I am at the moment busy trying to write an article about the Biblical Judith, yes, the one who beheaded the enemy general Holofernes to galvanize her people to war against his Assyrian maraudes. I was stunned to discover that critics have called her a murderess! So, I was delighted to find in my mailbox a link to this article which exposes the fallacy and dangers of such old/new critic.

So, I suggest that those of you who read French do so here. For the rest of you, I am offering a bit streamlined mechanical translation of the last few paragraphs of Laurent Murawiec's"Pacifisme/ Mains blanches, pas de mains:"

One can do nothing, as said the poet Charles Péguy. One can let Evil have the leisure to abuse the world, and give him the exclusive monopoly on action. One can take refuge in the by ways of good conscience:"At least, I did not act with malice towards anybody" Nor with benevolence either!

But the ball of fire which burned Dresden and killed tens of thousands of Germans, or that of Hamburg, or the two mushroom clouds, did not make Allies of the criminals, nor of their criminal war. The Allies did not lose their heart. They were not transformed into Nazis.

What is the right way to deal with Gengis Khan and Tamerlan? To remain at home? The contemporary sensitivity requires it. It gives priority to good conscience. It elevates the errors made by those which reject its premises. It denies that the barbarians exist. It minimizes cruelty. It to seek to persuade to speak softly to the barbarians, to take account/understand their reasons and their desires. It opens the door to them so that they do not have any difficulty getting in.

Those who demonstrate the reality of the danger to them, the cruelty of the barbarian, is accused of inhumanity, is vilified for injurious cruelty. Better the world perish than my illusions!

To comprehend the languid aesthetic of this altitude, one should read Constantin Cavafy's poem,"While waiting for the barbarians."

When I hear that genre of complaint in connection with the prison of Guantanamo, the maltreatments at Abu Ghraib, the captured killers whom one tortures a little, in a word, when I hear them groan of the consequences of conflicts caused by the islamist nihilism, it is this sentimental mannerism . . . that I hear."It skins me the ears." It is founded on the absurd certainty that Evil is law, that it really does not exist, and that nothing evil will come to pass.

White hands are no hands!