What would you do?

Here’s some sad YouTube video of Pakistani security guards at the Marriott Hotel trying to put out a ruse fire in the truck bomb that was to detonate moments later. The men you see in the video had but seconds to live. The guards initially run from the truck as it crashes the barrier. Later, when the truck bursts into flames, the watchmen, impelled by a sense of duty and concern, return with fire extinguishers to try and put the blaze out.  Of course they were falling for the old “suck ’em in so we can blow them up” routine that the al-Qaeda so often use to maximize their mayhem. Variations on this ploy are one-two attacks in which a small bomb is blown near a larger device waiting to catch responding emergency workers and civilians who come to the help of victims.

It is the nature of evil to use the language of good against itself; and so it is al-Qaeda’s practice to use mercy, trust, tolerance and love to catch their victims. This tendency is universal; the debauched libertines of the 18th century, jaded with their own perversions,  always sought new innocence to corrupt.  Their own corruption was not enough; only fresh destruction can bring additional delight. Thus, there is nothing accidental in al-Qaeda’s choice of markets, restaurants, schools and places of entertainment as targets. The holy killer’s special bonus is the extra thrill that comes with knowledge that soon he will turn all those children or beautiful women into pulp; even the laughter he hears as he nears his target gives him pleasure — the pleasure of knowing he will turn it into unutterable grief.

The physical weapons of al-Qaeda are objectively puny. It is the sheer monstrosity of their malice that raises them above the ordinary; a malice so concentrated and intense that it constitutes the litmus test of character of this age.  From time to time evil sets up a shrine and tests humanity by commanding it to bow down before it. In the day of William Tell, it was the Landburger Gessler’s hat upon a pole; sixty years ago it was European civilization’s turn to be tempted by the smoking altars of the Nazi concentration camps.  Today both the Left and the Right are asked to choose where they stand in relation to the ideology of al-Qaeda; whose part they will take in the act of the murder.  A disappointingly large number of Western intellectuals have chosen to keep silent before this crime; or worse, to excuse it. It’s their choice; and a shameful one.

Tip Jar.