Every time you parade
the Abu Ghraib photos, every time you parrot the patently ridiculous
pretension by these repulsive murderers that decapitations are motivated
by what those photos depict — rather than by a belief system that
exudes hatred and murder — you are guaranteeing that there will be more
Daniel Pearls, Nick Bergs and, now, Paul Johnsons. You are telling
these monsters that they get a free ride: They get to kill, which they
would do anyway, and they get to have you tell the world that the
proximate cause of the killing is the U.S. government rather than
militant Islam. Scorecard: al Qaeda – win, win; America: lose, lose;
Americans: die, die.
There are two possible story lines here: choice (a) Paul Johnson
was viciously beheaded today, becoming just the latest of thousands of
victims slaughtered by a menace that cannot be managed, need not be
culturally understood, and must be totally eradicated; or choice (b)
Paul Johnson died today; an Arabic website, upon first breaking the
news, explained that his death was retaliation for the scandalous abuse
of Iraqi prisoners by occupying U.S. forces in Baghdad, where the Bush
administration is alleged to have employed harsh interrogation tactics
– in violation of the Geneva Conventions — in order to press for
intelligence about weapons of mass destruction which have yet to be found.
Anybody have the slightest doubt which choice we’ll be reading and
seeing?