Saturday, September 08, 2007

Quoted by bin Laden.

Candor compels me to admit that the book I cowrote with Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror , was something less than an international mega-seller. The book did however find its way into the hands of one unlikely reader: Osama bin Laden, who was badly enough stung by it to (mis)quote it in his 9/6 speech.

And among the most important items contained in Bush's speeches since the events of the 11th is that the Americans have no option but to continue the war. This tone is in fact an echoing of the words of the words of neoconservatives like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Richard Perle, that latter having said previously that the Americans have no choice in front of them than to continue the war or face a holocaust.

I say, refuting this statement, that the morality and culture of holocaust is your culture, not our culture. In fact, burning living beings is forbidden in our religion, even if they be small like an ant, so what of man?!

And he continues in this apologetic vein for two lengthy paragraphs.

Bin Laden is here taking Holocaust denial to a whole new level. At least the David Irvings et al. deny a holocaust carried out by somebody else. When bin Laden says burning alive is forbidden by his religion, he is denying an act he himself committed, and has been endeavoring to repeat.

The passage he is referring to appears on p. 9 of An End to Evil:

For us, terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil, our generation's great cause. We do not believe that Americans are fighting this war to minimize it or to manage it. We believe they are fighting to win - to end this evil before it kills again and on a genocidal scale. There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust. This book is a manual for victory.

Being quoted by one of the great monsters of modern times is not the kind of endorsement an author would normally relish. (Personally, I'm rather more gratified that two of the book's most vociferous critics, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, chose to "borrow" our cover design .)

Still, if any words of ours drew even one sting of shame from this fugitive killer ... I will take that as a compliment.

09/08 08:36 AM