Please cite where Nick Berg was ignorant, please! I just saw a live local TV broadcast about Nick from his HS. His teacher was very complimentary about his intelligence, personality and abilities, including the number of instruments he could play. He was a real human being … where do you come off from?
You don’t know where they get the idea? Multiple religious leaders stand in front of a crowd and issue fatwas specifically ordering the death of Americans. Their followers then kill Americans. No confusion there.
My question is simple. Should Americans believe there are enough Muslims in the region who want control of their own lives to make it work or should the US walk away and let another religious leader crush them back to the year 300 AD. I think the recent demonstrations against Sadr reflect a desire off people to risk open confrontation with his army.** see Demonstrations in Najaf**
The people who participated in the beheading were nothing but a bunch of religious Nazi’s that would kill you just for questioning their motives. They are vigilantes in the truest sense. Sadr should realize this is recent event will probably blow up in his face (literally).
Just wanted to say how sorry I am. The kid was so young. My condolences to his family and friends, and my sympathy to the American Dopers.
btw: The first Dutch soldier in Iraq was killed today. Not in such a horrible way, though.
Ok then.
A bit more on him and his parents (and their disagreements) and the circumstances around his stay in Iraq.
http://pennlive.com/newsflash/pa/index.ssf?/base/news-16/108430077760820.xml
Sounds like a bunch of America haters to me. I hear they have a book deal, and you know what that means, right, fellow travelers?
Sounds like a really decent guy who Al Qaeda exploited for the basest of political purposes. I hope most Iraqis will see through Al Qaeda at this point. They may increasingly hate the U.S., but that doesn’t mean they have to buy into Al Qaeda’s bull either.
Do I think the victim deserved it? No. Can’t think of too many people who I think deserved to have their head hacked off.
I am inclined to wonder why anyone would go to Iraq right now to look for a job. These people were not too fond of us even BEFORE we invaded.
Were the terrorists justified in this public execution of an American contractor? No. What crime did the contractor commit, aside from being American?
**What should the US do about this, if anything? ** Well, if we’re gonna talk “should,” the guys who did this should be hunted down and held responsible for their crimes. Not sure how likely this is, though, considering the current air of expediency currently circulating in the U.S. Government.
Does this put some perspective on the US’s recent actions with reguards to the prison scandal (i.e. pretty much all the details have come out, we are taking steps to punish the guilty and correct the problem, even as bad as it was, no one died or was executed publicly, etc) or no? I fail to see how hacking anyone’s head off puts much of anything into perspective. Torturing and abusing prisoners is wrong. So is taking hostages and hacking their heads off when things don’t go your way.
Does anyone even care about this at all? Well, I would suspect the victim’s family is kind of upset about it. Particularly now that the news media is going to pester them about it for a few days.
All hail Bush. All hail Ashcroft.
Oops: that was meant to be noted as a joke and gentle ribbing at xtisme. It wasn’t meant to go out without smilies and without a disclaimer. I apologize as well.
Well, I care about it too! Where is the outrage?
Nothing too original in my responses, but what the hey:
Of course not. No such act is ever justifiable, IMO.
Find the persons responsible and put them on trial for murder.
No. Firstly, this in no way excuses the systematic mistreatment of helpless prisoners by US forces. Secondly, not all the details have yet come out to the public, with the administration itself as much as admitting that additional documented acts of abuse, apparently even more objectionable than the ones already documented, are currently being investigated. Some of these apparently include the deaths of prisoners in US custody.
As far as Arab reaction, we’ll likely never get a clear idea because a) much of the Arab press is state-owned and heavily muzzled; b) it’s in Arabic, which most of us can’t read, and c) any information the Western press reprints from Arab sources will tend to highlight anti-US and extremist statements rather than moderate commentary, because that’s the sort of thing the western public expects to see. As for the world at large, the incident is already being reported worldwide; Reuters, the BBC and AFP, among others, had all moved wire stories when I checked about an hour ago. This is all straight reporting, the story is still too fresh for there to be any coherent Op-Ed material to refer to as yet.
