ïìAbduction of Peace Activists Brings War Home in Italy,î by Ian Fisher, New York Times, 9 September, p. A14.

The greatest shock here was not just the awful fact itself, that two vibrant young Italian women were kidnapped in Iraq, dragged from their office by attackers who, it seems, knew their names. The deeper jolt was that they worked for a relief group that was outspokenly against the war in Iraq and helped child victims of the war.

France has it's two journalists held hostage because of the head-scarf ban, and now Italy joins the ranks of those suffering incomprehensible attacks. Can we blame it all on the "chaos" unleashed by the war? Hmm, taking Western hostages in the Middle East, where have I heard that before . . . ?

This isn't about winning a war of ideas, not for them, and it shouldn't be for us either. Our world is growing smaller as the Core grows larger, and we're simply at the point in history when that growth process is bumping up against the desire of too many in the Middle East to keep the big bad world at bay, securing the region's permanent retardation as societies, economies, states--right down to the level of individuals hell-bent on doing nothing more than generating hell on earth.

And yeah, this world is too small for both visions of the future, so the Gap has to go, along with all those hate-filled types who will fight tooth and nail, waging wars of perversity, to keep the Gap the Gap in the Middle East. We're watching a civilization die, and the wounds are self-inflicted.