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June 18, 2004

Al Qaeda Leader in Saudi Arabia Reported Killed

Better late than never.

And can I say something? I'm glad he's dead. I thrilled he's dead. I hope his death brings some comfort to Paul Johnson's family. And I think they have no reason to feel guilty about that.

Our society is soft. Everyone likes to pretend that retribution -- vengeance -- is a base impulse. Deep down, I think most crave retribution against the evil, but they convince themselves that is a retrograde, reptillian emotion.

It is not. It is a moral impulse. It is moral for the just to be rewarded. It is equally moral for the vicious to be punished.

There is no shame in delighting that justice is done. And that's what retribution is -- bringing justice to the evil.

Thanks to NRO's The Corner.

posted by Ace at 06:01 PM

Comments

Did he dies slowly and painfully? Please tell me he dies a slow, painful, humiliating death. Please -- that way I'll know there is justice left in this world.

Posted by: Brian B on June 18, 2004 06:08 PM

Retribution is a nice, comforting Old Testament idea, and therefore acceptable to all major faiths.

The Christian ethos of forgiveness and acceptance of injury has been warped by the victimization fetishists into a suicidal idea of non-violence that has never been espoused by anyone, including Ghandi or MLK.

Retrbution is just, vengence is bad. Maliciously seeking the death of one's enemy can corrupt the soul, but appropriate punishment of malefactors is the job of all just societies.

Being glad he's dead, ace, is a little more disturbing than being relieved and satisfied that he's dead. But I'm assuming you're of northern European extraction, ace, so you can blame it on your Celtic genes.

Posted by: hobgoblin on June 18, 2004 06:19 PM

I don't know about Ace, but this Celt is always over-joyed when some of the darkest human evil is eradicated from this earth. No apologies.

Posted by: Rob on June 18, 2004 06:29 PM

Retrbution is just, vengence is bad.

Well, they're near-synonyms. I suppose you are defining retribution as being righteous vengeance, but the trouble is, of course, that everyone thinks his own vengeance righteous.

History provides few examples of men who sought vengeance which they themselves deemed of the non-righteous variety.

Posted by: ace on June 18, 2004 06:30 PM

Part of enjoying revenge is considering the other guy to be inhuman.

I am no more excited about this guy getting whacked than I would be about a faulty tie rod that resulted in a fatal accident being sent to the junkyard.

These Al Qaeda folk might share similar DNA, but that's as much as I will grant them.

Posted by: Bravo Romeo Delta on June 18, 2004 06:32 PM

I mean, no one ever shouted, "And now I shall avenge my father, who was a real asshole and pretty much deserved what he got, and come to think of it I should be thanking you for doing him in, but I'm going to have my counterproductive, immoral vengeance on you anyway, you who did me the biggest favor of my life."

Posted by: ace on June 18, 2004 06:38 PM

Actually, Ace, I think you've just summed up a lot of Greek works.

Posted by: Rob on June 18, 2004 06:40 PM

I guess that's true.

Posted by: ace on June 18, 2004 06:57 PM

I don't think he is dead. I think it's a ruse. The timing is too odd.

Posted by: Sydney T on June 18, 2004 07:21 PM

Sorry I wasn't clearer ace. One of the qualities of retribution that I'm thinking of is a certain emotional detachment at the act. Sort of like the death penalty. One hopes that the guy puling the lever isn't cackling with glee, know what I'm sayin'?

Posted by: hobgoblin on June 18, 2004 07:25 PM

Retribution is the highest value in the what to do with evil/wrong behavior catagory. Correction, deterrence, other values which are also important, don't "max out." Holding someone until they're corrected could be longer than seems just for the particular crime. Doing heinous things to an offender may be a great deterrent but far beyond what the crime calls for (chopping off the hand of a shoplifter.) What is the limiting principle, the humane principle operating here...it is retribution. The punishments exceed the just desserts. Food for thought.

Posted by: slickd on June 19, 2004 12:13 AM

The only thing that's keeping me from ululululululu-ing is the fact that the story is both an act of, and reported by the same less-than-reputable and -honorable organization (the house of Saud). These are the people who may have let the previous atrocity perps "escape" an "inescapable" cordon.

Is there any corroboration of this retribution so that I can really get on my ululululululu-ing? 'Cuz I wanna ululululululululu 'til the cows come home ... if'n it's true 'n' all.

Posted by: kobekko on June 19, 2004 01:48 AM

Hobgoblin writes: The Christian ethos of forgiveness and acceptance of injury has been warped by the victimization fetishists into a suicidal idea of non-violence that has never been espoused by anyone, including Ghandi or MLK

I beg to differ. From http://www.israelblog.org/1065948183/ , here is a quote from Gandhi:

"If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon. I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. if one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now."

Incidentally, Aron of Israelblog is a pro-Gandhi peacenik. The essay he writes (link above) is worth reading as an illustration of Matthew Henry's maxim, "None so blind, as those that will not see". It's all very sad.

Sincerely yours,
Jeffrey Boulier

Posted by: Jeffrey Boulier on June 20, 2004 12:08 AM

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What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
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A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

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Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

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