Canada's Epiphany

Not on the road to Damascus necessarily, but from the road to Damascus.  Or the greater Middle East.  Who knew, truly, before then that the malign forces of those who "love death" and are eager to hasten it for innocent people unaware that they have a very finite time left to live, were preparing to mount a huge surprise for the symbolic centre of America? 

Certainly they had struck before, in Yemen and elsewhere, far from North American shores.  This new spectacular was distinguished hugely by its imaginative and successful display of intrepid hostile action.  After all, absent an atomic bomb, to destroy the lives of almost three thousand people in one fell swoop of catastrophic surgical planning represented quite the coup.  One that caused great rejoicing across the Arab and Muslim world.

The stunned reaction of the West was another matter altogether.  The unimaginably dread sight of tall obelisks, built to house American financial enterprise crumbling in an explosion of fire and shattered steel and concrete was the stuff of nightmare.  But the sight of human beings desperately flinging themselves into the ether, knowing for one brilliant flash of reality that they were breathing their precious last was beyond horrible.

The odious ideology that transported the vicious jihadists to victory over the Great Satan by destroying so many lives sent the suicidists into transports of ecstasy at the self-induced fantasy of sublimely serving their faith.  Among those reeling in disbelief and horror, of course, were the families of those whose end was dreadful and swift; a morning's work to go down in history for sad posterity.

Jubilant posterity for those whose business has become Terror Incorporated.  That epiphany?  Well, the realization that evil does indeed exist, and that evil has a love affair with death.  Not fearing it, as normal human beings do, but beckoning it to come ever closer and they will deliver to its cold, bony hands held out greedily to receive them, corpses aplenty, once loving family members, now stony dead.

And then, attempts to recreate similar events, in Indonesia, in Spain, in Britain; more bloodflow, more slaughter, more celebrations of death.  Terror became the new world conflict.  The lines drawn and the notices forwarded to expect more of the same, and then more of the same again.  Giving nations like those in the West good reason to improve their intelligence-gathering, and to guard against future clever devices of destruction to avoid being taken by surprise yet again.

Canadian poliicians, who once gahered among the ethnic groups who brought to Canada their cultural baggage of diverse hatreds and planning assaults, and gathering 'donations' to fund those assaults, vied for votes, impervious to, oblivious to, disinterested in, blatant messages impossible to misinerpret.  But of no concern to them; it didn't impact Canada.  Except that it did.  Canada no longer has a Liberal-led government whose representatives court the Tamil, the Sikh and the Muslim vote.

Canada now has a Conservative-led government that removes itself from amoral shams like Durban's human rights burlesque, that denounces calls from countries like Iran to celebrate anti-Semitism and destroy a Jewish state.  Canada is now vigilant at the presence of covert agents seeking to undermine democracy and equality.  And vigilance is increasingly required for the purpose of remaining who we are.