Dragging The Left Down With Al-Zarqawi
I’ve spent much of the last few days following the liberal coverage of the death of Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi. It almost sounds like a lament. Is it because they saw him as a freedom fighter against an imperialist “occupier”? Is it because they saw similarities between the United States and terrorists as they do the conflict between Israel and Hamas?
I dare say they do. They look on with pity, those poor Palestinians who are outgunned and out-financed, whose only resort is to bomb innocent Israeli civilians and hide amongst their own civilian population for cover. Zarqawi had the balls to stand up to us, and now that he’s dead, there is a chance, however remote, that hostilities may ease. For the American left, that’s not good news.
After all, if not for the insurgency, the United States may have left Iraq more than a year ago. Despite the insurgency, the Iraqi citizenry has voted on numerous occasions for candidates other than the lone Saddam Hussein, which was the norm. Women are no longer targeted for the pleasures of his evil regime. Most of what George Bush promised the Iraqi people has come to fruition.
It may be an apropos time to remind liberals of just who this poor dead terrorist really was.
“As Information concerning his demise continues to surface, the death of Abu Musab Zarqawi marks the end of one of the most accomplished mass murderers in the modern history of terrorism. According to the claims of responsibility released by his own group in Iraq, Zarqawi and his followers have conservatively murdered thousands of Iraq civilians and hundreds of coalition soldiers — in addition to perpetrating the February 2006 bombing of the al-Askariyyah Mosque in Samarra that instigated a wave of sectarian violence across the country.”
- Dan Darling, Weekly Standard
Ice Berg, Dead Ahead
With that, check out this quote from Michael Berg, father of Nicholas Berg who was reportedly personally beheaded by Abu Musab Zarqawi. Mr. Berg is a vocal critic of the Iraq war, the Bush administration, and is running for Congress on the Green Party ticket in Delaware.
“Well, I was not relieved, not comforted by his death. In fact, I was saddened by his death, as I am about any human’s death. Zarqawi is not the only one that died if 1,000 pounds of bombs were exploded there. Aside from being a human being and having people that love him that will suffer the same pain that my family and I have suffered, Zarqawi is a political figure. He and George Bush have been playing a volleyball game of revenge for too long now, and this is just another spike in that volleyball game, and it will bring about only more death, more sadness, and it will perpetuate this endless cycle of revenge.”
- Democracy Now!, June 9, 2006
<>We have seen many images and video over the years, courtesy of al-Jazeera, of civilians being posed in front of terrorists including Zarqawi, seconds before a beheading. Most of us saw the image of Nicholas Berg on the left. Michael Berg sees the image with a President Bush on the right.When asked what would give him closure, Berg said, “The end of the war and getting rid of George Bush. I don’t think that Zarqawi is himself responsible for the killings of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq. I think George Bush is.”
Zarqawi’s organization claimed responsibility for the execution of Nick Berg in May 2004, and the video was released with a caption reading: “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi slaughtering an American.”
Yet Michael Berg continues, “George Bush is the one that invaded this country, George Bush is the one that destabilized it so that Zarqawi could get in, so that Zarqawi had a need to get in, to defend his region of the country from American invaders.”
So according to Mr. Berg, the rape and torture rooms should have been allowed to exist. Saddam Hussein should have been allowed to murder, en masse, all those who opposed his rule. Berg blames President Bush for the torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison, as well as repeatedly blaming Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his 26-year-old son’s death.
“Yeah, like George Bush didn’t OK the torture and death and rape of people in the Abu Ghraib prison for which my son was killed in retaliation?”
Only a partisan hack would believe that the President authorized the “torture and rape” of Iraqi citizens. There have been tens of thousands of American military personnel who’ve passed through Iraq. In war, bad things happen and have allegedly been done by a few small handfuls of them. To taint the American military as a whole shows the typical disdain a war-resister (coward) has towards the very people who defend his freedom to protest.
Regarding the death of Zarqawi, Berg concluded, “I have no sense of relief, just sadness that another human being had to die. I have learned to forgive a long time ago, and I regret mostly that that will bring about another wave of revenge from his cohorts from al Qaeda,” he told Fox News. To refer to Zarqawi as a human being is opinion. We’ll never know, but for those of you who’ve witnessed a beheading video, “human being” is the last word that comes to mind. Very few of us human beings could and would do that to another.
It is unknown where Mr. Berg gets his intelligence, and the American people have been warned that the war isn’t over. But the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has surely dealt the Iraqi insurgency an important blow backwards, and I hope our military can clear out the remaining weeds in a more expedited fashion so the Iraqi people walk the streets more freely without his deadly interference.
False Address
A few weeks ago, 21-year-old Jean Sara Rohe at the New School graduation ceremony in New York, used her opportunity to address the audience with a rebuke of the keynote speaker Senator John McCain. McCain was invited to speak by New School President, former Senator Bob Kerrey.
