hobitbob wrote:McGEntrix, you have no one to blame for this but your president, and yourself, for supporting him. Everything that Bush has done since 11th September has played right into OBL's hands. I'm actually surprised you didn't castigate him for screaming before being killed. I would have thought that you sould have scolded him for his cowardice!
The fault lies not with McGentrix or the president, but apparently with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in charge of the group that took the hostages and did the beheading. If we go to war with someone, and the enemy takes non-combatant hostages and executes them, the fault is with the enemy, since using non-combatants in a war zone for blackmail, and executing them is immoral. Hypothetically, if we go to war with someone, and they commit some immoral act during the war, this does not generally imply that we should not be in the war. The conclusion that we should not be in that war may or may not be correct, but the fact that the enemy murders our non-combatants, or that the war is difficult to win, certainly doesn't prove that the war shouldn't have been fought.
US forces have done something immoral, and a faction of the enemy have done something immoral. A very tiny percentage of our troops abused prisoners. A faction of the enemy, and, indeed, several factions of the enemy, take non-combatants as hostages, use them for blackmail, and kill them in particularly brutal ways. In the former case, the Bush administration has arrested and is prosecuting the soldiers who abused Iraqi prisoners, is disciplining their leaders, and has apologized for the incident. Investigations are underway to see whether such abuses might exist elsewhere. It should probably at least be mentioned that as terrible as the prisoner abuse is, it has occurred in every war. As terrible as the prisoner abuse is - and it is terrible - it is not as bad as kidnapping and murdering non-combatants. In the latter case, no one in the Arab world is investigating the murder of these non-combatants, and no one is apologizing. These kidnapping and murders are not getting much press or much condemnation compared to the prisoner abuses. The people who are criticizing us the most (e.g. the Arab press) for the prisoner abuse, generally pretty much ignore these far worse crimes. There is a double standard.
People who would make a routine, systematic practice of kidnapping non-combatants, using their lives for blackmail, and murdering them in very painful, gruesome ways, do not deserve to succeed. They should not be left in charge of Iraq or any portion of Iraq. They should be killed or captured. If captured, they should be tried for their actions, even as the American soldiers who abused prisoners will be tried.
