The Smoke Also Rises

Al Capone was a bloody man; a murderer and extortionist whom the world would have been better without. Still he had his supporters. He did local acts of philanthropy and patronage and in a strange way, many Chicagoans took a perverse pride in the man that the Feds had so much trouble taking down.

Hezbollah has its arm chair supporters as well, who are able to set aside the horrendous damage and loss of life that its ambition toward ethnic cleansing has caused and gloat over how many Israeli soldiers have been killed, how difficult it is to defeat them or disarm them and how they continue to rain down rockets on the civilians of Israel.

The Average Chicagoan was not the target of prohibition era gang wars. The killings were strictly business and as such the average Joe felt relatively secure perusing the Sunday paper; viewing blood spattered corpses face down in linguini or some colorfully nicknamed gangster slumped over the wheel of a Packard, but most of the people being killed in the battle between the stateless army of God and Israeli regular troops are Lebanese families.

Reading Islam Online this morning, I was interested to see that web site flirt with open praise for Hezbollah and reminded of the scene in Doctor Strangelove where Gen. 'Buck' Turgidson (George C. Scott) enthusiastically explains how Slim Pickens’ B 52 could fly under the Soviet radar, “Fryin’ chickens in the barnyard” even though the success of that mission would mean the end of life on Earth. Islam Online repeats with like enthusiasm, the obviously inflated numbers of Israelis killed, number of Hezbollah rockets fired and positively gloats over how well trained, resourceful and locally supported are the terrorists who hold Lebanon hostage and who hold so many Muslims in thrall.

At one time in my youth I was so inspired by The Sun Also Rises that I was ready to fight the Spanish Civil War all over again, but I’m not a youth, I don’t find romance in the dismembered corpses of children or devastated cities, in holy wars or the holy bastards who promote them.