Wednesday, November 17 2004http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/blog_11_17_04_1257.html
THE GOOD GUYS VS THE BAD GUYS: Islamic terrorists executed 59 year-old Margaret Hassan who had lived in Iraq for thirty years, married an Iraqi and become a citizen herself, and who had devoted her entire life to helping the Iraqi people.
For weeks the terrorists tormented this woman physically and psychologically before putting a bullet through her blindfolded head.
Al-Jazeera chose not to broadcast the video. Not because it is too graphic - that has never stopped them before and it won't stop them in the future - but because the enablers at Al-Jazeera know that the image of this innocent woman being shot in the head hurts their cause.
But Al-Jazeera has no problem running a constant loop of the tape showing the U.S. Marine shooting a wounded terrorist - with the obvious intent of trying to hurt the USA.
It's bad enough that we have to fight the propaganda machine of Al-Jazeera and the rest of the Arab media, but shouldn't the press in OUR country show a little more judgment and restraint?
I'm not suggesting the US media just accept the Pentagon line carte blanche. But I am suggesting that they refrain from treating these types of events as equivalent in any way. It's bad enough we have to contend with headlines like "Arabs enraged by Marine's shooting" while Hassan's brutal murder gets relegated to the back pages.
Our military has pulled the Marine in question out of action and is investigating the incident, which is exactly what should be done. But every benefit of the doubt had better go to that young man putting his life on the line for our country.
More importantly, no one should forget that the wounded men in the mosque captured on video, including the guy faking to be dead, are EXACTLY the same type of people putting bullets in the head of aid workers and slicing off people heads.
It simply boggles the mind that some people don't get it. Like Chris Matthews, for example, who said this the other day:
If this were the other side, and we were watching an enemy soldier, a rival-I mean, they're not bad guys, especially-just people that disagree with it. They're in fact the insurgents fighting us in their country. If we saw one of them do what we saw our guy do to that guy, would we consider that worthy of a war crimes charge?
They're not bad guys? The London Times (courtesy of Powerline) reports that the people of Fallujah beg to differ:
Residents who stayed on through last week's offensive were emerging and telling harrowing tales of the brutality they endured. [A] poster in the ruins of the souk bears testament to the strict brand of Sunni Islam imposed by the council, fronted by hard-line cleric Abdullah Junabi. The decree warns all women that they must cover up from head to toe outdoors, or face execution by the armed militants who controlled the streets.
Two female bodies found yesterday suggest such threats were far from idle. An Arab woman, in a violet nightdress, lay in a post-mortem embrace with a male corpse in the middle of the street. Both bodies had died from bullets to the head. Just six metres away on the same street lay the decomposing corpse of a blonde-haired white woman, too disfigured for swift identification but presumed to be the body of one of the many foreign hostages kidnapped by the rebels. Such is the fear that the heavily armed militants held over Fallujah that many of the residents who emerged from the ruins welcomed the US marines, despite the massive destruction their firepower had inflicted on their city.
A man in his sixties, half-naked and his underwear stained with blood from shrapnel wounds from a US munition, cursed the insurgents as he greeted the advancing marines on Saturday night. "I wish the Americans had come here the very first day and not waited eight months," he said, trembling. Another elderly man, who did not want his name used for fear the rebels would one day return and restore their draconian rule, said he was detained by the militants last Tuesday and held for four days before being freed. "It was horrible," he told an AFP reporter."We suffered from the bombings. Innocent people died or were wounded by the bombings. "But we were happy you did what you did because Fallujah had been suffocated by the Mujahidin. Anyone considered suspicious would be slaughtered. We would see unknown corpses around the city all the time."
The same story of arbitrary executions was told by another resident, found by US troops cowering in his home with his brother and his family. "They would wear black masks, carry rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs, and search streets and alleys," said Iyad Assam, 24. "I would hear stories, about how they executed five men one day and seven another for collaborating with the Americans. They made checkpoints on the roads. They put announcements on walls banning music and telling women to wear the veil from head to toe."
This type of mentality from guys like Matthews that leads to questions with lines like these "aren't bad guys," and these guys are "just insurgents fighting us in their country" is the same kind of mentality that led to Michael Moore taking his seat right next to Jimmy Carter at the Democratic convention.
The Left in this country needs to undertake some serious soul-searching. And when I say the Left I don't just mean the fringe Left, I mean the heart and soul of the national Democratic Party, as represented by their leader in the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi. I mean the mentality of the media elite as represented by Chris Matthews, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather.
We are fighting a ruthless and evil enemy who wants to enslave the world and throw it back to the dark ages. We are fighting the people who killed 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, killed 190 Spaniards going to work last year, and slaughtered hundreds of children going to school in Russia this September. These are the people who are desperately searching for the ability to inflict a strike that will make 9/11 look like a good day.
We have a hard enough time trying to convince people like Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac of the true threat we are facing in Islamic fascism. The last thing we need is a press corps and a good chunk of one of our two major political parties at home who seem, at times, confused about who are the good guys and the bad guys.