Matt Wretchard on Kenneth Bigley's murder:
He and Steyn have put their finger on the simple error that everyone from Bigley to those campaigning for his release have made. Not only is it impossible to put a rational construction on these events, it is a waste of time to try. Bigley thought he was too old; the schoolchildren in Beslan thought they were too young; the French journalists thought they were too French to be the victims of terrorism. And they were wrong. Wrong because they assumed that enemy intent rather than capability was the limiting factor to their mayhem. It is an odd statistical fact that fewer Americans have died from terrorist attacks in Iraq than Iraqi children. The one thousand US combat deaths in the months since OIF is only slightly larger than the number of Canadians killed in the 1942 Dieppe Raid over the course of 9 hours; and not because the terrorists are eager to "show the world the justice and mercy which Islam teaches us" but because they cannot kill more.
Radical Islam is self-evidently at war with the West because their efforts are limited only by their capability. And the West is just as clearly not yet at war with radical Islam because its actions are still limited by its intent. Zarqawi sawed off Bigley's head simply because he could; America spares Fallujah from choice. That inability to think of ourselves as being truly at war underlay the rejection of Mark Steyn's column. He had only stated the obvious.
Update: Also make sure to read the Mark Steyn column Matt references.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
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