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COMMENTARY
September 1, 2004
What works
It is an axiom of human nature true in all cultures at all times and places that if you reward bad behaviour you will get more of it. This is not rocket science and yet in the name of "compassion" or from lesser desiderata the fixed principle of those who are weak in heart and mind is to go right ahead. "Liberals" I call them but the reader may call them anything she pleases. They are the people who can always find a reason to reward bad behaviour -- invariably at the price of punishing the opposed good behaviour. This in turn leads to transvaluations of good and bad demanding additional cartloads of "nuance". The usual if rarely acknowledged reason to reward bad behaviour is to avoid immediate pain or more precisely to trade it -- less pain now for more pain later. Cowardice has never been short of plausible arguments and conversely courage requires at least a moment of silence for the "still small voice". Why am I moralizing? Because we have to start somewhere in considering the latest challenge presented in Iraq; which if it is not dealt with effectively and memorably will soon be a problem far outside Iraq. The current issue is the kidnappings which are becoming standard procedure among the Jihadis. It is now arranged in a standard format. A suitable person or small group is apprehended a video is made of them begging for their lives this is shown gleefully and internationally by the Arab TV network Al Jazeera -- "the smiling media face of the Jihad" -- and then depending on the whim of the kidnappers the victims are either gorily murdered (for another video) or casually set free. Note: the casually setting some captives free is part of the psychological game intended to contribute to panic by increasing the adversary's feeling of helplessness. The Jihadis are adopting kidnapping over other methods of advancing their interests and ideology because it is now working for them better than other methods. For instance car bombings are proving in Iraq at least much less effective now that they are taken for granted. They are dealt with more and more like any kind of car "accident" -- just a price you pay for having roads. At the moment of writing the Jihadis have all Paris in convulsions over two journalists they may or may not behead -- Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro and Christian Chesnot of Radio France Internationale -- an act which they have presented for Western consumption as if it were a challenge to the recent French law banning Muslim women's headscarves (and other religious paraphernalia) from French public schoolyards -- a law which President Jacques Chirac could not now overturn except by extra-constitutional means. At the same time another cell has grabbed the attention of Kathmandu by "executing" a dozen Nepali contract workers. From the final video a feed of which Al Jazeera was happy to provide into Nepali homes the Jihadis seem to have got bored after decapitating the first and just shot the rest. They were then at pains in an accompanying message to show solidarity with Nepal's own domestic Maoist terrorists which should help answer the oft rhetorically-asked question about whether terrorists could co-operate across the Sunni-Shia divide. (Outlaws and other outlaws have always found common interests: it is another one of those fixed rules. It's a snip when they have common enemies.) President Chirac's response -- after the surprised popular outpouring Why us? We're as anti-American as you are! -- has been to send his foreign minister on a whirlwind tour of Arab capitals to get help pleading for the captives' release. He found that he could call upon the good offices of Yasser Arafat Hamas and Moqtada al-Sadr in addition to more conventional diplomatic contacts to make this pitch. We will see if it works. It might because the Jihadis in question -- the same cell that beheaded the Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni last week and which from the quality of its captives obviously has its own good media connexions (just a small hint to investigators) -- will have been able to show the whole French state bowing and scraping before it for mercy. This will in turn enhance their fellow Jihadis' prestige across Europe. And it might not: these Jihadis may butcher their latest victims as they did Baldoni. Either way it would appear that the French have had another opportunity to join the "coalition of the willing" against the international Jihad; but have again chosen to encourage it and promote kidnapping rather than take sides with the Americans. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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