GROUND ZERO, New York City, Apr. 12-- Terrorism died the other day.   It’s death went quietly, offering to the world an unnoticeable death rattle, issuing only a slight whimper barely audible as it sifted through the frail waist of Terrorism's hourglass.  
        To those who witness Terroristic executions, this one was mundane.  It gave off  just only a scratchy sound, similar to that of a snake's plated underbelly slithering over the sandpaper surface of a hot Iraqi desert.  Like fingernails dragging slowly down a blackboard, it scratched against the grain of humanity.
        Some hoped Terrorism's death in Iraq would cauterize the slashed veins of war and end a long chapter in history of tyranny and oppression.   They would be disappointed.
      

   The tableau of  Terrorism’s death was painted in blood.   Behind the gravesite was the roar of fires raging in cities, set by angry citizens who had just been liberated from Terrorism's brutal grip.  They exhibited the anger of a people who were liberated from more than two decades of tyranny and torture rained upon them by a leader and his sons who ground the people’s spirit under the heel of their despotic boots—a father and sons who raped, pillaged and plundered the country in the same manner Genghis Khan, the 13^th Century leader, who lived by the creed:

        Few tears fell for the death of Terrorism.
        Some things you just don’t cry over.

       Some things rob the tears of their wetness, sear away their liquidity, barbeque their ability to give the sad eye solvent.
        Terrorism’s death was such an arid event.
        Upon its death, there was a great vacuum, as though Terrorism's lungs sucked in all the oxygen.   Nothing could be heard in the silence but the slithering of the snake's belly scratching over the sand.

        No words were spoken over the grave of Terrorism, for none knew exactly where it was. Terrorism's body slithered over the horizon, disappearing from sight.   Neither the spirit or body remained.  This is the way of Terrorism.  It dies a lonely death in unmarked graves.
         In Genghis Khan’s day, when the Khan of Khan’s died in 1227 at age 65, his loyal followers ran herds of horses over his grave, trampling it so it could never be found.   Then trusted guards were posted around the burial site until the newly planted trees grew thick to disguise any sign of its existence.  The Tyrants of Terrorism want no one to ever find their bones and desecrate them.
         Saddam Hussein may be buried in a similar manner.   His remains may be crushed under tons of concrete, pulverized by the shocking power of explosives that ripped his body into fragments and then turned his flesh and bones into ashes by incandescent heat.  He may have died a Terrorist's death.
          Hitler died in a similar way.   Rumors rage about his final moments, but there never has been any proof, any verification of his remains, any finality to his demise.   Odds are his body was trampled and crushed by the weight of history, ground into mulch in the unmarked Hall of Despots.
          Saddam’s body?

          Alive or dead, his molecules belong to the bowels of the earth.  If he is alive, he is a zombie—dead flesh hanging on his bones, waiting for the Grim Reaper’s scythe to slice him into a thousand pieces.
           Whoever harbors him or offers him refuge risks the wrath of Khan.  Herds of horses will ultimately trample him. If found alive, his prosecutors will tie his arms and legs to four stallions and then stampede them to the four points of the compass.  His torso will thump and shake, legless and armless in the hot sun.   Then his head will be lopped off and placed on a stake facing the hot sun.  His eyes will be sewn open so the vultures will have easy access.
          It is the way of death for the Terrorist, to die the way he lived, to remind those who think civilization has advanced that it hasn't inched forward at all, that it remains brutal, uncaring and revengeful regarding the punishment of Terrorists.
        Despite all who claim the lofty platform of soft justice--where there is no eye for an eye and no tooth for a tooth, where the horrid brutality of a man and his sons against hundreds of thousands is washed away with forgiveness and his life is spared as a symbol of the evolution of good over evil--no soft justice will be allowed.
        The despots must pay the price of tyranny and oppression they brought upon the innocent, the helpless, the vulnerable.  Some will want to hang the body--alive or dead--by its heels over a bridge so that vultures and other vermin can gnaw at the body as Prometheus was when tied to the rock for eternity for offending the gods.

          If hung over the bridge,  thousands will walk under it and look up and see the suffering.  They will know it will not heal their wounds or replace their losses, but it will sate the revenge for the tyrant's acts of children being raped by Saddam and his sons.  The hanging body will pay some retribution to the wives whose husbands being tortured by Saddam and sons, and compensate somewhat for the thousands of wives and sisters that were debased.   For the Kurds, the dangling body being ripped by the fowl of the air into pieces will avenge in a minor way the tens of thousands of deaths Saddam and sons brought to women and children in villages where his gas killed them as they clutched their children to their breasts.  While it cannot bring back any lives lost, it will punctuate the ugliness of Terrorism and its reptilian nature. It will also remind the world that human beings have not evolved from the primordial ooze, but rather have only taken a step out of it

         In the 21^st Century, the legacy of Genghis Khan survives and thrives.   The civility of the world has made little progress when it comes to killing Terrorism.   And there is a reason for its invincibility.
        The Beast of Terror does not evolve.
        He is the Beast.  He was the Beast.  He will always be the Beast.
        He is ugly, vile, corrupt.

