Here was a scene to haunt the memory for ever a kind of Dante's Inferno but on ice....Outside the white building were stacks of long pieces of ice each about three metres long melting away in the noon heat.Beyond the ice pile was an open pergola, with piles of body parts in plastic bags surrounded by puddles of water from melted ice. Occasionally, soldiers would slide the bars of ice into the white building through open doors over a white tiled floor where you could see stacked rows of whole body bags.
That's from Australia's Herald Sun newspaper (full article here). If you've been having an enjoyable Columbus Day weekend, not paying attention to the news, you might not have heard about the bombing in Bali, Indonesia, that took dozens of lives, most of them Australians. Their crime was going to a nightclub when a terrorist decided it was a wonderful night for a mass murder, just like the September 11 victims' crime was going to work that day.
You know, the Australians fought alongside the U.S. in every war we fought in the 20th century. I hope our government is doing everything it can to help Australia in any way they need, though I'm sure it already is. As for our countries' intelligence services, I hope they patiently assemble the evidence and find out where the murderers are. If they can be apprehended, then arrest and try them. If that would put too many innocent lives at risk, then kill them. If you think that building a coalition is a prerequisite for morally upright warfighting, I'd say that Australia is a definite "yes" when the time comes to invade Iraq.
I used to think that Pax Christi and their sister "peace" organizations were simply misguided. Now I think they're dangerous. Reflexively opposing any use of force is just as morally obtuse as reflexively approving the use of force. When their "solutions" of prayer and non-violent persuasion have run their course, murderous men will still be able to prey on innocent lives.
Here's a quotation from their solution to stop international terrorism:
"Since Slobodan Milosovic was brought to trial for crimes against humanity, though he had a whole country for hiding, why cant others?" Our moral betters at Pax Christi didn't notice that we bombed the crap out of Serbia for two-and-a-half months, then threatened his regime with a land invasion. If it hadn't been for that, he'd still be directing his goons from Belgrade. (By all means, read that quotation in context. Read their whole site.)
These people are idiots. I'm sorry I can't dress that up in more nuanced language, but anyone who thinks terrorists will be deterred by "international law" is willfully ignorant of reality. To clothe such rhetoric in the mantle of the Christian religion, and to use the name of Jesus Christ to promote their fantasies, is repugnant.
Not that I'm minimizing the usefulness of prayer; indeed, I pray in the words of Psalm 58:
The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance;
He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked,
So that men will say,
"Surely there is a reward for the righteous;
Surely He is God who judges in the earth."
