Read Online The Perfect Kill by Robert B. Baer - Free Book Online

talk about the Academy Awards, write blogs about their inner turmoil, or take off a year to find themselves.
    Call it a natural advantage or a disease, but for poor Shiites in Hajj Radwan’s slum, reality let them know exactly what they were worth. Without crutches such as trust funds for the wealthy or social safety nets for the poor, profligacy wasn’t an option. With few chances coming along in life, you knew you absolutely had to take the ones that did. While we in the West go to sleep thinking about what we’ve lost, Lebanon’s poor Shiites stay awake dreaming about what’s to be gained.
    Straight-up politics wasn’t a salvation either. The Shiites knew from hard experience that elections are rigged or bought, justice is a luxury for the rich, and the rule of law is a deceit perpetuated to keep down the weak. The few Shiites lucky enough to make it to the top immediately forgot their roots and started to sing the elite’s tune and devote themselves to their comforts and entertainment.
    What the Shiites had left was the extended family, clan, and tribe. As in Homeric Greece, all satisfaction came from blood ties—livelihood, work, duty, social ties, and even relations with God. In Arabic, there’s a word for it—
asabiyyah
. Tribal solidarity. A sort of esprit de corps, I guess you could call it. The Sicilians have something like it,
sangu du me sangu
. Blood of my blood.
    With tribal solidarity comes the notion that there can be only oneundisputed chief, the tribe’s shepherd. Invested in him is every important decision related to the tribe’s welfare and security, especially decisions related to war and peace. His decisions are personal and binding; he’s prosecutor, jury, and judge. Something like homicide isn’t a crime in the public sense, but rather a personal matter for the chief to decide—name the transgression and then decide the appropriate penalty.
    It’s a world where power is never ambiguous, words are meaningless, and the act alone counts. There are no second-place finishes, no also-rans, no consolation prizes, no satisfaction from straddling the top of the bell curve. The only thing that matters is authentic, unadulterated power—holding on to what you have and usurping more given the opportunity. Those who can’t adapt to the world as it is are doomed to misery and early death.
    Guesses will always be guesses, but I believe it’s in this context that we need to view Hajj Radwan’s attempt on Ambassador Phil Habib. It goes some of the way in answering the question why Hajj Radwan didn’t murder the first American he came across in Beirut. There were hundreds of them wandering around, all blissfully unaware of Hajj Radwan’s existence, let alone knowing that he might have an interest in killing them. If he’d taken this route, he would have racked up a much higher body count.
    There was the obvious symbolism of destroying a building belonging to the American government, but I suspect it’s more complex than that. In his attempt on Habib, Hajj Radwan almost surely hoped that by making it personal—decapitate the invading enemy—his act would be a stronger incentive for the Americans to decamp and go home. Killing a second secretary from the American embassy or a spook like me lacked the act’s full import. In Hajj Radwan’s world, you kill the owner, not his dog.
    Theory aside, what’s for certain is that Hajj Radwan didn’t learnabout the instrumentalities of murder at the polo club. He arose out of a world whose insides are blackened by murder and poverty, where beautiful theories are burned to a crisp, and easy-to-come-by morality is slain by brute fact. It’s a world where people survive solely thanks to their reptilian instincts, and by sticking to the essential . . . and definitely not by throwing money at a problem.
A NOTE ON COLD EMPATHY
    The day Chuck and I decided to