or not we are at war or the equivalent of war, … Continue reading →
Al Qaeda is a secret organization. It doesn’t publish statistics on how many members it has, and if it did we wouldn’t believe them anyway, because for al Qaeda propaganda trumps veracity every time. And yet lack of specific knowledge … Continue reading →
Today a suicide bomber in the Iraqi Parliament managed to kill eight people, and preliminary reports have it that the bomber was a security guard. Whether or not the report of the bomber’s identity turns out to be true, the … Continue reading →
[Part I, “saving them,” is here.] Children are the future of any society. This makes them a double-edged sword: since most cultures are devoted to the protection and nurturance of their own children, most societies are uniquely vulnerable when those … Continue reading →
Recently I rented the movie “United 93.” The edition I watched included an addendum to the film, interviews with families of some of the passengers on Flight 93 who’d been featured in it. This was almost as interesting as the … Continue reading →
I’ve got an essay up at Pajamas Media. Topic: “Isn’t it Romantic?: suicide, homicide, terrorism, and Romanticism.” That’s “Romantic” with a capital R.
Continue reading →I wondered about it a few days ago: what’s to stop the terrorists/jihadis/insurgents in Iraq from running away in the face of the proposed surge, and living to fight another day? The answer seems to be “nothing, at least for … Continue reading →
Remember Daniel Pearl? His kidnapping and brutal murder in the winter of 2002 sent shock waves throughout this country, back in a time when we were still relatively shockable. The still shots released of Pearl during his captivity reinforced the … Continue reading →
Does it seem as though five years have passed since that dreadful day of the stunningly blue sky, the orange flames, the plumes of grey-black smoke? In some ways it seems a lifetime; one looks back at before-9/11 and thinks … Continue reading →
It’s the second anniversary of one of the worst terrorist acts in history, the Beslan kidnapping and massacre. I wrote this post one year ago, on the first anniversary. Nothing much has changed since then. The sorrow of the parents … Continue reading →
It’s been said before in parts of the Arab world, by Hezbollah leader Nasrallah and others: “We are going to win because [the Israelis] love life and we love death.” Loving death: what an amazing thing to brag about. It’s … Continue reading →