Look Hard at This Picture, America

Look hard at this picture, America. Would you rather forget it?
It was taken in Iraq. The men in black are NOT Iraqi dissidents.
You know that.  These are the same people who brought us 9/11/2001. Would you rather not acknowledge that? Do you think that these men are in Iraq because America invaded Iraq? The man wearing black in the middle pulled out a knife shortly after this frame was taken and severed the head of Nick Berg,an innocent American. The man is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He  was in Iraq long before American troops were there. You cannot see it in the picture, but al-Zarqawi has only one leg. One of his legs was removed because of wounds that he suffered while fighting with al Qaeda against American troops in Afghanistan. His wounds were treated in one of Saddam Hussein's hospitals in Baghdad. Before that, he was in Iraq as the commander of a
________________________________________  training camp for terrorists in northern Iraq that specialized in the use of chemical weapons. This has been well-documented, and even the die-hard anti-war group acknowledges this. The anti-war people prefer either to ignore it or to excuse Saddam as not being able to do anything about the camp because it was in the Northern No-Fly Zone. Even if the latter were true, it is irrelevant.   Zarqawi and his terrorists were there.

Look hard at this picture, America. Is anyone really naive enough to believe that this murder was done in retaliation for abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib?  What was the excuse for the similar murder of Daniel Pearl by the terrorists
in Pakistan? How can anyone equate the immorality of what took place at the prison to that which is taking place here?

Look hard at this picture, America. How can you claim that the economy, unemployment, education, or health care are the biggest issues facing our country?  I am quite certain that Nick Berg was not thinking about his health care plan as his neck was being cut by the terrorist's knife. Why is it that the media showed only this picture, and the coverage of this story was limited to just a day or two before it was refocused to Nick Berg's college days and chance encounter with terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui? At the same time, pictures from Abu Ghraib prison were shown day after day, and vivid descriptions were provided of pictures that we did not see. Is it not obvious, America, that much of the media has an agenda, and that many of us are being sucked up by their one-sided reporting?

Look hard at this picture, America. Do you think that it could happen here? Or do you care? Many who died at the World Trade Center suffered equally horrible deaths as they jumped from the burning towers. Would their deaths had been any less horrific or any less important if the unemployment rate was only 5 percent instead of 6 or 7 percent? Would 9/11 have been more acceptable or less likely to have happened if American businesses were not outsourcing jobs, if more kids could read, or if our air were cleaner?  I am not saying that these issues are unimportant, but rather that they must be placed in their proper perspective during this time of decision. Serious, rational thought would relegate them to a distant second relative to our survival. There are those, fortunately a small minority, who refuse to believe or accept the fact that we are in a struggle for survival. They view incidents such as 9/11 and the Nick Berg murder as nothing more than isolated responses by Third World champions of justice to American misbehavior.

There is a slightly larger group who look upon 9/11 as something that is history, something that we must put in our past, that we must get over it and move on by focusing on domestic issues and our personal lives. The Nick Berg murder is just another noteworthy media event, similar to a railroad accident in North Korea or an earthquake in China, with no relevance to themselves or their families. To these people, I would say, look hard at this picture. It could have been your brother, your son, or your friend in the orange jump-suit.

Look hard at this picture, those of you who, for whatever reason, think that the War in Iraq was immoral or wrong. Those men in black were of the people who we wanted to prevent from getting more lethal weapons. Because of them, our government was faced with the choices of letting them be; letting them continue their training while the United Nations endlessly deliberated the issue, allowing Saddam to defy that organization; or to remove the Hussein regime and ensure beyond any doubt that worldwide terrorism would not find a source of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Your argument, of course, is that there are other potential sources of WMD that we have not done anything about. While this is not totally correct (we are putting diplomatic pressure on Iran and North Korea), I would modify your argument only slightly by adding the word "yet". Would you have found the War in Iraq to be more palatable if we had simultaneously invaded Iran and North Korea? If "yes", it begs the question, with what?  Would the UN or NATO  have supported this endeavor?  You cannot possibly believe that scenario if you really think about and study it rather than merely regurgitating the standard rhetoric of the left. Look hard at this picture, and form an opinion of your own for once.

Finally, look hard at this picture, those of you who initially supported the War in Iraq but have since grown tired of the seemingly never-ending scenes of battle and death, never seeing the successes of our efforts. Perhaps you feel that some of the so-called "mistakes" that have occurred doom our efforts to failure, not recognizing that all of our wars have had their share of unexpected reverses and unforseen misfortune. Wars are fought by humans, and you can only hope that your side makes fewer "mistakes" than does the other side. We seldom recognize or appreciate the mistakes made by our enemies. The Abu Ghraib fiasco should be considered to be a "mistake" on our part. The murder of Nick Berg, however, was a real "whopper" by the terrorists if, as expected, it reunites American public opinion against them.  That was not their intention. Their goal was quite the opposite.

Look hard at this picture, America. What would you have done if you had been there with a squad of Marines under your command? Would you have waited until the terrorists murdered Nick Berg to do something about it?

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