       He is the stench of the wolverine.   The wolverine is, pound-for-pound, one of the most vicious of all creatures.   It radiates a gagging odor, as though the bile of all death’s putrification oozes from its pores.  Its repugnant, odious scent broadcasts its amoral intent to rip the entrails from the mother, father and children of any creature standing in its way.
       When it dies, it slinks into the sullenness of the forest, deep in the bowels of the earth, to rot.
        Wolverine Terrorism is not a pretty thing.  Neither is human Terrorism.
         Terrorism is not life.  It is death.  It seeks only to kill, to torture, to maim.
         Those moralists who want to treat Terrorism with kindness and compassion in hopes of luring it from the dark side to the light side become its next meal.   Terrorism has no redeeming moral or social value.  There is no space in its venomous brain cells for rehabilitation because it operates, as the shark, on the "hunt and kill" firing of its synapses.   Its mind has no light side.  There is only darkness, only the moss of the swamp.
        Beasts know no morality.
        That is why they are Beasts.

        Attempts to humanize the Beast fail because the Beast has become used to raw flesh and acquired the taste of blood.
        There are those, however, who want to believe the Beast can be tamed.   Such a feat has never been achieved throughout history.  
        Terrorism cannot be snuffed out with bombs and bullets or with prayers and kindness.   Neither extreme has the power to wipe the slate of inhumanity clean.
         Inhumanity is to humanity as water is to fire.  To exist, they must coexist.   For there to light there must be darkness.  For there to be good there must be evil.  
         This is the mathematics of life--everything has an equal and opposite--everything has a plus and a minus.
         But futility is not the only solution to Terrorism.
         Terrorism can be stunted.  Its growth can be cut short.   Its power can be emasculated.
         First, one must believe the Beast of Terror cannot be killed, just as darkness cannot be removed, or pain removed from life.   To exterminate Terrorism is to upset all the balances of nature, for by removing one half of a whole, all that is ceases to exist.  
         Therefore, when Terrorism dies in one place, it is born in another. 

        No matter where the Beast crawls to die, or how horrible its death, it will germinate again and again and again.   
         This is the Terror of Terrorism.  When a Hitler dies, a Saddam is born.  When a Genghis Khan is buried, a Hitler is born.
         To battle Terrorism we must accept its immorality.  And, if we accept its immortality, it invincibility, we must also accept its equal and opposite--Vigilance.
          Vigilance--the constant battle of Fear vs. Courage, of Intimidation vs. Conviction, of Complacency vs. Right Actions to the benefit of the Children’s Children’s Children—is the only counterbalance to Terrorism.
          Vigilance recognizes the light over the darkness, the plus over the negative, the belief in good over the dismay of the bad.
           Vigilance requires that a society not relinquish its duty to protect its children to governments or police or the military or to its religious leaders, or to any other body of authority

           Vigilance demands that human beings must be the first line of defense against the dominance of the Beast of Terror.   Human prescience must overpower human hope in this issue, for hope is nothing more than a shadow box of Complacency.  When one "hopes" Terrorism will not infect them or their society they are "wishing" it out of existence.   Terrorism is a hard reality.  It has shape and form, just as a rock does.   To limit its power a sledgehammer rather than a wish or a prayer is necessary.   Vigilance is the sledgehammer.  It must be swung hard.   The rocks of Terrorism must be broken.   Action, not thought, is necessary.

            It is the Deeds of Vigilance that quash the Beast of Vigilance.  It is the struggle of light vs. dark, of good vs. bad and right vs. wrong that defeats Terrorism.   When there is no struggle, when there is no presence of Vigilance in the face of Terrorism that Terrorism rules.
            To fight Terrorism at the grass roots level begins with recognizing that a child becomes the victim of the Beast of Terror when the child first suffers Fear, Intimidation and Complacency in any and all forms.
            Neglecting a child’s suffering from these virulent forces opens the gate to Terrorism’s graveyard.  It impregnates the womb of the Beast, and creates in the child the shadows of Terror that drive the child into a state of hopelessness, into a sense that it is powerless over the dark forces of Fear, Intimidation and Complacency.  It snuffs the Light of Vigilance.
             That’s why a Parent of Vigilance is necessary to lift a child out of the quagmire of Terrorism into the Light of Vigilance.

          When a Parent of Vigilance vows to fight Terrorism in his or her home, by first battling his or her own Fear, Intimidation and Complacency, the child is put in a safe place.   Once the parent comes to grips with his or her Beast, then the parent can pass on the teaching of Vigilance to the child.    He or she can model and instruct and guide a child to have at least One Percent more Courage than Fear, One Percent more Conviction than Intimidation, and One Percent more Right Actions in behalf of future generations than Complacency that he or she is powerless to make a difference.
            Saddam Hussein rose to rulership not through his own power, but because the people of Iraq surrendered their power of Vigilance.   They fell victims to Fear, Intimidation and Complacency.   They denied their own Beast of Terror and gave the power of the Beast to their leader through inaction, through Complacency.
             Iraq will fall again under the wrath of the Beast of Terror unless it takes up the Sword of Vigilance and stands up to the Beast within.  Iraq's freedom depends on its citizen's resolve to stand up to the Beast of Terror.   The first step in that battle is to recognize one's ownership of the Beast, one's authorship of it.
             To rid the world of Terrorism requires the Citizens of Vigilance throughout the world to admit to their ownership of the Beast.   Once each Citizen vows to manage his or her Beast, then the Beast’s power will diminish in proportion to that vow.   To end up with a plus, one must first recognize the minus.   To be victorious, one must face the chance of defeat.  

             It is the vow of Vigilance that will make the difference in Iraq.
             Terrorism will rise again and again unless it is stopped by the Citizens of Vigilance at the doorsteps of their own homes, and in the hearts of their children.
             Terrorism—humanity’s greatest weakness—can become its greatest strength when Vigilance is summoned.  
        Then, and only then, will Terrorism truly die.

April 11--Bathing In Vigilance--The ProAmerica Side Of Terrorism