Others have already posted about this, and I first found it thanks to Stephen Green in this post on Thursday, but Dan Simmons’ recent posting of a short story about a visit from a time traveller from an all-too-likely future deserves everyone’s attention.
An excerpt:
?Your enemies have gathered and struck and continue to strike and you, the innocents of 2006 and beyond, fight among yourselves, chew and rip at your own bellies, blame your brothers and yourselves and your institutions of the Enlightenment ? law, tolerance, science, democracy ? even while your enemies grow stronger.?
?How are we supposed to know who our enemies are?? I turned and growled at him. ?The world is a complex place. Morality is a complex thing.?
?Your enemy is he who will give his life to kill you,? said the Time Traveler. ?Your enemies are they that wish you and your children and your grandchildren dead and who are willing to sacrifice themselves, or support those fanatics who will sacrifice themselves, to see you and your institutions destroyed. You haven?t figured that out yet ? the majority of you fat, sleeping, smug, infinitely stupid Americans and Europeans.?
He stood and set the Scotch glass back in its place on my sideboard. ?How, we wonder in my time,? he said softly, ?can you ignore the better part of a billion people who say aloud that they are willing to kill your children . . . or condone and celebrate the killing of them? And ignore them as they act on what they say? We do not understand you.?
I still had not turned to face him, but was looking over my shoulder at him.
?The world, as it turns out,? continued the Time Traveler, ?is not nearly so complex a place as your liberal and gentle minds sought to make it.?
Go check it out.
Technorati Tags: War On Terror
