Fruits of Evil
I haven't had the mental energy to blog the past few days. I wanted to say some things about the Abu Gharib prison situation. But now I feel like everything I wanted to say has been eclipsed by the horror of Nicholas Berg's beheading at the hands of Islamist terrorists.
As Rachel Lucas and Jared say better than I can, what happened at Abu Gharib was wrong. It's shameful and embarrassing. Those responsible should be punished and I don't think any excuses should be made for this sort of behavior. I think it's preposterous to blame Rumsfeld or Bush for this. But this scandal makes all of us look bad, and we are better than this. These few soldiers with their pictures have made better propaganda for the Bush-haters and America-haters than ten Michael Moore flicks and a hundred Tell Rall cartoons.
I haven't seen the video of Nicholas Berg's beheading and I won't because I don't think I could bear it. On another blog, I accidentally ran across a still picture of them holding his severed head, and that was too much for me. Just reading the description was too much.
As Mark Shea says here, the Islamists have inadvertently provided moral clarity:
But let's not do the moral equivalence thing and imagine that this [Abu Gharib] aberration, condemned by virtually all Americans, is the same thing as the revolting policy of cold-blooded murder which Al-Quaeda exists for no other purpose than to promote.
But Mark also warns us not to let a great evil cause us to excuse lesser evils. This is something I'm struggling with right now:
It makes atrocities so much easier to commit if we can console ourselves that we're not as bad as the Bad Guys...We *must* not allow ourselves to be remade in the image of our enemies.
To people who still babble about "root causes", who think "they hate us" because we don't give enough foreign aid, who want to blame Bush for everything, whose thinking is steeped in political correctness, who suffer from pacifist delusions, I have this to say: Pull your head out of your nether regions, clean your eyes and ears and get a clue! The Islamists hate us because we're not Muslims -- we are the Dar al-harb, the "House of War". The hate us because they don't see us as human, we are "things" to them, things that need to be conquered or destroyed.
As they murdered Nick Berg, these savages shouted, "God is great!" Well, whatever god they worship is not the God I worship. Look at the fruit that radical Islam bears -- it is evil, poisonous fruit. It is not from God.
Some people seem to be losing heart because of recent events. That is exactly what the Islamists are relying on. They think we are weak and decadent. Some of us are one or both of those things. But we can't be. We have to be a strong and decent people. We have to "suck it up" as INDC Journal says. The alternative is unthinkable.
Update: I think it's important to point out that Nick Berg wasn't just an American, but a Jewish American, like Daniel Pearl. (Via Ilyka Damen.)