Ally Carter Quotes

Jorge Mario Bergoglio

The Minister equates the unintended consequences of war and civilian casualties with a terrorist retaliation which has as its purpose the killing of as many civilians as possible. The proliferation of terrorism complicated the ethics of counter terrorism. In the case of Palestinian terrorists their tactics included using civilian facilities---schools, hospitals, homes---from which to launch rocket attacks or to store weapons or hide terrorists. Under international laws of war, a civilian facility and the civilians in it become legitimate military targets the minute that weapons are stored in or fired from that location or that location is used for planning, training, equipping or manufacturing of military material. Palestinian terrorists claim that even though civilians were harmed in legitimate, legal attacks on military targets, a proper response is to send suicide bombers into civilian areas and preparing the explosives with nails and rat poison to cause as much pain as possible.

See Robert Southey for the later version 400 years later which is more familiar to us.

This proverb only makes sense in the light of understanding the Arab concept of revenge—“blood.” In a rural desert environment where little can be expected of government, the Arabs have developed a law enforcement and peace keeping mechanism which while primitive from modern standards, nevertheless worked to some degree. It is that revenge—“blood” is a moral necessity and obligation of all people, and revenge is not limited by time or to the individuals involved in the first incidence. The immediate family are the first to exact revenge, but the extended family follows and often the entire clan. Sometimes revenge is tribal or even national. Anyone who fails to revenge a member in his group is not only a disgrace, but is a clear and present danger to the group because then they can be attacked with impunity. So revenge is a strong obligation of the group members and blood must be paid with blood no matter how many generations it may take. The only thing that keeps me and my family safe, is the surety what whosoever kills one of us will themselves be killed or if they die a natural death we will take revenge on one of the evildoers relatives and no one is exempt. Crime must never pay!

Johnson was Vice President at the time. What he did not realize at the time was that one of the plotters was supposed to have killed him at the same time as the others, but the assassin got cold feet at the last minute and never entered Johnson’s house.