I remember taking this very same Little Engine with you to find a five star restaurant at the top of some skyscraper in Cape Town. We planned to conceal the battered “Hellmobile” just around the corner from our destination, but when we drove into the valet line of a nearby hotel to ask for directions, we found we were in the right place, and could not avoid the car being valeted, cracked windshield and all.

I do truly want to get hold of a language course, so that I’m able to share more freely with the Homelanders.

Unitl then – the Xhosa are mercifully patient souls, with hearts as big as the continent, so I’m generally suffered with grace while I stumble over the words ;-)

Because that worked out so well for the Afghans and Iraqis?

In your article you said “As for Iran, bomb the barbaric lot already”. I would include a dictionary definition for the word “lot”, but that would be asinine. It is your core thesis that violent regime change in Iran is the right and fitting thing to do.

I pointed out that Iran was far from barbaric and that bombing is a barbaric act.

It really is quite a simple as that!

Then, for your next exercise, try attacking an argument I actually made and that would be worth defending, instead of demolishing some ludicrous invention of your own. (Genocide? Right, then. Not aiming for subtlety, are we?)

If you re-read the column in question, you’ll notice that I was quite explicit that my opposition is to the barbarism of the Iranian theocratic regime. In simpler words, it was about the Iranian government. It was not about the Iranian people, Shiites, Sunnis, Arabs, Persians, Muslims, or anyone else. You may also notice that although you say I raised the “evils of Islam”, I in fact wrote the exact opposite: I do not believe Islam is the problem, I have no particular beef with Islam, and I agree entirely with Khaled Abou El Fadl when he makes the point that Islam is not mutually exclusive with civilised society, and in fact condemns the very barbarity of which the Iranian regime is guilty. You go on to flatly ignore the part where I explicitly agree Christianity has been used to justify barbarism, in order to make the point that it is a mark of civilisation to reject such theocratic barbarism. If you were paying attention, you’d also have seen that I was quite clear about my support for the civilised citizens of Iran who bravely oppose the tyrants that impose their perverse notions of morality on them by force.

I proposed the overthrow of the Iranian government, by force. No less, indeed, but certainly no more. Sorry to disappoint you. Still, you totally pwned that straw man.

Shri Ramakrishna was once asked by one of his disciples “Swamiji, why is evil in the world?”, to which the mystic replied after due consideration “To thicken the plot”.

Imagine the horror of no horror. Imagine a soup with no meat or salt or spice. I’m not a fan of horror or trauma (I side with Luke Skywalker rather than Darth Vader) but I wonder if you can really know a thing without knowledge of it’s opposite.

Peace to you too, but with a good measure of strife thrown in so that you can truly know peace.

I evaded that whole thing, you know. By luck and chance.

Strange as it is, this is the first time I’ve ever seen, put into words, anything like the trauma that so many friends experienced and never spoke about.

Perhaps not so strange. Just unexpected. And honestly fitting.

So incredibly tragic.

I can’t ever phrase this appropriately because I was never anywhere close: It was undoubtedly a wrong cause, but it was never your choice at all.

And I’m speculating, but I don’t think you could even have shared this if not for innocent Debbie. Such sweet sad sorrow.

Dogs of War takes on new meaning…

Peace