The
ugly reality of our enemy'
Gerry
Wachovsky
For
my final column of the semester I was throwing
around several ideas of doing something
special but recent events have occurred
that I believe I would be doing an injustice
to not discuss. The events I am referring
to, of course, are the humiliations of Iraqi
inmates at Abu Ghraib prison by certain
U. S. soldiers, and the release last Tuesday
of a video depicting the beheading of an
American civilian contractor. I have seen
the video of the decapitation, and I have
seen pictures of prisoners being sodomized
and raped by members of the military, but
through this all, my views have been strengthened:
invading Iraq was not a mistake.
The
events that took place at Abu Ghraib were
by all means sick and disgusting and the
culprits need to be dealt with accordingly,
and the government is doing just that. While
I do believe that those events were dastardly,
I believe the beheading of Nick Berg, an
American civilian, by terrorists, was worse.
How, you may ask, can one sick event be
worse than another? How can a rape be somehow
less significant than a beheading? The answer
is resoundingly simple: one person got to
walk away with his life, while the other
paid the ultimate price by losing his.
Please
do not misinterpret my words here: I think
the humiliations and rape that went on in
Abu Ghraib should carry a harsh and extreme
punishment, there is no arguing that. Neither
victims deserved what happened, but I must
admit that I reserve slightly more anger
over what was done to Nick Berg than what
happened to the prisoners. You see, Berg
was killed for one reason and one reason
alone: he was an American, just like you
and me. He did not kill any insurgents,
he did not humiliate any prisoners, and
he had not done anything wrong; he simply
went over there to help rebuild Iraq’s
infrastructure. To the terrorists, however,
he had done something wrong: he had the
misfortune of being born in America.
It
takes a special breed of monster to be able
to actually bring a blade to someone’s
neck, saw through flesh and bone, cut a
head off and then dangle it in front of
a camera. It takes a person who grossly
disregards the importance of the sanctity
of human life. The video also serves as
a reminder that this is exactly why we are
fighting the “War on Terror.”
This is why we must continue to fight it.
People who are as brutal and vicious as
the ones shown in this video need to be
stopped, for the sake of humanity.
The
video begins with Nick Berg saying whom
he is, where he is from, and the names of
his family members; it ends with him dead.
The callousness that the five masked men
exude, standing there reading a list of
demands and rhetoric while toting automatic
rifles, is enough to boil one’s blood.
After the middle man is finished reading
his list, he pulls out a large blade from
beneath his jacket, pushes Berg to the floor
where he is held at gunpoint, and thrusts
the blade into Berg’s neck. Berg screams,
but those screams are cut short by the sawing
of flesh and bone. Then the killer proudly
holds Berg’s head up, forever frozen
in a look of terror, and the video ends.
This
is why we are fighting this war.
Gerry
Wachovsky is a journalism major at Cal State
Long Beach.
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