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| Southeast Asia |
| Smirking Bali bomber Amrozi' final days |
| 2008-07-19 |
| THAT smirking Bali bomber Amrozi woke this morning and prayed to his god. It's a good thing that his god won't be able to stop Indonesian justice wiping the smile from that face. Amrozi today is on an ever-thinning precipice of life. One morning soon, a dozen Indonesian marksmen will march him, his bother Ali and their mate Imam Samudra, into the jungle, place targets over their hearts, and fire into their upper bodies. They will die quickly, but not soon enough. You can already hear the wailing - unquestionably sincere - of those in Australia opposed to capital punishment. But the Bali bombers' deaths will be a long way from the judicial executions that create so much debate here. You cannot compare extinguishing the lives of Amrozi and co with, say, hanging Melbourne's jailed serial killers Peter Dupas or Paul Denyer. While killing the Bali bombers will hardly be a deterrent to other Islamist extremists - those who boast they love death as much as we in the West love life - it will be an insurance policy of sorts. Indonesia is the only living proof that free thought - the administrative expression of which is democracy - and Islam can cohabit. And although its pluralist society, with 200 million Muslims, the greatest number living anywhere on earth, can call itself a qualified democracy, its strained economy and fractured Islamic groupings don't guarantee a stable future. The illiterate poor of Indonesia - like everything in a nation of 250 million, there are plenty - are hardly beyond the grasp of locally grown Islamist fanatics whose beliefs are probably being shaped by Arab language classes funded by harder-line and monied Middle East states. Jemaah Islamiyah survives and its many members are sure to be taking heart from that malevolent cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who described us non-Muslims on March 24 as "worms, snakes and maggots", and justifiable targets for extermination. Bashir is insane and his high profile since being linked to the Bali bombs cramps his style. But he's not alone. The balance of the oil equation for Indonesia recently slipped into the red, which is why it quit OPEC - that "E" standing for "exporting". And with its huge population spread across many of the archipelago's 17,000 islands, and the logistical expenses involved in transport, communications and power generation, Indonesia does not have the growth potential of China or India. Indonesia remains an unsettled democracy, stricken by corruption, with many tens of millions of its inhabitants earning less than $2 a day, fertile ground for resentful Islamists pushing for it to become a theocracy. And should that ever happen, the Bali bombers would be liberated, hailed as heroes, and given positions of influence to spread their black agenda. Just look at the reception in Lebanon on Thursday for returned terrorist Samir Kantar. He shot Israeli Danny Haran in front of his daughter so that it would be the last thing she'd see. Then he smashed her skull against a rock with his rifle butt. His countrymen lined the streets waving banners, flying flags and singing to welcome him home. A national holiday was declared. Killing the Bali bombers is not so much capital punishment, as a strategic, surgical strike against Jemaah Islamiyah. Alan Howe is HWT executive editor |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 kill em in their cells |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-07-19 18:34 |
| #1 DAMN FOOLS, Do NOT "March them into the jungle" You do and you'll find a couple of hundred killers waiing for you Execute them right there in the compound, give them NO chance to escape. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2008-07-19 18:27 |