Leonard Pitts, in his Miami Herald column, uses a quote from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to highlight signposts leading up to Anders Behring Breivik's alleged bombing of a government building and shootings at a youth camp in Norway.
Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war." —Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 1
The dogs of war are snarling. They strain forward, slavering, growling, pawing the air, eager to get at one another, to rend and tear and wet their lips with blood. As strangers in a dog park would, we try to pull them back, to exert control. But you feel your feet sliding beneath you, feel yourself carried, helpless and unwilling, into this fight they mean to have. It strikes you how poor a leash is reason.
Which brings us to Anders Behring Breivik, who allegedly bombed a government building and shot up a youth camp last week in peaceful, far away Norway. Dozens of people are dead. Breivik is reported to have seen himself as a Christian conservative crusader defending the faith against the evils of multiculturalism. Read: Muslims.
And you wonder: Did this begin on Sept. 11, 2001, when putative Muslims crashed four planes full of innocent people? Did it begin on Nov. 5, 2009, when a putative Muslim shot fellow soldiers at an Army base in Texas? Did it begin when Cain slew Abel?
Does it matter?
The dogs of war are spoiling for this fight. So a putative Christian burns a Koran in Florida while others use arson to stop construction of a mosque in Tennessee. And now, there is this.
Read Leonard Pitts' complete column at the Miami Herald.
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