“This is a crime. Even God will not accept it.” And God, we know, is willing to put up with a lot.
I don’t think there’s anything to be said beyond the obvious about the death of Margaret Hassan: This person sounds like a real heroine, it amazes me that two or more people can get together (presumably this was not the act of a lone individual) who are able to justify this to one another. Why?
It’s the Helter Skelter motive I suppose.
And according to the rest of the linked article it works well; “Conspiracy theorists – of whom there are many in the Arab world – see the workings of a sinister plot to discredit the Iraqi resistance – a view you can also hear inside Iraq”
The people who killed Margaret Hassan are most likely foreign insurgents who care nothing about Iraq or the Iraqi people, but wish to see it used as a base to spout their vile perversion of Islam. If reports that she was killed because of the invasion of Fallujah are true, it shows again that these people care nothing about living standards of other people.
it amazes me that two or more people can get together (presumably this was not the act of a lone individual) who are able to justify this to one another. Why?
Why ask why?
If the ‘insurgents’ have shown anything over the last year is that their barbarity knows no bounds. The same people that did this are the same people that blow up kids, saw off the heads of old men, and fly planes into skyscrapers. Why is this any worse?
At least Mrs. Hassan spent the prime of her life doing something truly noble and helpful.
It’s clash of civilizations, stupid.
There’s something that’s making my blood boil: while Muslims kill Jews only, they’re labelled “freedom fighters” and get respect and money from the EU. Only when they start to kill Europeans, the’re called as they deserve: barbarians.
Pavel,
you might want to lighten up a bit on the gibbering-barbarian-hordes business. Yes, al Qaeda & Co. are murderous barbarians. But not because they wear kaffiyehs or quote from the Koran; rather, because they murder barbarically.
Some of my own countrymen had habits rather like those of al Qaeda. Their motives were slightly different, and so far as I know they never got round to beheading as a method of killing. But otherwise they could easily hold their own against Zarqawi and friends. They blew children to bits, ‘disappeared’ those they disliked and (for all their claims of being politically motivated) frequently killed people whose only offence was to have the wrong religion. The killings have quieted down a bit in recent years, but they still routinely torture and mutilate members of their own communities to ‘discipline’ them. So far as I am concerned, the only important difference between al Qaeda and these people is that the latter tend to be lighter-skinned and have a slightly better command of English. They are barbarians, yet in the western world there are many who regard them almost as romantic heroes. It’s important to recognise barbarity as barbarity, but at the same time it’s important to make barbarity (and not difference of culture, religion or ethnic background) the measure of barbarity.
BTW, lest you wonder, I think those Muslim or Arab terrorists who kill only Jews are barbarians as well; just as Baruch Goldstein, yemach shmo vezichro, was a barbarian.
Calling people barbarians here is not helpful. At least the leadership echelons do things for a rational albeit not realistic purpose.
In this case we can speculate about the motivation. They might speculate on causing ineffective unthinking acts of retaliation. Or they simply kill off the competition.
If you think about people as barbarians it will cloud your judgement and weaken you. You fight an enemy because he is an enemy. Mixing moral conceptions into that is bad.
It also is bad to think about a clash of civilisation before you absolutely must. You just create internal strife.
Calling people barbarians here is not helpful. At least the leadership echelons do things for a rational albeit not realistic purpose.
Calling people barbarians here is calling a spade a spade.
Their leadership echelons might well be rational; there can be rational barbarians. It is their acts that mark them as barbaric, not any lack of reasoning ability.
Lets not forget that one of the purpose of terrorism is to exacerbate the adversaries so that they harm people who had nothing in common with the terrorists, giving the terrorists a breeding ground. If Margareth Hassan murder get the US soldiers to be more harsh toward Iraqis, then they will achieve their purpose. In Spain ETA has been doing attentates against military families seeking to provoke the Army to rise against the government, or at least to force their involvement in Euskadi, since they believe that in such a case, most peoples of their region would back ETA.
DSW
Calling people barbarians here is calling a spade a spade.
Which is not always appropriate. Call it a spade and you wish to dig. It is also a tool for other use. You might also call it an artifact or even an object of a certain mass.
Calling them barbarians you will cause people to think them stupid and primitive which they are not. Call them evil murderers if you must use a morally relevant term.
The danger here is that you invite a comparison based on moral assesments of actions. This will cause comparisons with levelling cities filled with women and children. Doubting one’s own position in a war is dangerous.