Succinct
February 13th, 2003 - 12:40 am
Krauthammer lays down the stakes:
This planet has been around for 4 billion years, intelligent life for perhaps 200,000, weapons of mass destruction for less than 100. A hundred–in the eye of the universe, less than a blink. And yet we already find ourselves on the brink. What are the odds that our species will manage to contain this awful knowledge without self-destruction–not for a billion years or a million or even a thousand, but just through the lifetime of our children?
That is why we’re at war. Not imperialism, not glory, not conquest, not oil. Everything decent about humanity is threatened by everything wrong with us. We can’t afford to lose, we can’t afford not to fight.
(Found by Moe Freedman.)
“Everything decent about humanity is threatened by everything wrong with us.”
That’s an excellent line.
Oh, I absolutely agree. I hope people understand that a fanatical sect of Islam will not rest until they drag the rest of civilization into the same Dark Age they dwell in. It’s not about the OIIIILLLL!
Ummm . . . a little technicality, smallpox blankets or smallpox in general for that matter, a sort of biological weapon, go back to about the time of the American Revoloution. Unless you’re going to define a weapon of mass destruction by the delivery system
Whatever it was that Charles Krauthammer said succinctly, you just said it succinctlier.
Powerful stuff.
When I was reading descriptions on the “Fantastic Victoriana” web site
http://www.geocities.com/jessnevins/vicintro.html
I was surprised to discover one 19th-century science-fiction story there (which I can’t find at the moment) in which there was a mass attack with anthrax-laden balloons.
“Oh, I absolutely agree. I hope people understand that a fanatical sect of Islam will not rest until they drag the rest of civilization into the same Dark Age they dwell in. It’s not about the OIIIILLLL!”
All of Islam is the enemy now? You just defined yourself as a danger for the rest of the world because you’re short-sighted and intolerant.
Jones,
You do read English, yes?
The previous poster, which you QUOTE, specifically said, “a fanatical sect of Islam.” A sect, in case you are not aware, is a subset, often implicitly a very small subset.
How you managed to conclude that this is “All of Islam” is beyond me?