In the Presence of Evil

I would like to thank New Sisyphus for his most recent post, which captures the contempt and anger I feel about the great, holy Islamic warrior-cowards. Who shoot helpless women and children; cut off the heads of people whose hands are tied behind their back; and murder wounded crash survivors -- and then keep a videotape record of their glorious deeds.

The nature of our enemy could not be made any clearer. From Beslan, to Manhattan, to the field in which the helicopter’s passengers met their doom, one theme is constant: the absolute cowardly and craven nature of the Islamic Fascists themselves.

Say what you will about the old fashioned German variety; at least they knew how to fight and fight bravely. These new fascists cannot kill anything that isn’t rendered helpless or unaware first. And, when they are fought head to head they more often than not fall to their knees and beg for forgiveness. Or commit suicide, which, despite what you’ve read at Daily Kos is not a sign of bravery but yet the ultimate in cowardice.

I am a psychiatrist and I couldn't do this work unless I really cared about people and believed the best of them. The only time in my career where I regularly encountered individuals that I could not connect with was during a several year stint working in a county jail. Not all the people there were bad--many were just plain stupid. But fairly regularly I would meet up with the ones who --well, to put it bluntly--raised the hair on the back of my neck and sent shivers down my spine.

Practicing psychiatry as long as I have, I no longer try to talk myself out of this kind of negative response to someone. No, I have learned over the years to trust my instincts in such matters. When I feel this way, I know I am in the presence of something bad. I usually then search for something to connect to in the people who stimulate that reaction--some elemental living thread that makes me feel that I am talking to someone who is also a member of the human species. I try to feel sympathy, even if my normal empathic response eludes me.

Likewise, I have forced myself to watch the awful beheading videos and other assorted visual evidence that the cowardly Islamofascists so narcissisticly make of their despicable actions. Only someone truly evil could even possibly imagine that such technological reproductions of their depravity could be seen by anyone with human DNA without feeling utter revulsion and outrage toward the perpetrators. I have tried to find something in their behavior that I could understand on any level. But these Islamic fanatics have taken me one emotional step further than even the serial killers I have interviewed.

In addition to the feelings I mention above, I have felt a growing coldness and an increasing sense of grim determination. When I watched today the al-Jazeera video of the injured pilot from the helicopter that was shot down being brutally murdered, after asking help to stand; his body riddled with bullets, while the brave soldiers of Allah the magnificent mindlessly shouted (off-camera) "Allah Akbar"--I finally understood. I had understood this on an intellectual level for some time, but the psychiatrist in me had still been searching for something-- anything--that would make it possible for these monsters to be able to live in a human world.

They are vermin. They feed off of death and destruction. They glory in nothing but death. Once maybe when they were children they were human. Now they teach innocent children to hate as they steal their souls from them. They are cowards and subhuman troglodytes; remnants of a medieval culture that should have died a thousand years ago. The complete, total and irrevocable extermination of this evil and its adherents MUST be the goal of anyone who is civilized.

I don't advocate torturing them or even humiliating them (maybe humiliating them).I don't advocate even hating them. It isn't a worthwhile expenditure of emotional energy. Just kill them without any great fuss or angst. And send them and their ideology to whatever hell awaits such pathetic and deformed souls. We owe it to whatever is great and good in the human spirit to do no less. And it is no more than what such creatures deserve.

When you are in the presence of true evil, you have only one real choice. You must face it coldly, ruthlessly and with unswerving determination and loyalty to Life.

Because in every way that matters, this is a battle of Life and Death.