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COMMENTARY
October 9, 2004
Bombs v. votes
In the course of the last news cycle the Jihadis have cut the throat of Kenneth Bigley their British prisoner in Iraq. Exploded three car bombs obliterating a couple dozen Israeli tourists at a Red Sea resort in Egypt. Achieved at least three blasts at various locations in Pakistan (Shia Jihadis killing about three dozen Sunnis in a reprisal bombing in Multan). Strafed Israeli civilians at two locations in Gaza. Did one big hit in Kabul and at least six little ones around Afghanistan narrowly missing several election candidates including President Karzai's running mate. Blown up the entrance to the Indonesian embassy at Paris breaking glass across the upscale neighbourhood across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. There is more; I have limited space. In media terms that's about a B-plus performance with an argument for an A-minus. In arguing for the lesser score it is worth mentioning a couple of items on the other side of the ledger. An alert U.S. pilot was able to kill from the air three Jihadis in the act of planting and rigging artillery shells in a freshly-dug hole in Sadr City Baghdad. And Afghan soldiers stopped a fuel truck just south of Kandahar driven by three Pakistan nationals who had loaded it with 40 000 litres of gasoline and rigged it to explode in the middle of Kandahar on election day. The reader would be right to detect some sarcasm in the way I am reporting this. One becomes jaded by too much of anything even too many explosions and the purpose of the sarcasm is paradoxically to remind that it is all very real. I invite my reader to imagine the kind of news day it would be if the gas truck had made it into Kandahar. Or perhaps by morning when this column appears some other large atrocity will have been achieved somewhere in Afghanistan. For with more than 10 million registered voters eager to cast their ballots in the country's first national election today -- including nearly 5 million women -- the Jihadis have their work cut out. They tried everything they could to prevent this election; they'll do everything they can to make it a memorable disaster. You would think -- and I once would have thought -- that the response to the Jihadis across the civilized world would be See you in paradise, Ahmed. For it should be part of the definition of a civilized person that he will not compromise with terrorists that he will not do the terrorists' bidding. Let it be said today that we will see many millions in Afghanistan who by going bravely to the polls have performed that act of defiance that is the minimum required of the civilized person. But a friend who watches TV notes some expostulation by a CNN correspondent who said that with the death of Mr. Bigley the British prime minister Tony Blair has blood on his hands . This my friend adds is the moral and intellectual equivalent of asserting that Winston Churchill started the Holocaust. It is a judgement on events so utterly upside down as to constitute in itself a real evil. Let me try to keep this simple. There is a war on -- the explosions in every part of our globe should bring this home to any reader. There can be all kinds of room for tactical discussion about what needs to be done where and when. But Afghanistan and Iraq are front lines in that war. The Americans and their allies are trying to establish democracies in those countries under impossible conditions. How can any decent person wish them to fail? How can any honest person blame them for the acts of their enemies? Let Paul Bremer the former U.S. "viceroy" in Iraq who is now being selectively quoted against President Bush by the Kerry campaign and the mainstream media finish my column for me. I quote these remarks because my reader is unlikely to find them elsewhere. They provide the context for Afghanistan too: "The press has been curiously reluctant to report my constant public support for the President's strategy in Iraq and his policies to fight terrorism. ... "The President was right when he concluded that Saddam Hussein was a menace who needed to be removed from power. He understands that our enemies are not confined to Al Qaeda and certainly not just to Osama bin Laden. ... "As the bipartisan 9/11 commission reported there were contacts between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime going back a decade. ... "President Bush has said that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. He is right." David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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