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Bin Laden's mentor) Abdullah Azzam called the “Lenin of international jihad" produced a philosophy of history crystallized in the words below.
Azzam's advocacy of political violence, was metaphysical. It had no practical goal or purpose. Killing and death constituted a philosophy of existence.
“History does not write its lines except with blood. Glory does not build its lofty edifice except with skulls. Honour and respect cannot be established except on a foundation of cripples and corpses.
Empires, distinguished peoples, states and societies cannot be established except with examples. Indeed, (one cannot) change reality, or change societies, without blood, sacrifices and invalids, without pure, innocent souls.” |
There is nothing in Azzam's doctrines about "winning" or "losing." He understood the "bad math" of history (Ivan Strenski): loss = gain. Political violence revolves around death and destruction for its own sake.
Imagine the endless histories of the First World War that document the essence of this war: asking young men to run into machine-gun fire and artillery shells for four years.
This is the meaning of my essay suggesting that mass-murder is the "bedrock of history." Winning or losing battles is beside the point.
Stalin and Mao understood that killing one's people was more important than killing "enemies." In cold blood, they killed tens-of-millions of their own people They understood, as Azzam did, that history "does not write its edifice except with skulls." Historical "glory" builds its edifice upon a "foundation of cripples and corpses." Empires cannot be established "without blood, sacrifices and invalids," without killing pure innocent souls.
Historians write about the "causes" of specific political conflicts, wars, battles, cases of genocide, etc. The statements by Azzam and photos above could have saved them a great deal of trouble: HISTORY WRITES ITSELF IN BLOOD.
This is the "glory" of the human race: to create or produce death. The reasons vary. But the most reliable method (for a leader and his nation) to get "written up in history books") is to kill a vast number of people. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot understand this. They performed with the intention of being remembered. Historians fall into the trap set by these kinds of people by write monumental historical "studies" of men who have killed the greatest number of human beings.
Rememberance is beyond victory or defeat; beyond good and evil. The objective is to be written up in the history books.
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