Point two concerns the technical possibility to commit the crime. And that we should turn down at once, when dealing with such brilliantly organized malice as attack on Pentagon in Washington and World Trading Centre in New York.
Why? –I asked mostly for holding up the conversation, than trying to controvert.
Oh, it’s very simple, my friend: because it is completely impossible to manage the operation of such large scale from some tent or cave in Afghanistan, as impudent newsmen and obtuse TV-men are trying to assure us, and all the more having on the tail half of planet’s intelligence. Compare the events in USA with terrorist attacks of Palestinian fanatics in Israel during the latest Intifada – the most they could do in this unequal struggle with aggressor was to blow up the knapsacks, full of screws, on their backs or to drive the bus right into the crowd of people waiting at the bus-station. But this concerns the problem of “lack of behaviour alternative” for actual criminals, which some analysts-criminalists don’t notice at all and others overemphasize, as I’ve said earlier.
Yes, all this is simply terrible, dear Holmes, and I have to agree with you completely. The difference in the quality of organization is too obvious.
So, we have only point three left: absence of moral barriers and fear of punishment. When it is a question of suggested “kamikaze” attacks, mentioning about fear seems to be irrelevant. And by the way, journalists borrowed this word from Japanese language, but not from Arabian, and it unintentionally addresses our memory to the events, which took place sixty years ago in Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, President Bush in his earliest public speeches on Tuesday and Wednesday called these attacks “cowardly acts” and I’d like you, Watson, to remember these words clearly, for we will return to them a little bit later.
To speak about moral barriers, – by the moment, in the whole World History it was the Administration of the United States who has been demonstrating systematically their absolute absence. It is sufficient to remember the barbarian “carpet” bombings of German cities during World War II, aimed only against civilian population and taken hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, or atomic bombs, thrown down to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which also were not military objects, or testing of chemical kinds of weapon in Vietnam and incinerating the whole villages together with all their inhabitants with napalm there, or using the prohibited kinds of weapon containing depleted uranium in Iraq and Yugoslavia, and so on. To charge some mythical “Islamic terrorists” of contempt to human lives in this case means shifting the blame where it doesn’t belong. I read Koran and came to the conclusion that Islam based on Koran is one of the most peace-loving and humane teachings. And all the same, the History shows that in every time and almost in every national society acts the same international power, which carry on its dirty affairs standing under someone else’s banners, hiding under someone else’s slogans. Thus the historically real Islam is not insured from this power penetrating into the guidance of rather well meaning public movements with a purpose to distort them in its own interests.
But the illiterate newsboys and Western governments brought up by them are not able to distinguish Islam based on Koran from Islam-the-result-of-history, as well as they are entirely unaware of the difference between the real teaching of Christ and actual Christianity.
I know I can trust you, Holmes. I’m ready to agree that the official version of the events, which recently took place, developing by mass media, doesn’t stand up to any criticism, but who is to blame in that case? Don’t you reject the very fact of the attack?
At this moment Holmes made one of those theatrical pauses which he loved as much as his genius great-grandfather, and, like looking forward to the effect of his words, answered quietly, but clearly:
I do.
I must confess that if my friend’s goal was to embarrass me with unexpectedness and obvious absurdity of his declaration and throw me off the thoughtless speculation on prototype and, by doing that, to make me think by myself, he was entirely successful.
But you must be kidding, Holmes? – I could find nothing better to say. The expression of my face apparently attested such great confusion, that my companion hurried to help me.
Don’t worry, Watson, I didn’t go mad and don’t try to play a trick on you. I understand that it’s not easy for you to follow my thought because of lack of information at your hand and absence of the habit to systematize and analyse it.
I beg your pardon, Holmes, but we saw it all with our own eyes... The airplanes, passengers-hostages, blasts, fires, collapsing of buildings, piles, thousands of victims... What can be more real than this?
Well, Godzilla[12], for example, or tyrannosaurus Rex! – Contagiously laughed Holmes, letting out thick puff of smoke and coughing.
It is a hoax of yours, I think!
No, no, old fellow, I’m speaking rather seriously.
Well, but what reasons do you have to make such conclusion?
There they are, – said Holmes and pointed to the desk with pile of newspapers on it, which I didn’t notice yesterday evening.
I could never suggest such turn in our conversation.
But you have just sworn at all those newsmen, and, to my mind, you were absolutely right!
Ah, my good fellow, you belong to that charming type of people whose honesty borders on the simplicity which sometimes is worse than robbery, and whose trusting nature and openness of character often look like shallowness and stupidity. I tell this not intending to offend you, on the contrary, accept it as a compliment. Your antipodes – they are the scourge of our time: impertinent, superficial, unscrupulous, whose pedantic talkative briskness is often mistaken for erudition and fine intellect. But excuse me; I’ve digressed from our theme. So, Watson, let you see, that my words aren’t controversial anyway. The point is that you, like the most part of contemporary educated Americans and Europeans, have long ago reconciled to mass media venality as to inevitable evil; you don’t even suspect that those mass media can have some other functions besides systematic duping of our unhappy compatriots.
But, I beg your pardon, Holmes, what another functions can they have?
For example, informative. Yes, yes, Watson, don’t you be surprised, mass media can be useful for distributing an aim, meaning – administratively significant, information, whether you see it paradoxical or not!
Nice paradox!
But not anyone can extract and absorb it on the background of “interference” – noise for the crowd – but only those whom this information is addressed to, and those who know exactly what and where to seek.