Introduction
I wrote this piece just days after the attack upon the World trade center and the pentagon in Washington, D.C. I was angry,
hurt and spiritually devastated by the heinous atrocity perpetrated by Osama Bin Laden and his militant comrades. Although
I have since become equally disgruntled with George W. Bush and his militant group of comrades’ handling of the “War on
Terror”, I am still not happy with the Arab Society. They and their philosophy of Islamic Fundamentalism aren’t helping
things at all.
The Arab militants aren’t just attacking Coalition troops in the Middle East, they are attacking innocents all over
the world. Rioting, destroying property and dragging human beings into the street and killing them over cartoons?
Kidnapping journalists and executing them? Holding women hostage for ransom? These are acts of cowardice in any code of ethics.
Therefore, just as I stood by the piece then, so do I stand by it now.
As peace is everyone's responsibility, so too is war the responsibility
of everyone participating in it.
The Face of Our Enemy
by
Dirk Bauman
We are not at war with a nameless, faceless enemy. All of us in the global community have encountered this ancient
adversary at one time or another as we have journeyed together along the path of our common becoming. Sometimes we have
discovered this foe hiding in the leadership of our own society. Other times we have come upon it hidden in
our personal thoughts, ideologies and belief systems. Now, once again we have been forced to confront the adversary in the
faces of one of our oldest global neighbors.
Regardless of the physical form, the philosophical ideology or the particular religious belief behind which this foe hides
at any given moment in space and time, its inner essence remains the same and clearly reveals the enemy at hand to each and
every one of us. Make no mistake; it is the essence of a thing that enables us to define a thing. To be able to define a
thing is to be able to correctly name a thing.
What is the essence of the enemy we face, yet once again in the course of human history? The essence of our enemy is fear:
intolerance and senseless destruction of anything that is not. The enemy needs us to be afraid so that we are paralyzed
and unable to respond. Fear immobilizes an individual or a community and prevents them from taking appropriate action.
Fear leads us to surrender and submission. Fear allows the enemy to defeat us without resistance. Just as fear is one of
our adversary’s oldest methods of attack, intolerance is one of our foe’s central character traits.
Intolerance of cultural, ideological or religious diversity has long served as the identifying signature of the foe in our
midst. Unlike those of us in the global community of man, who find joy in the cultural diversity of our species and
happiness in the sharing of our differences, the adversary would see us become one people. The enemy would see us united
under one ideology and in a state of complete surrender and submission to it's individual will. What is the will of the
adversary standing before us? The complete Destruction of free will and self-autonomy.
Whether it is the destruction of century’s old cultural icons or the toppling of individual autonomous government structures,
the destruction of the lives of many thousands or even millions of human beings, the apostasy in our midst does not care,
for death and destruction are it's only pleasure and purpose. Human suffering has never proven enough to satisfy the hunger
of our archenemy, it will only be satisfied with the complete and utter annihilation of humanity. The face of our adversary
is no longer Arabic, and it's name is no longer Islam. The face of our enemy is hatred and it's name is Evil.
All of us in the global community are grieving the losses of our loved ones, taken from us so ruthlessly in the bombing of
the World Trade Center. We have all been the victims of a terrible hate crime. We have all been the victims of cultural
intolerance. We have all become the victims of a racial cleansing. We who have endured this hellish moment have perpetrated
no crime against the aggressor other than our common being and existence. We are all of us aggrieved and yes, we are all
of us righteously angry. And We will all have justice. We can see beneath the current disguise of our enemy and the current
ideology through which it is working it's destruction. We do have the ability to prevail and we shall conquer evil in this
present moment, just as we have always defeated it, whenever and wherever it has chosen to manifest itself in the past.
And may God bless us; each and every one. For in our defense, in our hearts we can say, “Forgive us, Father, for we know
we have sinned.”
--end--