What A Bomb Does To You

As usual Gail has done an excellent job of producing some very interesting posts. In one she offers photos of an unexploded bomb and a photo of an X-Ray of an Israeli bomb victim, showing the front view of a pelvis imbedded with nails and metal fragments.

I have reproduced them here as well for your review.

It is rather frightening to look at the one and then to see the aftermath. The X-Ray makes it look rather sterile. There is no blood or gore, no screaming and no dead or maimed to add to the image. I am not trying to sensationalize this, but I think that it is necessary to really think about it because there are people who do not want to accept the sad reality of our current state of affairs.

This is not a time to get crazy pointing fingers at those that disagree with our political perspectives but a time in which to rally together and work together on finding solutions. That being said I think that it is appropriate to refer to an earlier post called What Do the Terrorists Want.

In it I related a Daniel Pipes piece that outlined the goals of the terrorists we are dealing with. It should be noted that this is related to Islamic terrorists and their goals.

"In nearly all cases, the jihadi terrorists have a patently self-evident ambition: to establish a world dominated by Muslims, Islam, and Islamic law, the Shari'a. Or, again to cite the Daily Telegraph, their "real project is the extension of the Islamic territory across the globe, and the establishment of a worldwide ‘caliphate' founded on Shari'a law."

Terrorists openly declare this goal. The Islamists who assassinated Anwar el-Sadat in 1981 decorated their holding cages with banners proclaiming the "caliphate or death." A biography of one of the most influential Islamist thinkers of recent times and an influence on Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam declares that his life "revolved around a single goal, namely the establishment of Allah's Rule on earth" and restoring the caliphate.

Bin Laden himself spoke of ensuring that "the pious caliphate will start from Afghanistan." His chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also dreamed of re-establishing the caliphate, for then, he wrote, "history would make a new turn, God willing, in the opposite direction against the empire of the United States and the world's Jewish government." Another Al-Qaeda leader, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, publishes a magazine that has declared "Due to the blessings of jihad, America's countdown has begun. It will declare defeat soon," to be followed by the creation of a caliphate.

Or, as Mohammed Bouyeri wrote in the note he attached to the corpse of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker he had just assassinated, "Islam will be victorious through the blood of martyrs who spread its light in every dark corner of this earth."

Interestingly, van Gogh's murderer was frustrated by the mistaken motives attributed to him, insisting at his trial: "I did what I did purely out of my beliefs. I want you to know that I acted out of conviction and not that I took his life because he was Dutch or because I was Moroccan and felt insulted."

Although terrorists state their jihadi motives loudly and clearly, Westerners and Muslims alike too often fail to hear them. Islamic organizations, Canadian author Irshad Manji observes, pretend that "Islam is an innocent bystander in today's terrorism."

What the terrorists want is abundantly clear. It requires monumental denial not to acknowledge it, but we Westerners have risen to the challenge."

This will not end quietly nor quickly. This war began before 911 and before the current conflict in Iraq. I hope and pray that my children are able to grow up in a gentler world.

1 comment:

Gail said...

Thanks for the compliment. As soon as I saw the xray of the unexploded London suicide bomb, it brought to mind the xrays of Israeli bombing victims. I'd seen them ages ago, and never forgot it. A bombing is horrible enough - but to add nails and screws to it - it's so unfathomably barbaric.

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