A Blast from the Past

Roger Simon suggests
that time spent in places like Ramallah is never wholly wasted because it
provides an accurate, if somewhat cynical perspective of the true state of human
nature.

Andrew is tentatively flogging a Democratic Reformation argument today
justifying hawks voting for Kerry ... But in the short term, next decade or
so, many, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives will be on the line. I'm not
willing to pull the lever for Kerry just to reform the Democratic Party. At
its base, the senator's candidacy is too propelled by peacenik nostalgia to
take that risk. ... What's behind a lot of Andrew's assertions seems to be a
belief that the occupation of Iraq was botched. No doubt to some extent it
was. Of course it will be many years before we know to what extent (if then).
But, more importantly, could it have been another way? Not to any significant
degree, I don't think. I am of a very different persuasion from Andrew on this
(but perhaps I have spent more time in places like Ramallah than he has). I am
actually stunned we have made as much progress in the Middle East as we have
in a matter of a few years.

Mr. Simon is too modest. Time spent living in the Third World is an education
without which one's understanding of Terror is sadly incomplete. Long before
September 11, the Madrid train attack and the massacre of school children in
Beslan they were forshadowed by Operation Bojinka, the LRT train attack and the
mass abduction of schoolchildren in Basilan. Never heard of them? That's
understandable.

Operation Bojinka was a series of planning exercises and dry runs in the
Philippines in preparation for the September 11 attacks. Here's how Wikipedia
describes it.

The term can refer to the "airline bombing plot" alone, or that
combined with the "Pope assassination plot" and the "CIA plane
crash plot". The first refers to a plot to destroy 11 airliners on
January 21 and 22, 1995, the second refers to a plan to kill John Paul II on
January 15, 1995, and the third refers a plan to crash a plane into the CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia and other buildings. Operation Bojinka was
prevented on January 6 and 7, 1995, but some lessons learned were apparently
used by the planners of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

I can still see the Dona Josefa apartments, where these outrages were
planned, in my mind's eye. It's along FB Harrison near a dusty children's
playground not far from the city zoo.

On December 30, 2000 a
Light Rail Transit (LRT) commuter train packed with children was blown up by
Al Qaeda-affiliated Fathur Rohman Alghozi, with the assistance of Isamudin
Riduan Hambali, killing 12 and mutilating 19 others. The Blumentritt station,
where the blast occurred, is above an intersection so crowded the street below
has been turned into a permanent wet market where hawkers sell vegetables and
fish on plaited mats. The wreckage of the train was covered with bloody
children's clothes and Christmas toys.

The kidnapping and murder of schoolchildren was common fare on the Island of
Basilan, with which I am thoroughly familiar. In May, 2001 a Filipino
journalist wrote:

It seems almost a lifetime ago since it happened. Even in the jungles of
Mount Punoh Mahadji, there are hardly any signs left of the 44-day ordeal
suffered by 53 kidnap victims at the hands of the Muslim extremist group Abu
Sayyaf. Indeed, the outcry over the bandits' abduction of 53 school children
and teachers in Basilan on March 20 last year died down almost immediately
after their rescue by a civilian paramilitary group 1 months later, on May 3.
For the kidnap victims, however, the gruesome drama refuses to sink into
oblivion. Memories of their sleepless nights in a cramped 12 by 38 ft.
windowless wooden cell refuse to fade even in their sleep.

The victims may retain their impressions, but the world is innocent of
forgetfulness; because first you have to remember before you forget. But it was
not the first time Islamic rebels had kidnapped schoolboys. Just a year
before a group of schoolchildren were being held for ransom by the Abu
Sayyaf. A little later the Abu Sayyaf demonstrated their eclectic tastes by
attacking two
high schools. "They kidnapped 30 people after attacks on two high
schools in March -- of them 15 have been rescued while six were killed by the
guerrillas, including two adult males who were beheaded."

For those who have had the fortune, or misfortune to be acquainted with
Ramallah or Basilan, 9/11, the Madrid bombing and Beslan are different only in
degree to the low-level atrocities which the Western Press never stooped to
notice and which, if it has its way, it can soon bury again. September 11 had
the unpleasant effect of forcing them to cover what many pretended did not exist
and the days since then have been an infinite trial, a bother and a wearisome
task; a cross unwillingly borne by those whose calling is to higher
things,  like staged United Nations fetes and spectacularly elegant
diplomatic events. Possibly the only reason why Darfur, in the Sudan is not
wholly forgotten in the name of political correctness is it's connection to
September 11. The principal Liberal objection to the overthrow of Saddam is not
that Saddam wasn't killing his own by the million; it was that President Bush
had "unfairly" wired him to First World politics.

So it was with some interest that I came across an old article from July 2004
describing what had become of one of the child abductors of Basilan. He was arrested
under an alias in a suburb of Manila operating a school bus service for
children.

Manila -- Troops have arrested a senior commander of the al-Qaeda-linked
Abu Sayyaf kidnap gang in Manila, Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita said
Monday. Ibno Alih Ordonez is wanted for murder and several counts of
kidnapping, including the abductions of more than 50 Christian students and
teachers in the southern island of Basilan in 2001. Several hostages were
killed in that incident, including a Catholic priest who was tortured and shot
in the head by the gunmen. Ordonez was arrested last Thursday in the financial
center of Makati, where according to investigation he operates a bus service
for an exclusive school, Ermita said.

I would like to say, like many of those who urge "tolerance", that
old Ibno Alih had turned a new leaf; that one should not judge too harshly from
an alien cultural viewpoint. But I can't. An acquaintance with Basilan has lowered my
expectations of people who kill and kidnap children; who torture and kill
Catholic priests. It's dollars to donuts his school buses would been just the
thing to effect another mass abduction. And when one reads
that "25 Chechen terrorism suspects have illegally entered the US from
Mexico", that this report may be behind "the warning issued by the US
Education Department for American schools to be vigilant after Chechen militants
took over a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, last month, a tragedy that cost at
least 344 lives, half of them children", one can as Roger Simon does,
wonder whether the Presidential election is an opportune time to reform the
Democratic Party or an indulgence too grave to risk. Maybe we have to live in a Ramallah to find out.