Friday, March 10, 2006
Time for some Eighties nostalgia. Remember that Sting song "Russians" from the last days of the Cold War, the one, like so many others of its type, that expressed an impassioned political outlook that events of only a couple of years later would prove exactly wrong? I thought of it today:
I thought how, today, this song days it seems almost childishly innocent, confronted as we are by:
5000 Pakistani Children from ages 8-12 demand execution of Cartoonists
Maryam Mohammad Yousif Farhat (or Mariam Farahat; born in 1950), popularly known as Umm Nidal, "the mother of Nidal" or "the mother of struggle"...sent three of her six sons on Hamas suicide missions against Israel. She attracted public attention after being filmed preparing and advising her 17-year old son Muhammad Farhat for his March 2002 suicide attack against Israeli civilians. After infiltrating the Gaza Strip former Jewish settlement of Atzmona, opening fire on the students and throwing hand grenades at the school where they were studying, killing five teenagers and wounding 23 others, he was shot dead. Upon hearing of her son's death, she proclaimed "Allahu Akbar!" and gave out boxes of halva and chocolates in celebration.
Lacking the equipment to open secure passages through Iraqi minefields, and having too few tanks, the Iranian command again resorted to the human-wave tactic. In March 1984, an East European journalist claimed that he "saw tens of thousands of children, roped together in groups of about twenty to prevent the faint-hearted from deserting, make such an attack."
The point is, one could imagine that the Russians loved their children too. One cannot make the same assumption with the jihadists we're currently at war with. And that is the most frightening thing about the situation: There really is no deterrence with these people.
Mr. Reagan says we will protect you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me and you
Is if the Russians love their children too
I thought how, today, this song days it seems almost childishly innocent, confronted as we are by:
5000 Pakistani Children from ages 8-12 demand execution of Cartoonists
Maryam Mohammad Yousif Farhat (or Mariam Farahat; born in 1950), popularly known as Umm Nidal, "the mother of Nidal" or "the mother of struggle"...sent three of her six sons on Hamas suicide missions against Israel. She attracted public attention after being filmed preparing and advising her 17-year old son Muhammad Farhat for his March 2002 suicide attack against Israeli civilians. After infiltrating the Gaza Strip former Jewish settlement of Atzmona, opening fire on the students and throwing hand grenades at the school where they were studying, killing five teenagers and wounding 23 others, he was shot dead. Upon hearing of her son's death, she proclaimed "Allahu Akbar!" and gave out boxes of halva and chocolates in celebration.
Lacking the equipment to open secure passages through Iraqi minefields, and having too few tanks, the Iranian command again resorted to the human-wave tactic. In March 1984, an East European journalist claimed that he "saw tens of thousands of children, roped together in groups of about twenty to prevent the faint-hearted from deserting, make such an attack."
The point is, one could imagine that the Russians loved their children too. One cannot make the same assumption with the jihadists we're currently at war with. And that is the most frightening thing about the situation: There really is no deterrence with these people.
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