Vince Castellano
Rockaway Beach, NY
Here in New York City, every conversation about the terrorist attack of September 11 on the World Trade Center invariably begins with the question, "are you missing anybody?" People breathe a sigh of relief when they say, "no, I am not missing anybody close." There are now more than 6,000 that didn't make it home that night and slowly everyone finds out that someone was close.
Tonight I found out the people next door, next door!, lost their son, Kevin. He was a fire lieutenant. I saw him just the weekend before. He was married and had three kids. His daughter played with mine. Another family four doors down the block lost their son at Cantor Fitzgerald, a firm in one of the towers that seemed to hire a lot of young men from Breezy Point. I am told that in our little community of 3,000 families, 20 people are missing. In the larger Rockaway community of 100,000 people, more than 120 are missing.
Amidst the shock and grief there is the inevitable rattling of sabers. People, hell I, want blood. But more than that I want safety, I want freedom from fear. But how do you battle an enemy who believes he has been commanded by God to kill you? Moreover, this enemy, who lives in a sexually repressed culture in this life, has been promised unlimited sexual satisfaction in the next life with the enthusiastic assistance of 70 virgins (although virgins have never been overly appealing, the sheer weight of numbers makes this offer worth at least some passing consideration).
My conclusion is that when facing an enemy with such beliefs, negotiation is not possible, incarceration with the goal of rehabilitation would not be productive. I don't think you could have much confidence in peace treaties with such people.
I happen to believe that when stripped of the cultural facade, mankind is nothing more than a naked ape. We are naturally aggressive, we pick on the weak because at our core we are hunters. However, the naked ape is not stupid. If the weak is suddenly strong we make friends. If the weak can hurt us we choose not to fight. The story of the bully in the school yard is actually thousands of years old. The school yard bully will pick on you until he finds you can hurt him.
Some people have bemoaned the fact that this "new war" does not present hard targets to destroy. What is the point of destroying a $10 tent with a $2 million missile? In a war where the opposition leaders live in mud huts, hard targets are an illusion. But we have other options. Our enemy has thousands of volunteers willing to die killing us because it is the will of God. They also believe that since they oppose our government then any person in this country is a legitimate target of terrorism. In their world there is no such thing as a civilian, no such thing as a non-combatant. To put it quite bluntly and personally, my children, your children are threatened by these madmen. And our children will always be threatened by these madmen as long as they are alive unless we make them afraid of us.
My solution is simple. It is not civilized, it does not follow rules of war (assuming that is not an oxymoron), you might even consider it barbaric, it is certainly extreme.
We have the names of the terrorists who gave their lives to kill more than 6,000 innocent people. If you want to stop terrorism, make terrorists afraid. Adopt their "rules of war." There are no civilians, there are no non-combatants. Hunt down and kill their families. Kill their parents, kill their wives (all of them), kill their children, their siblings, their cousins, their in-laws, everyone related to them by blood or marriage. Moreover you do it in a manner that will not permit them to reach whatever they call heaven (I heard if you wrap them in pigskin they cannot achieve heaven, but what do I know).
In an attempt at fairness I would stop the executions when we get to 6,000 deaths, that is approximately 315 dead relatives per terrorist. I don't know about you, but I think such measures would be cut down considerably on the number of terrorist volunteers. In fact I think you would have family members turning in one another if they thought someone was leaning towards terrorism.
I am not proud of this, it violates my sense of fairness, but one
cannot forget that in war the most committed wins. I don't like to
lose.
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