I personally think that most foreign commentary will be a mixture of sympathy for Mr. Berg and some general suggestions that US behavior in Iraq is partially responsible for the climate in which this heinous act took place. This has been highlighted in all press coverage I’ve seen as an al-Queda, rather than a strictly Iraqi, operation and I seriously doubt than anyone at all, except for a few Palestinian militant and al-Queda-affiliated groups come out in favor of the action.
I don’t understand ---- of what exactly was Berg “ignorant?” In fact he appears to have been a giving person. Berg was in Iraq to help build the Iraqi infrastructure, a job that he was apparently very qualified. Nothing “ignorant” there - maybe “reckless” but this wasn’t the first occasion. According to Newday.com Burg ALSO *"made several trips to Third World Countries – at one point teaching villagers in Ghana how make bricks.…
…His father said Berg returned from his trip to Ghana emaciated because he gave away most of his food, and the only possessions he had were the clothes on his back."*
I’ve heard calls for genocide, torture, and specific humiliations since 9/11 of the whole Muslim world by 1000s of supposedly Christian Americans. Some major US religious leaders have seriously badmouthed the whole religion of Islam. US and British soldiers have subsequently committed war crimes of torture and murder.
Sadr is a Shi’ite and the killers were supposedly Al Quaeda. Shi’ites are Al Quaeda’s enemy as Al Quaeda are Sunni Wahhabists.
You’ll never know how much Americans appreciate the support that we’ve received. I will NEVER forget the scene at Buckingham Palace when they played the US national anthem. I still get emotional thinking about it.
And yes, I was aware of the death of the Dutch Soldier. I can’t speak for everyone, but I mourn his death with a greater sadness because his sacrifice transcended his own country.
On a personal note, I would have a hell of a lot more respect for the AQ asshats who did the execution if they had the freaking balls to show their faces.
<tongue firmly in cheek, and holding a huge pile of salt>
Of course they would be perfectly safe because all wogs look alike.
< 
I cant believe a friend of mine still thinks all iraqis look alike…talk about a racist individual…when I hung with the islamic students in university I had no trouble telling them or members of their families in pictures apart. heck, all they wanted was an education to take home and improve their country with=\ Anybody else heard people saying that all people of ‘insert nationality here’ look alike?>
Given this was pretty clearly Al-Zarqawi’s doing, isn’t it worth asking why we didn’t kill him back when we had the chance? He had at least three plans on the table to take him out, and they all got nixed. True, if we had killed him when we had the chance (when he was in the northern part of Iraq not controlled by Saddam) it would have weakened the political case for the Iraq war. But then, it also would have hurt Al Qaeda’s subsequent move into Iraq after the war in order to exploit it.
I would suspect that they did this in hopes of turning more people against the occupations. However, I think that this will backfire on them. This videotape does two things: (1) takes some of the focus off of the prisoner abuse and (2) will cause some people to say, “Hey, what our soldiers did was wrong, but we don’t go around decapitating people.” I think it also will give people something to think about when pondering just why we are in Iraq. The last few weeks have been quite bad for us in Iraq and why we are there has been lost in all the controversy. However, now people can say, “See, these people are the reason we are there.” Overall, I think this was a pretty stupid move by the terrorists.
My question 3 seems to be going where I didn’t actually intend it to go. Maybe I wrote it incorrectly. I was asking if this event gave some perspective between the US abuses (and the subsequent airing of them, the punishment of those in the wrong, etc) and what AQ had done. This was not meant to be an excuse for either action, as both were obviously wrong, but simply to show the contrast between what the US soldiers did (i.e. they committed crimes, and were punished for it BY the US) and what AQ has done (i.e. committed a summary execution of an innocent civilian and taped it for propaganda purposes).
