Does America Have the Will to Resist?

Shortly after I finished writing the article below (The Mistreatment of Prisoners and Its Aftermath), the news was flashing across our TV screens announcing the brutal and horrendous murder of Nick Berg in Iraq. A movie of the slaying, they said, was being shown on a terrorist website. It was entitled "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American."  For anyone who does not remember, al-Zarqawi was the al Qaeda member who was running a terrorist training camp in Iraq before the war began there, one that specialized in the use of chemical weapons. He is the same man who was treated in a Baghdad hospital for wounds suffered in Afghanistan, with the full knowledge of Saddam Hussein. I would ask those Americans who now oppose the war in Iraq to explain again how there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda terrorists.

Prior to performing their bloody act, one of the terrorists read a prepared statement that included the following:

So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way.

For the likes of Diane Carman (see article below), Ted Kennedy, and Robert Byrd, I should probably explain that the above words are an explicit attempt to destroy our will to resist in Iraq, using the Abu Ghraib events as an excuse. That anyone in America would allow the Islamic terrorists to be successful in their endeavors is beyond all comprehension. For those who might be tempted to offer the weak argument that this murder would not have occured if it had not been for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, I would remind them of Daniel Pearl. For those who claim that it would not have occurred if we had not invaded Iraq, I would remind them of the seventeen sailors who died in the attack on the USS Cole in 2000,  long before we were in Iraq. All are acts committed by people who want to kill Americans, people with whom there is no compromise, and people who were in Iraq before the Americans were. Abandoning Iraq now, as some Americans are wont to do, would allow al Qaeda to expand its base there, providing it with a safe haven from the coalition troops who are now pressuring its members in Afghanistan. Most importantly, it would send a clear signal to the world that Americans did not have the will to resist them. 

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