It was reported that nearly a thousand people signed a petition, urging Kerrey to cancel McCain’s invitation. The “brave” Rohe began her comments by signing an excerpt of the song, she says learned as a child, called “Living Planet” by Jay Manquita….
If all the world were peaceful now
And forever more
Peaceful at the surface
And peaceful at the core
All the joy within my heart
Would be so free to soar
And we’re living on a living planet
Circling the living star
I don’t know where we’re going
But I know we’re going far
We can change the universe
By being who we are
And we’re living on a living planet
Circling a living star.
How liberal.
Let’s jump around a bit, as she continued….
“I am disappointed that I have to abandon the things I had wanted to speak about, but I feel that it is absolutely necessary to acknowledge the fact that this ceremony has become something other than the celebratory gathering that it was intended to be due to all the media attention surrounding John McCain’s presence here today and the student and faculty outrage generated by his invitation to speak.”
Ms. Rohe didn’t have to change the direction of her address. I’m sure her emotions told her to do so. I’m sure she later received more than her share of pats on the back by her fellow students and professors for publicly embarrassing someone slightly more important, in the grand scheme of things, than her.
I’d like to see her try that in the workplace….
“The senator does not reflect the ideals upon which this university was founded. Not only this — please, not only this, but his invitation was a top-down decision that did not take into account the desires and interests of the student body on an occasion that is supposed to honor us above all and to commemorate our achievements.”
Please see my last column on know-it-all, self-centered kids.
Yes, as Ms. Rohe reminds us, this ceremony was supposed to honor them and their achievements. It was supposed to be all about them, yet a United States senator who had the nerve to vote his conscience, came and spoiled it all.
And just what are the ideals that this New School college were founded on?
“The New School is a legendary, progressive university comprising eight schools bound by a common, unusual intent: to prepare and inspire its 9,300 undergraduate and graduate students to bring actual, positive change to the world.”
- New School website
Normally, liberal-led colleges declare to us all that they celebrate free speech, inclusion, and tolerance. You know, all the courtesies Rohe and her narcissistic punks denied McCain.
“Senator McCain will tell us today that dissent and disagreement are our civic and moral obligation in times of crisis, and I agree. I consider this a time of crisis, and I feel obligated to speak. Senator McCain will also tell us about his strong-headed, self-assuredness in his youth which prevented him from hearing the ideas of others, and in so doing, he will imply that those of us who are young are too naive to have valid opinions and open ears.”
Nothing wrong there. I’d say she hit the nail right on the head.
“I am young, and although I don’t profess to possess the wisdom that time affords us, I do know that preemptive war is dangerous and wrong, that George Bush’s agenda in Iraq is not worth the many lives lost. And I know that despite all the havoc that my country has wrought overseas in my name, Osama bin Laden still has not been found, nor have those weapons of mass destruction.”
Needless to say, neither Osama bin Laden nor the weapons of mass destruction will be found thanks to her or anyone at her limp-wristed campus.
“We have nothing to fear from people who are different from us, from people who live in other countries, even from the people who run our government, and this we should have learned from our educations here.”
We have nothing to fear from people who are different from us, from people who live in other countries…? Apparently Ms. Rohe was sleeping in on September 11, 2001. Apparently Ms. Rohe was too busy singing when the Khobar Towers were bombed, as well as the USS Cole, or while TWA Flight 800 was blown from the sky. Maybe Margaret Hassan would correct Jean Sara Rohe, that is, if she were not murdered by her Iraqi kidnappers.
Lest she decide not to wake up, 2,986 died during the September 11, 2001 attacks, 299 US and French personnel died in the Beirut barracks bombings, 270 died onboard Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, 225 were killed in the U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania, and those are just the biggies.
Ms. Rohe needs a refresher course on the history of those who mean us no harm. Did she also forget the 2002 Bali bombing, the March 2004 Madrid train bombings, the Moscow Theatre Siege, as well as the numerous bombings perpetrated by extremists who mean innocents no harm?
“These words I speak do not reflect the arrogance of a young, strong-headed woman, but belong to a line of great progressive thought, a history in which the founders of this institution play an important part. I speak today, even through my nervousness, out of a need to honor those voices that came before me, and I hope that we graduates can all strive to do the same. Thank you very much.”
A “line of great progressive thought.” We should all ponder that one.
“Great progressive thought” has brought about no solutions to the lack of World Peace. Great progressive thought has stopped none of the kidnappings and murders in Iraq. Great progressive thought has never stopped a famine or genocide, or ethnic cleansing anywhere on our living planet.
Great progressive thought will never have the power or positive result of a couple of strategically targeted 500-pound bombs. Just ask the late Abu Musab Zarqawi.
