The South Korean government has announced that it will continue to send troops to the Middle East… which means that hostage Kim Sun-il is dead. We’re just waiting for the confirmatory footage, that’s all. My prayers for him and my sympathies to his family and his country.
Let us make no mistake: the terrorists who did/will do this are not inhuman; they are not animals; they are not the Other. We should not let ourselves be blinded by hate when dealing with them. But they are not going to win this war, either. Their nightmare made flesh will be excised from this world. Fifty years from now, there will be self-induced gaps in the records of a thousand different families, stories left unsaid at a hundred different gatherings. Children will ask why their uncles and grandfathers never speak of certain relatives, and receive no good answer. You will be able to see the outlines of contemporary radical Islamist practices and symbolism from the empty spaces. It will be precisely as if they had never been, and none will remember their names. And all this will happen because the culture that created their terrorism will also be the culture that finally rejects them – because in the end, humanity would rather build than destroy.
This I believe.
Moe
I certainly hope so. I only wish that they were inhuman; our species has long been too quick to pull personal atrocities up to and including beheading when fed the right (and by right I mean very, very wrong) set of values.
Moe, I’ve sat here for a while trying to think how to tell you how much I appreciate, and how glad I was to read, the second paragraph above. That sort of attitude from people in the West is the kind that will bring about what you envisage. And I share that vision and will do what I can to bring it about.