MDMD: Lambton Worm

[Doug Millison]

I agree with davemarc, those terrorists are bad guys and should be brought
to justice for their crimes.  They should be brutal, they learned from the
best -- the CIA. et al., during the Reagan-Bush Administration.

al Qaida takes on a mythical dimension (in the sense that I read in
Pynchon's work) as the Bush Administration II cowboys puff al Qaida up
(beyond their already brutal bad guy proportions) to make themselves look
more macho as they scare us all and win support for everything they want to
do under the name of the "war on terrorism," and as we internalize them as
mythical figures and respond to them as such instead of dealing more
immediately in the here and now.  GR studies this process in some detail,
but it's a recurring theme throughout Pynchon's work.

Hold al Qaida responsible for their crimes -- a position I've held since
September 11 -- but let's do the same for the Bush Administration and other
governments responsible for terrorism,  war crimes, and other crimes
against humanity.

Most observers agree that the results of the  "war on terrorism"  have been
primarily to scatter al Qaida across the globe, erode civil liberties here
in the US, kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan (and elsewhere),  and
cause untold suffering in Afghanistan, as it transfers billions and
billions of dollars from the US government (taxpayers) to suppliers of
weapon systems and other defense-related products and services. Far from
eliminating evil, this war increases evil, violence leads to more violence
and suffering that will continue, I expect, down through the generations,
as in the  story of the Lambton Worm that Pynchon includes in M&D.