By Nagatina

The author on himself:

A rogatina is a well-known weapon used in bear hunting, though it can be used against wild boar.  Imagine a double-edged blade, 15-20 cm (6-8 inches) in length with a similar hand guard, planted in a strong wooden shaft.  The idea is to make the bear climb onto its back legs, jam the blade into it chest (the guard does not allow the blade to slip all the way through the bear) and then set the staff in the ground so that the beast using his own strength and weight impales himself.  The rogatina was most likely thought up for fighting nomads, penetrating armor, impaling riders and horses, and preventing their breaking through a formations.  Rogatina.  The nagatina (naginata) is a little-known weapon used in hand-to-hand combat by Japanese samurais and their gods.  Imagine a samurai sword on a staff.

September 11th, 2001.  Four airplanes are flying to their destinations.  In these aircraft are flying beautiful, self-assured people who believe in God, all vibrant in the belief that their view of the modern world is more correct than that those whom they are carrying to death, whom they believe are truly guilty, and truly must die.

In the first three airplanes they were either asleep, or waiting for Steven Segal or Bruce Willis to come and save them, since in the movies they showed so many times that terrorists have no chance.  The terrorists have no chance because One Lady spent a lot of money on her facial, and One Gentleman paid all his insurance, and Another Gentleman took care of everything in advance.  On the fourth airplane, however, they all know that their airplane is not going to land, that Bruce Willis is not coming to help, and that they are all going to die.  This airplane, most likely, was shot down by the US government, which still does not acknowledge this, even though large pieces of wreckage have never been found*.

What would I have done if I found myself on one of these airplanes?  Waited for ‘Alpha’ (Trans: Russian counter-terrorism commandos) and Willis?  But how would this stop the horror?  When people who call themselves true jihadists and warriors seize maternity hospitals, schools and kindergartens, we say that the authorities have no right to negotiate with bandits, but instead they must assault with, well, a 10% loss of hostages.  The authorities must break the law in order to kill the terrorists and murderers before they can start killing their victims.  Well, you think, either they get killed by accident, or not entirely by accident.  Imagine that they held your wife for ten days without informing you only because some sentry thinks she looks like a terrorist.  Well, you think, racial profiling, sometimes it is useful to the authorities.

How can one find the needed balance between a police state, where there is no personal freedom whatsoever, and the fate of a market-ready sheep, which is the same as the average citizen when he finds himself a hostage?  He must prove to the government that he is not a terrorist or a terrorist accomplice, so that they do not kill him during an assault, and also he must prove to the gunmen that he also does not like the authorities.

The solution is simple: we need to free ourselves.  There will always be an assault.  There will always be casualties.  Someone is always going to die.  But so that the next ‘hot head’ does not think that someone is going to await the terrorists’ pleasure, that everyone will be too afraid to do anything, one has to at least die correctly.  I am not challenging people to die, however, I am challenging them to kill - to kill one of them, to send at least one of them to the next world.  Our government hates this position, but is as the only way to be done with terrorism.  The authorities’ concern about protecting the populace coincides with seizing and holding strategic oil regions (Iraq and Chechnya), as well as the capture of territory.  Does anyone still remember how the Americans ended up in Central Asia and Iraq?  It was the fight against terrorism.  What is our name for the anti-separatist war in the Caucasus?  It is an anti-terrorism operation.  Have we become any safer from these?  No.  The government has different goals, while all of us are flying on the fourth airplane, and the sooner we realize this, the better it will be for all of us.

* * *

* Trans note: I have been informed that I need to respect the opinions of others, no matter how outrageous.  I cannot, however, let the author’s comments pass.

While Rogatina (‘Pikestaff’) is acquainted with esoteric weaponry, he is apparently not a student of engineering or physics.

The fourth airplane, United Airlines flight 93, was a Boeing 757-200 with a takeoff weight of 250,000 pounds.  Its potential energy while moving at top speed can be calculated using the formula 1/2 x mass in grams x the square of velocity in meters per second.  Thus, 125 tons = 113 metric tons = 113 x 10+6 grams.  660 mph = 295 m/sec.  1/2 * 113 x 10+6 * the square of 266 = 4.924 x 10+12 joules of energy, or 4,924 gigajoules.  Since 1 kg of TNT explodes with 4.184 gigajoules of energy, the crash of UA 93 could be compared to the explosion of 1177 kg of TNT, on the order of a tactical nuclear device.  An air-to-air missile such as an AIM-120 AMRAAM has less than 50 kg of high explosives, while the more frequently used AIM-7 Sidewinder contains only 4.5 kg of TNT, and the AIM-9 Sparrow about 10kg.  Though nuclear-tipped surface-to-air missiles (such as the SA-5 Gammon) exist as part of the Moscow air defense ring, it is highly doubtful that there were any in Pennsylvania at the time of this terror act.

When the terrorists on September 11th sent UA 93 into a power dive at close to the speed of sound, the force of collision with the ground was similar to that of the other 3 hijacked aircraft, which were, not surprisingly, also pulverized.  Since a Boeing 757 is constructed of paper-thin aluminum, graphite-epoxy composites, and plastic, one cannot expect much to remain after such an energetic crash except for the engines and landing gear, which are to be found at a great depth under the crash site.   Since no one lived to ‘tell the tale’, conspiracy theories abound, despite reams of transcripts of cell phone conversations from on board the doomed aircraft, as well as the recovered cockpit voice recorder that support the conventional narrative of events.  Not surprisingly, even though there is such evidence from the other crashes (as well as photographic, i.e.: the Pentagon parking lot security cameras), conspiracy theories involving these tragedies abound as well.

The site of the crash of the fourth aircraft, with all its unrecovered wreckage and remains, is now a memorial to the brave souls who did not wait for Bruce Willis or Russian commandos, but sacrificed themselves so that others, such as Mr. ‘Pikestaff’, and, unfortunately, many others, may remain alive and free to express their opinions.

As far as the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq: Afghanistan’s Taliban regime sheltered the planners of September 11th, while Saddam Hussein’s Iraq supported terrorism in Israel (cash payments to the families of suicide bombers), as well as repeatedly violating the terms of the ceasefire in the 1st Gulf war, and continuing to obstruct the inspections he had agreed to in that ceasefire, to say nothing of the attempted assassination of a US president or his complicity in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, and, possibly, the Oklahoma City bombing.  That nuclear weapons were not employed against Iraq or Afghanistan speaks volumes to the humanity and restraint of the West, something that cannot be said for the terrorists.

Chechnya, however, represents Vladimir Putin’s greatest achievement while in office: he succeeded in having the brutal Russian intervention in a local civil war designated as a front in the Global War on Terror.

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