Common Folk Using Common Sense

Trackbacked at Blue Star Chronicles:

First, I still to this day believe that Saddam’s Iraq was a playground for Islamic terrorism. While Saddam was in power Islamic terrorists from multiple groups, including al Qaeda, were able to train and re-supply with impunity. I won’t say that Saddam had specific knowledge of the specific attack of 9/11, I do believe that he knew of the general plan. Iraq is Chapter 2 in the Global War on Terror - Afghanistan was Chapter 1. There will be further chapters.

Second, as a training and re-supplying base of Islamic terrorism, both before and after 9/11, the Global War on Terror is waging war on those that would do harm to us. Bringing democracy to the region is a far more effective weapon against Islamic terrorism than any bomb we can manufacture - although bombs are needed in some facets of the war. Many in the Middle East are already seeing that, with US help, there is a future beyond mullahs and fatwas. For the first time in thousands of years the people of Iraq have a choice, and many are wanting freedom, justice, and democracy.

The Quran gives three options for the non-Muslim:

• Convert to Islam
• Become a Dhimmi (vanquished non-Muslims) and pay the Jizya (tax)
• Die

For many years the world has turned a blind eye to events in the Middle East. When young girls are stoned to death in front of huge crowds the UN has done nothing. When people are whipped or burned to death for not practicing Islam exactly the way some mullah want Europe has done nothing. But, after witnessing 3000 innocent people butchered in New York City, I, along with a growing number of people worldwide, are no longer willing to simply sit and watch. A line in the sand has been drawn.

What is needed is not a war against Islam but a war within Islam. Granted. That does not, in no way, remove a war against those individuals that would will an innocent just because of their faith. Sometimes a lack of condemnation of an action is a justification, or at least tacit support, which is what the world has been doing for the last 100 years.

You too, one day, will be forced to take a stand against Islamic terrorism. I pray that this day comes before your spouse, your child, or a loved one is murdered in the name of Allah.

This leads me to the story below. Unfortunately the story is not uncommon. It has happened before, and it will happen again in the future. For many people the story will mean nothing in that it occurred far away. For many people the story will mean nothing in that it happened to Muslims and not Baptists. For many people the story will mean nothing simply because you don’t care about anyone other than yourself.

For me this is simply one more example of the cancer of civilization commonly referred to as Islamic terrorism. And like any cancer of the body this cancer cannot be reasoned with, cannot be debated - it must be destroyed.

A hat tip to MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, from Times Online [UK]:

Even by the stupefying standards of Iraq’s unspeakable violence, the murder of Atwar Bahjat, one of the country’s top television journalists, was an act of exceptional cruelty.

Nobody but her killers knew just how much she had suffered until a film showing her death on February 22 at the hands of two musclebound men in military uniforms emerged last week. Her family’s worst fears of what might have happened have been far exceeded by the reality.

Bahjat was abducted after making three live broadcasts from the edge of her native city of Samarra on the day its golden-domed Shi’ite mosque was blown up, allegedly by Sunni terrorists.

Two men drove up in a pick-up truck, asking for her. She appealed to a small crowd that had gathered around her crew but nobody was willing to help her. It was reported at the time that she had been shot dead with her cameraman and sound man.

We now know that it was not that swift for Bahjat. First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but particularly so for a pious Muslim who concealed her hair, arms and legs from men other than her father and brother.

Then her arms were bound behind her back. A golden locket in the shape of Iraq that became her glittering trademark in front of the television cameras must have been removed at some point — it is nowhere to be seen in the grainy film, which was made by someone who pointed a mobile phone at her as she lay on a patch of earth in mortal terror.

By the time filming begins, the condemned woman has been blindfolded with a white bandage.

It is stained with blood that trickles from a wound on the left side of her head. She is moaning, although whether from the pain of what has already been done to her or from the fear of what is about to be inflicted is unclear.

Just as Bahjat bore witness to countless atrocities that she covered for her television station, Al-Arabiya, during Iraq’s descent into sectarian conflict, so the recording of her execution embodies the depths of the country’s depravity after three years of war.

A large man dressed in military fatigues, boots and cap approaches from behind and covers her mouth with his left hand. In his right hand, he clutches a large knife with a black handle and an 8in blade. He proceeds to cut her throat from the middle, slicing from side to side.

Her cries — “Ah, ah, ah” — can be heard above the “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) intoned by the holder of the mobile phone.

Even then, there is no quick release for Bahjat. Her executioner suddenly stands up, his job only half done. A second man in a dark T-shirt and camouflage trousers places his right khaki boot on her abdomen and pushes down hard eight times, forcing a rush of blood from her wounds as she moves her head from right to left.

Only now does the executioner return to finish the task. He hacks off her head and drops it to the ground, then picks it up again and perches it on her bare chest so that it faces the film-maker in a grotesque parody of one of her pieces to camera.

The voice of one of the Arab world’s most highly regarded and outspoken journalists has been silenced. She was 30.

Blue Crab Boulevard says : “This is the face of evil itself. That the monsters choose to hide behind masks shows how deeply depraved and cowardly they really are. We must remember we are at war. Or that face will show itself again and again.”

This why we fight this war. To kill the people who do this. Sometimes something is just so evil - there is nothing else. There is no excuse. There is nothing else to say. Evil does exist. Evil must be stopped.

Saddam, Iraq, Islam, terrorism, al Qaeda, 9/11, Global War on Terror, Afghanistan, Bahjat

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