Hostages

I saw the brother of one of the slain hostages on the news yesterday morning. It just rips your heart out.

They asked him what he had to say about the killers, and he said "They killed the wrong man" and went on to explain that his brother was there helping rebuild Iraq's infrastructure -- water, sewer, electricity... things Iraq and everyday Iraqis desparately need.

I got to thinking about that. From our point of view, they did kill the "wrong" man. But that's not the terrorists' point of view.

We (I mean the American Public) for some reason still see the fight against the US in Iraq as a fight against US aggression and occupation. Part of the reason is that's what the Left believes, and it's in all the Leftist rants you hear on the subject. In this view, Americans are agressors and the fighters are merely patriotic "minutemen" fighting for their country's autonomy. If this is true, then the terrorist kidnappers killed the wrong man.

But that ain't the case. These aren't ordinary Iraqis. Many, maybe even most of them, aren't Iraqis at all. Al-Sadr and his followers are a different story -- they're mostly Iraqis although I wouldn't call them ordinary ones.

But these kidnappers, Al-Zarqawi and his Al-Queda friends -- are not doing this to bring about Iraq's standard of living up -- they do not want the sewers to work or the electricity to work or the water to run or the oil to flow. They want this whole plan to fail so that they can supply the answer. A Democratic, free, prosperous Iraq is precisely what they don't want. And to that end, they killed the right man.

They want to intimidate in the strongest way possible anyone who is working toward a prosperous and free Iraq, be they Italian, Egyptian, Phillipino, Russian, English, Polish, and on and on.

To do this, they are kidnapping and killing mainly civilian workers. Oh sure, they make some demands, too, to see what they can get. Anyone with an independent and sound mind can see that dealing with hostage takers can only lead to encouraging more hostage taking. But in the end, it's not the deals these people are after. It's the intimidation... the sheer "terror" of it. To keep people away. To cause the new state to fail, so that it can be replaced by a Fundamentalist Islamic government.

Most Iraqis know this, and they don't want it. This is why they risk their lives anyway waiting in lines to join the police force and military.

The last thing the terrorists want is a strong, stable democracy in the middle east. And it's what the West and most of the Arab population desperately wants and needs. This is step 1 in the swamp-draining. It is a part of the Bush Doctrine, and I think there's merit in it.

All that being said, Bin Laden and Zarqawi need to be found and eliminated.