 Ah, the perils of the unsuccessful shahid. If you kick off, taking a few infidels with you, there are those 72 doe-eyed flat-chested 12-year olds, the babes you lusted after but who thought you were yucky back when you were in 7th grade. That's Paradise, by Gum. But if you hose it, and you only succeed in maiming yourself for life, making it only halfway to Paradise, you don't find 36 of the little sweetlings waiting to indulge your craving for pre-teen nookums, whether or not your genitalia made it through the kaboom intact. People don't cluster around you, casting admiring glances your way, when you're stumping along on your wooden leg or pushing yourself around legless on a cart, or asking for help wiping your butt because you've only got the two hooks to work with now. The babes don't swoon when you hobble by carrying your colostomy bag. Mom doesn't look at her boy's hideously scarred features and fingerless hands with the kind of pride you had in mind when you climbed into the truck full of explosives. And the holy man who sent you on your way, now talking earnestly to somebody else about the glories of jihad, didn't have to go through the skin grafts with you, did he? Heh heh. Wotta dumbass you were. |
The deprogramming, similar to efforts carried out in Egypt and Yemen, is built on reason, enticements and lengthy talks with psychiatrists, Muslim clerics and sociologists. The kingdom still has a way to go in cracking the jihadist mind set. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and Saudis make up nearly half of the foreign detainees held in Iraq, according to Mouwaffak Al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser. They number hundreds, he said this month following a visit to Saudi Arabia. Dozens more are fighting alongside Al-Qaida-inspired militants at a Palestinian camp in Lebanon.