GRANDMA'S VIEWPOINT Our grandmas - both yours and mine - would have said that "things have come to a pretty pass" when we arrive at a point at which we seem to accept violence as a type of good.
Two events are said to have occurred in Iraq this past week which remind us of such a subtle warnings from the past voiced by people who have known them as the sort of thing they have seen happening before and who have often seen the results go far afield from being right.
Over thirty Iranians died in a suicide bombing which took place in an area outside the walls of a Mosque in which a Shiite religious service was being held. The suicide bomber involved was prevented from getting inside the mosque area itself by barricades set up by Iraqi military-police-troops. I listened to one American TV account of the story and it centered the point that the Iraqi guard and their barricades had, probably, saved many Iraqi lives within the mosque itself than if the bomber had been able to advance to that point before detonation.
One listener commented: "See there! What ever it is we are doing in Iraq is working ...training policemen-guards-troops ! They're catching on fast!" Thirty-some Iraqi citizens might disagree with that estimate were they still alive to do so .
We at home "troops"' need to curb our natural tendencies to want to "read into" news report - ideas of a religious, social or political bent, which may or may not be there at all. It is not true that " a little bit is better than nothing at all." And, is especially true when the "little" portion is mis-labeled or willfully mis-used.
The second incident concerns a man who was thought to be a bomber because someone noticed (we are not told how) that he was wearing a vest of the pocketed type used by many suicide bombers to transport their explosive charges. The crowd turned on him and beat him to death the and there. This may well be a fanciful piece of information. I heard it just that one time and my interest was in a comment made by another listener. "See there!", she cried out "You can't get a bunch of Americans to work together like that for the common good! Can you?"
No. We can't
We don't want to do so. It is called vigilantism we want no part of it - ever again.
We've been burned before.
A.L.M. February 19, 2005 [c428wds]
