Over at The American Spectator, it's considered a great honor if one's article is featured in the headlining picture. That honor is still mine on Dec. 6 until midnight. You could actually click on that picture and it links through to my article.
Now that midnight is a muddy memory, and sic transit gloria mundi (even on Tuesdi), we can only link to the specific article.
My subject today was the assassination by person or persons unknown of the much bewailed and bemoaned Mr. Rabia, #3 potentate of al-Qaeda.
Here is a strand culled from amid the arabesque:
The real War on Terror may be kicking in now. Now we have to get individual al Qaeda members who may be lurking in attics and cellars anywhere and everywhere. At this point the logic of war between the United States of America and a private-sector gang involves bestowing upon them a sort of honorary sovereignty. They are the government-in-exile of the sovereign nation of al Qaeda and every one of them is an ambassador. Their home, in whatever host country, is a piece of enemy territory. The principle of embassy status and diplomatic immunity is applied in reverse.
Look, they came here and bombed us with their Air Force. Does it really matter that their fleet was acquired through piracy of commercial air craft? In the same way, we view Hamza Rabia's house in Pakistan as occupying a legal status distinct from the rest of that ally country. His house is an al Qaeda embassy with discrete sovereignty and as long as we don't mess Pakistani lawns too badly with shrapnel and body parts, we reserve the right to act on our declaration of war. Or better said, on our engaging of their declaration of war.
Also, please let me encourage you again to visit my new sub-blog for fun two-line comments on the day's news.
http://twolinenewsviews.blogspot.com/
It was a brilliant piece, sir, a brilliant piece!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't hesitate to contact me if a big real estate deal comes up in St. Louis that looks good to you but you lack capital.
I know a lot of folks who can move very large sums into good projects anywhere in the country, and you and I can get a little piece for putting it together.
Well, I can say that I don't quite understand your beef with Greenpeace and that mentioning them in the same breath as al Qaeda is repugnant.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I actually kind of agree. This is more like the War on Terror we should have been prosecuting this whole time.
"Crepuscular" means dimly defined, similar to twilight, and I think that entities such as Greenpeace stand for some never-fully-defined set of beliefs - presumably to achieve peace without harming the green environment and vice versa.
ReplyDeleteNot knocking their goals per se, just using them to give a flavor of what NGO means in geopolitical parlance.
Thank you for the clarification. I must confess, I didn't know what the word meant, and thought it was related to "pustule." Whatever else I may say about your writing, know that your vocabulary and felicity with wordplay trounces mine.
ReplyDelete