All the facts haven’t yet come out about the prison episode, but I’m fairly confident that the majority of it will come out in the end, and that those responsible will be punished, and that the system itself will change. Its not exactly a shinning point in US history, though its not like its that unusual for soldiers, even (or especially?) US soldiers to go off the reservation so to speak and commit attrocities when they aren’t properly supervised. They are only people after all, and people commit crimes and even atrocites all the time…especially under the stress and fear of combat.
Perhaps it will come to light that prisoners under US supervision were in fact murdered for no reason at all (I’ll hold judgement on this until I see some facts that prisoners were in fact killed, and the actual events that transpired for why/how they were killed or died). The difference, of course, is that this wasn’t US policy, and those who committed the crimes WILL be punished, and that the US hasn’t covered all this up (i.e. the entire world knows about this fuck up by the US), nor have we ignored it (as other nations have done when similar things have happened in THEIR pasts), while this IS the official AQ policy (i.e. the killing of civilians, summary executions, etc) and they will have nothing but praise for what was done. So, for me at least it puts things into a bit of perspective. It excuses nothing on either side, nor did I mean this question to be interperated that it does.
-XT
Right, unless we’re going to find out that this was approved U.S. policy to kill prisoners, – no matter what else is still out there the differences are that we are investigating, self-reporting, and attempting to locate and solve the problem. Ours is considered a ‘systemic problem’ ---- the beheading of Berg was an accepted part of a system. Big, big difference.
The problem with this reasoning is that Al Qaeda already did things like this long before the Iraq war even took place. So claiming that this is some new revelation about what they are like falls a little flat. They killed Daniel Pearl in much the same way, for instance. We already knew that Al Qaeda was a bunch of monsters when we were horrified with the prison scandal: so why would this magically create any new contrasts?
I’ve seen the video, by the way, and it is truly, truly sickening. I can’t even begin to imagine how anyone could become the sort of person necessary to do that to another fearful, feeling, aware human being who poses no threat at all to you.
But it wouldn’t have if the photos had not been leaked. The army report was, and until last I check, still is, illegally listed classified. It would have gone well under everyone’s radar if not for the photos coming out.
The problem is: Al Qaeda is not a country. It doesn’t have any standards or due process of law or any lasting reputation to defend. It isn’t in charge of running societies, and it doesn’t set policy. It isn’t answerable to anyone. It’s just a bunch of organized thugs. Saddam himself is a far better contrast to us than Al Qaeda. The things Saddam did in that prison were most certainly far worse than what we did. But we knew that already: and yet we were still horrified, contrast or no.
So no, I don’t think this provides any real legitimate contrast. It’s a huge story, and a real outrage, but it represents no information we didn’t have before: i.e. Al Qaeda are evil bastards and plenty of worse atrocities than we have participated in have and will occur.
Who said anything about it being new? Not only has AQ committed atrocities for a long time, but war crimes have been committed for a long time too by just about every country thats ever fielded a military. Where are you getting the ‘new’ thing from?
I haven’t seen it, though I’ve heard it described. I have no intention of watching such a thing. And I have no idea how someone could do such a thing. But then, I have no idea how someone could torture or humiliate prisoners under their care either.
We’ll never know of course, but I think that, by the very nature of our system, it WOULD have come out, sooner or later. Some sharp reporter type, or another person sickened by what he saw…something would have come out to break it open eventually. Eventually such things always come out in the end in a democracy with a free press. One of the things I cherish about our system.
Valid point…AQ isn’t a country, true enough. And true, it doesn’t have any standards or due process. I suppose that we could compare and contrast things under Saddam instead, but there would be no point…again, the systems are too different to make a true comparison. I see a sharp contrast between the two events/systems, but conceed that maybe its in my own mind alone.
Fair enough.
-XT
Find the terrorists and kill them with extreme prejudice.
What a cop out! I’ll give you a million to one odds that no American military personnel sliced the throat of a live Iraqi until his head broke off. Please …