bowlus

About two years ago Air France 447 disappeared somewhere off the coast of South America. There wasn’t a mayday call, and until recently, there wasn’t any black box data. The Times recently published a magazine article about the crash by Wil Hylton. According to Hylton, after spending tens of millions of dollars on the investigation French investigators recently found bodies and fragments of the plane on the ocean floor. Hylton’s writing is riveting and horrifying:

Of course, some passengers may have survived the impact and then died quickly, but there is also a possibility that some lived longer. The surface water near Tasil Point can be as warm as 80 degrees in June, and according to hypothermic tables, a person can survive in those conditions for up to 12 hours before falling unconscious. The search plane finally arrived at Tasil Point 13 hours after the crash.

But what happened in those final hours may not be a mystery forever. On the Alucia this spring, as Woods Hole scientists scanned the first photos of Flight 447, they saw more than just landing gear, engines and wings. They also saw the bodies of at least 50 passengers sprawled across an abyssal plain at the base of the mountains. As they continued searching the area, they found a section of damaged fuselage not far away, large enough to contain more passengers. Members of the crew told me that a grim silence descended on the ship, and as word of the bodies reached around the world, an uneasy question began to rise.

Terry McDermott wrote an interesting article about 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a couple New Yorkers ago (Sept. 13th, 2010; sub. req’d). One passage that struck me was about his college days in the United States, where he was picked on and insulted by other students before graduating and returning home. One of his Kuwaiti high school teachers, Sheikh Ahmed Dabbous, had this to say:

“When he goes there, he sees Americans don’t like Arabs and Islam,” Dabbous told me in 2003. When Dabbous asked why, Mohammed told him, “Because of Israel. Most Americans hate Arabs because of this.” Dabbous said, “He’s a very normal boy before—kind, generous, always the smiling kind. After he came back, he’s a different man. He’s very sad. He doesn’t speak. He just sits there.” He told Dabbous he was upset that Americans hated Islam. “I talked to him, to change his mind, to tell him this is just a few Americans,” Dabbous said. “He refused to speak to me about it again. He was set. When Khalid said this, I told him we must meet again. He said, ‘No, my ideas are very strong. Don’t talk with me again about this matter.’”

Perhaps the mosque deniers and would-be Koran burners should keep in mind that hate is a two-way street. As always, the relevant national security distinction is between radicalized Muslims and mainstream Muslims. We cannot escape our partial responsibility for the former.