1 Boring Old Man

It’s not like in the Wizard of Oz:

Ding Dong, the Witch is dead,
Which old Witch?
The Wicked Witch.
Ding Dong, the Wicked Witch is dead.

Munchkinland isn’t liberated. The end of the jihadist suicide bomber epidemic isn’t likely either. But there is, at least, a feeling of relief that this man whose brutality seems beyond question is no longer in the strange mix of forces operative in wartime Iraq. I wish we understood it better – the kind of monotonous hatred that fuels the neverending barbarism in places like the middle east. It’s like it’s in the sand itself.

Alan Dershowitz has an post on The Huffington Post right now using our targeted killing of Al-Zarqawi to point out the hypocracy of the British criticizing the Israelis for similar targeted killing of Terrorists. I’m sure there are plenty of writings in other parts of the world justifying the al-Zarqawi murders of journalist hostages, using some kind of similar logic. It just depends on which side you’re on, how you view the current threats, where you focus your fears, and what you see as a just cause. But at 64 years of age, I can’t any more feel the Wizard of Oz-ness of it all. And I can’t feel Dershowitz’s zeal for rationalizing or justifying targeted killing either. It’s just part of a senseless tragedy that I don’t really understand.

But our soldiers and military intelligence are to be commended – they completed their mission and we are deeply appreciative – conservative and liberal, Democrat and Republican.  Opposing the war in Iraq in general has nothing to do with supporting the crazy jihadists that operate there. Disagreeing with our Administration’s wisdom in starting a pre-emptive war in Iraq does not mean that we might suggest some other solution to the primitive and unfamiliar ways of the people who live in that region. Writing endlessly about the Administration’s duplicity in starting this war on false pretenses does not mean that we don’t support our troops – in fact just the opposite. What these things do mean is that many of us do not agree with putting our American children in harm’s way for any but the most desparate of circumstances, and we don’t think this was one of them. Al-Qaeda, yes. Iraq, No. All but a few of our soldiers have kept their heads in this impossible situation – one in which they cannot tell friend from foe. I don’t know if I could do what they’ve done.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was a forty year old man who spent at least half of his life filled with righteous hatred and murder. He died at a meeting with his spiritual adviser, Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman. I wish "Wicked Witch" or "Axis of Evil" explained that for me. It just doesn’t. I’ll bet he thought that I was a "Wicked Witch" and part of the "Axis of Evil" too…