Another Day, Another Muslim Massacre

It's not that I didn't notice this story. It's that I want to take some time before writing about it.

So it goes.

I only see two options I can support:

1. We keep doing what we're doing. We fight the Bush way.

2. We recognize that the proper response to savagery and terror is savagery and terror, and we drop our illusions about being able to effect a good solution to this problem, and we begin revising our policy about bombing population centers. And we define a major terrorist attack as being a nuclear-level attack, inviting a nuclear response.

After 9/11 I was pretty sure what I wanted to see was Option 2. When Bush took nukes off the table, I was disappointed.

I did then, and still do, criticize Bush for being a Born-Again Christian. By which I mean: informed by the Christian ethics of mercy and regard for human life.

Which I thought were nice and everything but... too constraining.

After 9/11, I had a much less Christian sort of thought about how to deal with a murder cult.

Bush sort of changed my mind, and pursued, I thought, what seemed to be a less savage, more noble course. I gave him credit for that. Maybe I (and people who thought like me) were in fact giving license to genocidal hatred. Maybe Bush's decision to keep things civilized was a good one.

I was proud of what Bush, and the troops fighting for America, did for me, and for all of us. It wasn't just that they delivered justice -- justice could be more cheaply delivered via massive bombs dropped on cities and towns. They also delivered something finer than justice. Compassion, mercy.

I wouldn't have chosen that course -- but I was glad that cooler (or, warmer) heads chose it for me.

But as this goes on I am going back to thinking those are expensive luxuries and I no longer wish to pay for such things.

posted by Ace at 05:24 PM

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