Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Smarter terrorists: this seems ominous

Anyone who thinks physicians are particularly immune to evil needs a quick history lesson. Or maybe they just need to be reminded that Al Qaeda's true leader, Zawahiri, is a surgeon. Or that Serbia's genocidal murderer, still at large, was a psychiatrist. And, of course, there's dear old Mengele.

So it would not be surprising if the principals in a recent set of terrorist attacks were physicians. Not surprising, but ominous.

The last few years the terrorist attacks and plots in the UK and US have, as nearly as I can tell (I try to track this) involved pretty incompetent people. No geeks. Nobody clever. Many persons with obvious psychiatric ailments or cognitive disorders.

This group is not like this. Maybe they were incompetent, or maybe we were just very lucky, but they're not naive or disabled. They more resemble the terrorists of Hamas than of the past few years of al Qaeda.

I'd very much like to know why they're getting smarter.

2 comments:

  1. There is considerable literature on the willingness (sometimes eagerness) of a great many German doctors to participate in (and actively help to plan) the Nazi government's escalation of euthenasia of 'uselss' persons to devastating medical experimentation on prisoners to mass slaughter of German citizens and citizens from other countries.

    It really should not shock us that Muslim (or Muslim-sympathizing) doctors will be an important part of the Islamist killers' war on Western civilization.

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  2. Yes, hence my reference to the "good" Dr. Mengele. The midly interesting question is whether physicians are MORE prone than lawyers or engineers to be truly evil.

    The more important question though, is why are we seeing Hamas quality terrorists after years of seeing incompetent bumblers?

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