Justin's post on the complexities and difficulties of life extension (who ever thought such a thing would be simple?) reminds me of a related issue: those who have made it their job not to extend lives, but to shorten the lives of ordinary people selected wholly at random.

It has been all too easy and all too comforting to dismiss the work of Islamic radicals as being waged by outside forces (or at least by discontented Muslims). But this latest report ought to give pause. Not only were the suicide bombers not from the Mideast, one of them, Germaine Lindsay, was a Jamaican who wasn't even Muslim-born:

Stocky 5ft 8in Lindsay converted to Islam several years ago and is thought to have been a regular at Brixton Mosque, where shoe bomber Richard Reid and 9/11 plotter Zacharias Moussaoui attended study circles.

Reid, 29, from South London, turned to Islam in prison and tried to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami in December2001.

He was a disciple of self-styled Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal — another Jamaican, convicted of soliciting murder in February2003 after urging followers to kill non-Muslims.

Not only that, but the same Germaine Lindsay is reported to have traveled to Cleveland, Ohio in 2000.

Cleveland is also in America.

Sheesh. Much as I'd prefer fighting terrorists in Iraq, if things keep going this way, the war on terrorism will take on the trappings of civil war right here.

Charles Krauthammer looks at the British bombers along with their Dutch counterpart Mohammed Bouyeri, (assassin of Theo van Gogh), and reflects on the nature of this war.

One of the reasons Westerners were so unprepared for this wave of Islamist terrorism, not just militarily but psychologically, is sheer disbelief. It shockingly contradicts Western notions of progress. The savagery of Bouyeri's act, mirroring the ritual human slaughter by Zarqawi or Daniel Pearl's beheaders, is a return to a primitiveness that we in the West had assumed a progressive history had left behind.

Our first response was, therefore, to simply sweep this contradiction under the rug. Put the first World Trade Center bombers on trial and think it will solve the problem. Even today, there are many Americans and even more Europeans who believe that after 9/11 the United States should just have done Afghanistan — depose the Taliban and destroy al-Qaida's sanctuary — and gone no further, thinking that would solve the problem.

But the problem is far deeper. It is essentially a civil war within a rival civilization in which the most primitive elements are seeking to gain the upper hand.

But juxtaposed they must be, for they are both going on in the same society. Insanity better describes the contrast than irony.

But such insanity is what results from the negation of civilization. Concludes Krauthammer,

Decadence is defined not by a civilization's art or music, but ultimately by its willingness to simply defend itself.

Consider the honors bestowed upon these malignant assassins by their defenders:

...[T]he problem today is not immigration per se; it is the fact that a pernicious ideology has been allowed to infiltrate Europe's immigrant communities. And that has happened because we have blindly allowed our country to be a haven for fanatics.

"The whole Arab world was dangerous for me," the Egyptian Islamist, Yasser El-Sirri, was recently quoted as saying. In Egypt, he has been convicted and sentenced in absentia three times over: to 25 years of hard labour for smuggling armed terrorists into the country; to 15 years for aiding Islamic dissidents; and to death for plotting to assassinate the prime minister. Where does he now reside? In London, where he is Director of the Islamic Observation Centre.

"If al-Qaeda indeed carried out this act, it is a great victory for it," declared Dr Hani al-Siba'i in an interview on the al Jazeera satellite television channel the day after the London bombings. "It rubbed the noses of the world's eight most powerful countries in the mud." He went on to say that it was legitimate for al-Qaeda to target civilians because "the term 'civilians' does not exist in Islamic religious law in the modern Western sense. People are either of Dar al-Harb [the domain of war, meaning territory ruled by non-Muslims] or not."

And where are you most likely to bump into Dr al-Siba'i? Why, in London, where he is the Director of the al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies.

The fact is that a campaign has for some time been underway to convert young European Muslims - and non-Muslims like the Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay - to the ideology of extreme Islamism. And it is being conducted in euphemistically named "centres" all over Europe - like the government-funded Hamara Youth Access Point in Beeston in Leeds where, it seems, Shehzad Tanweer came under the influence of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the oldest of the London bombers.

Fortunately, self defense is still legal in the United States, and many Americans are armed. This means home grown terrorists could have a tougher time here than in Europe.

Self defense might not be life extension, but I'm afraid it's a necessary precursor.

MORE: A deconstructionist named Stan Goff condemned Hasan Akbar's trial as a "lie." Worth reading for those who have the stomach for that sort of thing. (Mr. Goff and his ilk would probably call self defense a form of genocide . . .)