Terrorism and Barbarity

[HeavilyArmed]

I heard my first decent Thomas Friedman (NYT columnist/blowhard) quote a while back and if I remember correctly it went something like this: "Is Iraq the way it is because of Saddam or is Saddam the way he is (was) because of Iraq?'

I now believe the correct answer is the latter. I have seen every effort to move towards an Iraqi democracy founder. Democracy in Iraq is not going to occur, IMO, and this is GWB's biggest miscalculation. I take Freidman to mean that given the nature of Iraqi cultures, only the ministrations of a near psychopathic dictator could maintain any sort of order.

The fact that so many are willing to take up the cause in suicide bombings takes away from me any psychic connection to these insurgents. They are not only not like me, they are incomprehensable to me. There is no situation where I can imagine doing what they do. It's true that much better American men than I have volunteered, in times of war and crisis, for missions that were near certain death. The difference is that they had an out, however small.

Suicide bombing of civilians, by itself, allows me to label it an act of barbarity. Add to it the relish and celebration surrounding beheading, the merciless torture, disfigurement of the dead, and it's more than enough for me to question the culture that spawns such acts so foreign to a western sensibility.

barbarity

noun

A cruel act or an instance of cruel behavior: bestiality, brutality, cruelty, inhumanity, savagery, truculence, truculency. See attitude/good attitude/bad attitude/neutral attitude, kind/cruel.