I’ve no idea what you’re on about but no matter.
An interesting question is:
So even the mad-dogs wanted her freed.
One day these people will face justice.
TLC1, since I realize you probably haven’t seen many of the threads lunched by that particular poster, I’ll just say “Yep”.
er, launched, that is.
If we reach the point at which we are all the same species, at which the only discernable difference between US troops and terrorists is the flags under which we fight then, in the most serious, most literal, most accurate way, the terrorists have already won.
That is an interesting point, and one that I was about to bring up.
I reckon it was a group of al-Zarqawi wannabes. They wanted to kidnap a foreigner and send them on to Tawhid and Jihad in order prove that they are worthy to join their prestigious group. But then they thought, “hey, if the person we kidnap is famous, then Tawhid and Jihad will really be able to stick it to the world! Al-Zarqawi will love us! Yeah, let’s kidnap a famous person!”
Hassan was a likely candidate. She was quite well-known in Iraq (cite), and what’s more, she was of foreign descent. Perfect! So they plotted and carried out the kidnapping and offered her to Tawhid and Jihad.
But Tawhid and Jihad’s goal is to gain power in Iraq. To gain power, they need the support of a lot of people in Iraq. They are killing soldiers and contractors because many Iraqi people see them as the invaders. But Hassan wasn’t a soldier or a contractor – she a full citizen who had been living in Iraq for over 30 years. What’s more, people in Iraq loved her. If they killed her, they certainly wouldn’t gain any support, and would likely lose a lot. So Tawhid and Jihad told our anonymous little group, “naw, we don’t want 'er. You best put 'er back where you done found 'er.”
So all the effort the group took to kidnap her was in vain. They were pissed! They were so angry that they slipped into a child-like temper tantrum. “You can’t tell me what to do!! You’re not the boss of me!! I’m gonna kill her anyway!! How do you like that?!”
Well, that’s my wacky theory, anyway.
I think killing Hassan was just about the stupidest thing Zarqawi has done… killing americans is all fine and dandy with the Iraqis. Killing an Iraqi national (she was married to one) and especially someone from CARE… and a woman !
It does show that **both sides ** aren’t that bright about how they handle violence… and do not fanthom the political consequences.
( I sure hope her death is a false report… )
Okay, then why hack her up? To prove how scary tough they are?
Maybe just to help dispose of the corpse, though desecrating the body of your enemy is a sign of disdain and hatred that goes back at least as far as the Iliad.
<rant alert>
So, to recap here…a US marine shoots an insurgent in a combat zone and it gets 4 pages of mostly rants against said young marine, though we all know that this will be investigated and if found guilty said marine will face punishment.
An innocent woman is murdered by these same insurgent (along with countless other innocent civilians based on the DvD’s found at the ‘slaughterhouses’ throughout Fallujah…were said insurgent was killed by the marine) and this rates a few half hearted ‘well, thats really bad’ posts, and a few that ask who killed her (not sure what the implication of the original poster on this tact had but I have my own guess).
And I’m told basically that of course everyone knows that these insurgents are animals and do these kinds of things…and that the US is held to a higher standard (and we hold ourselves to a higher standard). Ok…I buy that to a certain extent. It still smacks of a double standard to me…and an out of wack double standard to boot. The US is held to an unattainably high standard (i.e. our troops aren’t expected, or appearently allowed, to be human), and these insurgents are given a pass because they aren’t expected to act like humans, being as they are some kind of subspecies or something.
A US soldier kills a fellow enemy combatant in a combat zone. A US soldier who is obviously under the stress of combat. Yes, he may have done wrong. Yes, its something that we, as Americans, don’t feel good about. But come on…the vitriol in that thread was thick enough to spread, the knee jerk jumping to automatically try and convict the man without all the facts set new speed records. And I notice the world has jumped on board in condemning both the marine and the US has been fairly heated…to say the least.
On the other hand we have a woman who is an aid worker in Iraq…striving and devoting her life to helping the Iraqi people. She is captured, though she has exactly zero to do with the war, taken to one of these ‘slaughterhouses’ by basically thugs, held in captivity…and eventually blindfolded and executed. For absolutely no reason at all.
Where is the outrage? Where are the strident denounciations of this behavior? Where is the understanding for a young US marine who if fighting these kinds of people? Where is the praise for the US for taking out Fallujah…a nest of these kinds of people?
Ok, my rant is over. This test of the emergency fairness system of the SDMB is over. Had this been an actual fair and balanced look at these two issues the OP would have dropped over dead on the spot. Thanks for your participation. 
-XT
You assumed that people would see the moral difference between evil deeds happening in the pursuit of good ends and evil deeds happening in the pursuit of evil ends. That was erroneous.
You also assumed that people would be able to recognize evil. That also was erroneous.
OK, I’m guilty as charged. I do hold a double standard. I wasn’t involved with any discussion or pitting of the marine, but I am definitely troubled by the killing. I guess I kind of expect that behavior (kidnapping and killing of innocents) from the groups kidnapping foriegners, but then again I consider them to be criminals. Kind of like if I hear about some criminal walking into a bank, shooting the security gaurd, and taking money, I think ‘I hope they catch that bastard’. If I hear my dad did the same thing, I would be much more emotional and upset. I guess I wouldn’t shed any tears if I heard the murderers or Hassan were gunned down like dogs, but I don’t think the marine should meet the same fate. Still, the fact that the ‘good guys’ did that bothers me immensely. I want to think of us as the good guys, but actions like that make it harder to do so. So I am more upset over the killing by the marine.
