Say Anything Blog

I've been getting a lot of comments on the Nick Berg video post from people of varying political backgrounds. A lot of the commenters who obviously oppose the war are taking the opportunity to blame Berg's death on President Bush. In fact, Berg's own father has blamed the President. I don't understand how they can do that.

President Bush did not force them to murder Nick Berg. If the man who killed Nick Berg wanted to make a statement about America's occupation of Iraq wouldn't he have done better to give some comments to a reporter in Iraq? Wouldn't a peaceful, pleading message have worked better?

Murdering Nick Berg was a choice made by the men in the video. They weren't forced into it by any sort of circumstances. They had a lot of other options to choose from which would have been just as effective (if not more so) in accomplishing their goals. They didn't choose any of those options. Instead they chose cold-blooded murder.

And that's what separates us from them. We aren't murdering them. We kill them, yes, but only during the course of battle. We don't tie them up then make video tapes of ourselves beheading them. And if some of our soldiers get out of line and begin to act below our standards we round them up and punish them, just as we're doing now to the prisoners involved at Abu Ghraib.