9/11 and other victories for violence

Call me a masochist, but last night I put myself through four hours of hell. I'm speaking of the National Geographic channel's take on "Inside 9/11". I have long advocated that the networks ought to re-run the footage every night, the way Ted Koppel kept score during the Iranian hostage event. We should not forget the events of that morning, and God help us, we have already begun to do so. The movie versions are coming to the big screen near you. There was enough outrage pouring out of the small screen last night. I don't need Oliver Stone and Nicholas Cage to tell me what I saw that day. The screams and tears of my nurse [I was in the hospital; don't we all remember where we were?] and the pain when I tore my IVs out and leaped from the bed are still fresh in my memory. The folks over at National Geographic earn high praise; their program was dispassionate, and informative. They didn't sensationalize, and there was no obvious agenda driving their reportage. For all of that, reliving the horror on a timeline was an occasion for much cursing and crying in the Possum Den.

So, I wake this morning, and see the last of the Israeli clean-up on The West Bank. They, too, earn kudos for conducting their operations in a civilized and restrained manner. However, and here's where the other shoe drops, have they done the right thing? Even before the remnants of the Gaza and West Bank settlers were cleared out, dedicated members of Hamas were marching towards one of the settlements, declaring their undying enmity for Israel and America, and maneuvering to get within rifle range of the settlement. I made a joke about it, but it ain't funny.

Will any amount of appeasement, equivocation, and unilateral surrender matter to those who belong to the death cult of Islam? America has her own death cultists; the abortionists and the euthanasia advocates are in the forefront. Is a reward for death the right path? Is it right to acknowledge homicide bombing, crashing airplanes into buildings, or any other form of "martyrdom"? I sit here in my dotage, wondering how this will all end, and come up with gloomy scenarios about the deployment of thermonuclear weapons within ten years. The ruthlessness of the death cultists is not going to be appeased by "cooperation" on some imaginary "roadmap to peace". This is going to get uglier than anyone wants to imagine.