I understand…and even agree to a certain degree. We SHOULD be held (and hold ourselves) to a higher standard. And we DO…after all, this came out immediately (i.e. it wasn’t censored in any way), and its being investigated by our military.
But to my mind its a hugely unfair double standard…one situation was a COMBAT situation involving a stressed out KID who ‘murdered’ a fellow combatant in a tense situation. The other was premeditated and cold blooded murder of a WOMAN…and a woman who was not only a non-combatant but someone who was there to frigging HELP the Iraqi’s. And yet I see a hell of a lot more rantage both here and on the internet about this marine than I see about this poor woman.
Well, nothing new me making erroneous assertions.
-XT
I agree. Killing her was the most politically inept move that Zarqawi has commited yet. Did he really think that killing her was going to win him the hearts and minds of the Iraqis? 
He is getting desparate and will soon make his last mistake.
It seems somewhat ironic that you critisize people for being more fixated on this marine then on the murder of Ms. Hassan when its fairly obvious that in this thread you really wanted to focus attention on the fixatation on the marine, and didn’t give a carp about discussing the murder of Ms. Hassan.
And a four page pit thread and a thread in General Questions, as was pointed out in the second post of this thread. The meaning and guilt or innocence of thse involved involved in the mosque shooting is debatable, so there’s a long thread about it in Great Debates. Everyone agrees about the meaning of the murder of Ms. Hassan, so threads on this subject are in the pit. None the less, when you started this thread, several people made an effort to find some interesting related topics to debate. I speculated on what the goals of the hostage takers were and the signifigence of the mutilation of her body, there was the always annoying but inevitible debate about whether it was Bush’s fault or not, and most interestingly tagos chimed in with the interesting fact that unlike most hostage killings, Zarqawi has apparently not claimed responsibility, which you responded to by making shady insinuations about his motive:
My guess for tagos’s motive was trying to save your trainwreck of an OP with actual information and a topic to debate. The article he links to actually tells us something about Ms. Hassan’s captors, and about the insurgency in general. If you wanted to debate the supposed double standard by which the marine and the insurgents are held, then perhaps you should have stated so clearly in the OP instead of offering a free for all “lets discuss Ms. Hassan’s killing” thread, then blowing by all of the posts people wrote to actually discuss issues related to the killing so you could have your sanctimonious moment of “Where Is The Outrage!!”.
No one gives the insurgents a free pass. We are actively trying to kill them with bombs. They act like we expect, but its not like anyone is saying that makes it OK, we’re saying that their punishment is not debatable, while the punishment of the marine is.
I agree a few posters in the marine thread (well Diogenes, anyway) were taking their fustrations at what they see as an unjust war out on the marine, and were far too eager to condemn him. But the place to critisize this is in that thread, not start a “trick” thread about Ms. Hassan so that you can rag us all out about not being outraged enough.
The outrage for Ms. Hassan is in the pit thread about her murder. The understanding for the marine is in the Great Debate thread about his actions. Where is the point of this thread?
So, if there is a pit thread on it that pretty much fully releases the outrage on an issue? I assume there must not have been a pit thread on the marine shooting then.
I guess there really is no point to this thread (your description of a train wreck was accurate) as it hasn’t gone the way I had hoped. Basically I was looking for some reactions to the events, and some comparison and contrast to the marine shooting…but mostly I wanted to talk about this womans death and then got peeved when no one really wanted to talk about it (thus my rant earlier). My bad. The thread can sink into obscurity as a failure on my part for not being able to articulate what I was looking for and for lack of interest.
-XT
For me - and maybe a lot of others - the reaction is pure speechlessness. I honestly can’t form words on it; nothing seems right. I can put it all together, I just can’t express a reaction.
It literally boggles my mind. It’s much like 9/11 for me - I couldn’t and still can’t get angry, because I can’t even process the mechanics of how it could happen, let alone react put it all together and react to it.
The soldier? I’m upset with his actions because he’s one of ours, and he’s supposed to be doing his best. I can understand his mistake, but he’s got to pay for it too.
Sorry about the overly long rant. The “Where is the Outrage” attitude gets to me, as I think the last thing that this forum needs is more outrage, whether about Iraq, the election or any other hot button topics. I didn’t mean to question your sincerity in wanting to discuss the hostage killing.
That said, I think your wrong in saying that no one wants to discuss the hostage’s murder. As I said before, several folks have chimed in with interesting (if perhaps not adaquately outraged) posts. It’s easier to see if you skip the usual blabber posts about whether it’s Bush’s fault or not. tagos’s link, especially was news to me, anyways, as I think it makes clear that this hostage killing happend outside of the control of Zarqawi.
I think this is interesting because it suggests:
- How uncentralized the insurgency is becoming.
- Zarqawi didn’t want this women killed, and thus presumably does have some sort of sense of managing his PR inside Iraq.
- That tactic of using the execution of hostages is spreading to other groups
Erm, didn’t we already establish that Zarqawi didn’t do it? Or, at the least, there is no evidence connecting him or his group to it?
Read my link. He wanted her released. He, in this particular instance, isn’t the murdering scumbag.
Another aid group has announced it’s pulling out of Iraq. link
The attacks on aid organizations certainly seem to be having an effect. The BBC says the organization pulling out today was “one of the last”. Even the intrepid Red Cross has pulled its international members out of the country and won’t enter Fallujah because it can’t get the insurgents to guarentee thier safety.
These aid organizations are an important tool for winning the hearts and minds, so I imagine expelling them is a victory for the insurgents and a sign that their hostage taking, bombings and assasinations are having effects other then just pissing off their fellow Iraqis.