Vlog: Facing evil
: I created a new vlog about what I would say to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man behind September 11th. Watch it here (click on the ugly hairy asshole). Here’s the text:
Sometimes, I fantasize about facing evil. Don’t you? Don’t you wonder what you would say if you came face-to-face with Hitler or Stalin … or bin Laden?
Now I wish I could face Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the “mastermind” of the murders of September 11th, now that we have him in custody, now that he will face justice.
And what would I say?
I would have nothing to ask him. There is no reason for what he did. There can be no reason for what he did. There is nothing he could say that would ever matter.
So perhaps I would tell him about the destruction he caused that day. I could tell him what I saw: the jets filled with life destroyed in his burst of hate… the bodies of the innocent falling because death was their only escape from pain… the crushing tons of concrete killing everything in sight… the tears and anguish of the survivors.
But why? Why would I bother to tell him this, as if he had a conscience, a heart, a soul. He has none.
No.
No, I could yell at him. I could scream about the people he killed. I could tell him that he was facing me, one of those he tried to kill that day just for being an American. I could show him his failure. But I would also show him my own pain and I don’t want to give him even that ounce of victory.
I could insult him. I could tell him that he is not good enough to eat his prophet’s shit. But no insult is bad enough. I have to listen to what Elie Wiesel tells us: that you must not bring theater to the Holocaust or the Holocaust to theater because you can never represent evil in its fullness; no description, no depiction, no insult, no words are adequate for evil.
No insult is bad enough for this man.
No punishment is severe enough for him, except perhaps the torture of his own sick and evil insanity eating him alive as he sits in a tiny cell, alone with the worst of mankind, alone with himself.
No, all I could do is stare at the face of evil: fat, ugly, stupid, excessively hairy, what can you say about except that Hannah Arendt was right: Have you ever seen such a banal face as this, this face of evil? Have you ever seen such a nothing?
So there is nothing to hear from him and nothing to say to him. There are no words and there is no torture sufficient to equal his evil.
No, all I can do know that his Allah and my God will have the final words for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed when they meet. And those words are: Go to hell.
