Ring, Ring

The London
Times (hat tip: NGR) illustrates the futility of any real retreat from
fighting terrorism. Thair Shaikh writes about how cellular phone technology is
being used to capture "that perfect moment" for family and friends
among a certain circle of persons.

Mobile phones are being used by young Muslims living in Britain to watch
videos of hostages being beheaded by militants in Iraq. With their color
screens and access to the internet, the latest generation of mobile phones are
being used to download the videos after they are posted on Islamist websites.
The videos can then be sent to other mobiles.

One militant has saved every available video of hostages being killed in
Iraq. An Algerian in his thirties who has lived in London for almost ten
years, he is a follower of Abu Hamza al-Masri, the cleric whose extradition is
sought by the US ... said "for us the jihad is alive in our hands as we
watch American infidels get their heads chopped off ... within a few minutes
of the Americans dying last week I was watching them on my phone"

Which goes to prove that the worst job in the world isn't cleaning the floor
at the peep-show but scouring the linoleum in the sacred establishment of Abu
Hamza al-Masri, blessed be his name. One might criticize the conduct of the war
on grounds that it should go faster, or be conducted in a different way, but it
takes a special kind of obtuseness to argue the superfluity of defense against
those who save the images of death agonies as a fetish. Yet that idea forms the
unshakeable core of a Liberal creed which has a 50% chance of becoming American
policy for the next four years.

Herbert Lottman, describing the last
days of Paris before it fell to Germans in 1940 describes the strange
mixture of urgency and lassitude, of obsession with long term schemes
counterpointed by an indifference to the immediate in a nation that had just
weeks to live. It was the perfect portrait of a country which did not know
it was at war. Not really. The French Communists continued to call for
"Peace Government" to mollify a Germany wronged by defeat in the First
War. Parisian authorities forbade the private purchase of firearms by citizens
anxious to protect themselves. Bread was rationed to 30 grams per meal at de
luxe restaurants though 100 grams could be obtained at a bistro meal. The French
cabinet pinned its hopes on more aircraft from neutral America as if they had
any prospect of receiving any future shipments. Nero fiddled. Rome burned. When
the Nazi columns finally marched into Paris, there was a widespread feeling of
betrayal and a search for a scapegoat. But they had betrayed themselves.

"It was the end of the world in which Paris was supreme, in which
France was alive, in which there was a breath of freedom. There was oil in the
blackened air, and soot in the rain, and the wretched city was pressed upon by
the lowering sky" -- Eliot Paul, The Last Time I Saw Paris

But Eliot was wrong. It was not the end of supremacy but illusion; and a
reminder that you need not ask for whom the video cell phone rings; it rings for
you.