Anis Amri: Couldn't Make a Life So He Made a Death

He was shot to death about 3:30 in the a.m. by Italian police.  Anis Amri was armed with a .22 caliber handgun , which he pulled from his backpack, managing to shoot one of the police officers in the shoulder.  Both cops fired back, hitting Amri twice.  One of the cops’ bullets went where it was supposed to go – center mass – the thorax.  You don’t recover from that.  The officer who was shot is thankfully doing well and recovering, according to Italian officials, but Amri was likely dead before his body hit the ground.

I  understand the reasoning of people who say it would have been better if Anis Amri had been captured alive. Then law enforcement could perhaps find out more about his contacts and support system.  That presupposes that he would give up information under interrogation. Argue that all you want, but include me out.  Amri’s victims got justice at least, and justice is coming for the others who aided him.   

 But really, it is doubtful that the Berlin mass casualty killer would provide information to police when there is no death penalty in Germany . Anis Amri would have his rights, including the right to keep silent, the right to television, the right to get media interviews, maybe a book contract. Maybe even conjugal visits.  The authorities couldn’t offer any more than a long life sentence so he would probably adapt to the institutional life and perhaps proselytize to other inmates.

What’s coming next (and has already begun) is the imbecilic question of whether Anis Amri was a ‘lone wolf’ or whether he was ‘self-radicalized.” Such questions do not apply to the world we live in. With the internet, we have become factional or even tribal. It’s easy to see how many little divisions and subdivisions there are in our society, all linked together in ‘groups” with ‘followers” and particular rules of engagement.  This bifurcation exists in all aspects of our society, even in music where a person’s choices are broken down into various classes (check Spotify, Amazon Music, I-Tunes, I-Heart Radio, and a whole bunch more)  Within the context of international terror, all you have to do to join ISIS or AQ is to have a smart phone and you’ll get hooked up. You’ve already acquired enough hate and resentment to become the slave of any master who relieves you of the burden of freedom by telling you whom to hate and what to do about it.

There are easily a thousand slave-mastering militant Islamist groups promulgating the notion that Muslims are victims of the ‘infidel.’ The ‘infidel’ can be anyone not Muslim, or better yet, not adhering to the basest interpretations of the political system sometimes described as a religion. 

By definition, Islam needs enemies. If every single person in the world were Muslim, and the Shiite Muslims converted to Sunni, then the remaining Muslims would invent an enemy.  Because to do otherwise would require rabid Islam (and I don’t mean secular Islam or the kind and tolerant Muslim lady who works in the local supermarket) to examine itself and pull back from its death dream of world political conquest.