The Curse Has Come Upon Us

I suspect that THIS or an even worse variant of it is what al Qaeda would like to be doing in the United States.

Did you know that Koranic (rhymes with "moronic") scholars have determined that it is OK to kill 4 million women, children and men (specifying that up to 2 million can be children)? That is is OK to leave up to 8 million homeless? And a few hundred thousand maimed and crippled? Can you imagine human beings spending their time calculating things like this?

It is almost banal to talk about the Curse of Evil these days, with all the vile incidents and insane psychopathic people who perpetrate them. We are used to speaking this way about lone serial killers, who up until recently were monstrous enough for our sensibilities. But the religion of Islam has created a meta-Evil -- an "uber" malignancy that has no corollary in history.
Certainly there have been historical events that intimated the evil that men are capable of. The Holocaust in WWII instantly comes to mind. And until the early 21st Century, Hitler was the epitome of the worse evil imagined by the race of mankind.

But we are talking about people who are planning the deliberate extermination of millions of people for the alleged wrongs done to them; and because of the simultaneous envy and hatred they feel for America and its values. Who justify their murderous rage with decorous, formal religious language and repeated invocations stating how great their god is. Compared to these religious fanatics, Hitler was a piker. This is not a Curse upon Jews or Christians, but a Curse upon Mankind.

What is most frightening is that they combine religious primitivism with technological sophistication. As they search for the perfect weapon to confer mass death, destruction and mayhem what will we be doing? Will we passively sit and wait for their plans to come to fruition? Like the Lady of Shalott, will we let this curse come upon us and lay ourselves down to die in hopelessness and resignation?

As they plan the death of YOUR child, what will you be doing?

As the Russians are finding out, once the terrorists have the children it is already too late to do anything and still be able to save them. I hope someone--anyone-- can think of a way, but it seems to me that the situation defies peaceful solution and can only end in tragedy.

So, what will you do?

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance--
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott...

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot.
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.