Not Lunatics, Heroes...

After Paris, so many people calling the killers crazy.

"The real limiting factor is finding about a dozen psychos who are so mentally whacked that they think that this is a good idea, but are still composed enough that they can work together effectively."

    What nonsense.

    The limiting factor is finding about a dozen heroes who are so dedicated to the cause that they are willing to strike a serious blow for God.
  
   These people are mission-identical with the Dam Busters, FTP,  or the Doolittle raiders. The ideology is different, and the social infrastructure a lot weaker, and you don't like seeing what they do on the news, but they aren't crazy spree killers. They are soldiers, they think of themselves as soldiers. Their friends, families, teachers,  and millions of people think of them as soldiers.

   The Aurora slug and the Chattanooga murderer illustrate the difference. Aurora was a nutjob, but the Chattanooga one was a functioning, job-holding, friend-having, electrical engineer with a serious ideology for which he was willing to die. FFS, he went after the entire U. S. Marine Corps and the Chattanooga Police Department on his own. If he'd been a German in 1940 there would be statues and street signs all over Europe.

   And like it or not, pretend otherwise or not, stadia, bars, malls, supermarkets, grade schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and $%^&* pet dogs are all legitimate military targets, at least they are since the Allies found a way to attack them in 1943. They remain, in this day of perfect targeting, legitimate military targets for us  when there's an important, or unimportant, or possible enemy in them.  Certainly they are in an insurrection, where the goal is to make the State look helpless to protect its own, frighten the government, weaken its resources, and impress the wavering with the insurgents' power, determination, and ferocity. What do you think this is, Chancellorsville?

   This isn't a mental heath problem any more than it's a criminal justice problem.  It's Algeria. It's Béziers.

Two hours from Bataclan...

     All set for a perfect St. Hubert tomorrow, but I expect there might be a change of plan. We're in Coucy-le-Chateau, a good seventy miles from Paris, behind the walls of a massive fortress built by Crusaders.

      It's strange to think that when this place was built, the rulers of Jerusalem and  the armies in the Levant and Syria were French. They built other Coucys which still stand lonely sentinel, silent witnesses in what is now the Daesh.

      The people who built these places, here and in Syria- the knights, the magnates, the stonecutters, cooks, prostitutes, and grooms- were serious people. These places are as permanent as they could make them. They BELIEVED. 

       We look at these witnesses, these artefacts, differently. To the Faithful, they aremarkers of triumph. The infidel Kafir came to stay, they built for the ages, and our ancestors threw them out like the Godless trash they are. The young people who look up at Krak know who Saladin and Abd el Kadr were, and they think of themselves as their heirs. They long to extend their victory. They are no more terrorists than George McGovern or Jimmy Stewart were.

        To us, the Crusader castles are pretty curiosities, relics of an embarrassing aggression we have fortunately outgrown.  Charles Martel is a figure of shame, Roland is forgotten, and Richard Coeur de Lion is the co-star of Robin Hood movies.

      You can't beat something with nothing.

     In the darkness a couple of hours to the south,  arrogant rich men who have forgotten real life are gathered to presume to create a new world, one they will mold and control to meet their fantasy crisis with greater power over their subjects. I'm sure they delude themselves into thinking that they and their puny agenda are the targets. They wish they were so important.

      Islam's counterattack stretches to Paris again. It's past midnight, and the village inside the fort is quiet.

Sometimes her visits are unexpected, but Clio is always near at hand.
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