Smoldering Rage

I have tried all day to come to terms with the idea of "9/11" and to put it into some context that is something other than rage. The images from that horror are seared indelibly into my consciousness. Watching a PBS program the other night about New York I realized, as I saw those airliners slam into the twin towers from every conceivable angle, I wanted vengeance.

Christopher Hitchens writing in an article entitled "Don't Commemorate Sept. 11"* for Slate.com stated:

"Should this solemn date be exploited for the settling of scores? Absolutely it should. When confronted with a lethal and determined enemy, one has a responsibility to give short shrift to demoralizing and sinister nonsense."

Of course, we have all been taught that revenge solves nothing, but I'm not so sure. Wasn't vengeance one of the motivating factors driving the allies during the Second World War? Pearl Harbor, The Blitz, the Holocaust all galvanized the civilized world into a force for the eradication of the evil the Axis Powers presented. And, by and large, it worked. As Hitchens so eloquently says:

" Reflect upon it: Civil society is assaulted in the most criminal way by the most pitilessly reactionary force in the modern world."

Radical Islam (that now has a following throughout much of the Muslim world) should be regarded with the same horror and revulsion as Nazism or Fascism. And accordingly, should be shown the same treatment – extermination. The loony Left "has the posturing loons all concentrated on a masturbatory introspection about American guilt, granted the aura of revolutionary authenticity to Bin Laden and his fellow gangsters, and let the flag be duly seized by those who did look at least as if they meant business."