Posted on 07/16/2002 2:06:23 PM PDT by knighthawk
The other day, from the comfort of my office, I watched a man's head being severed and, with his eyes peacefully closed and bottom lip slightly sagging, held aloft by the hair.
You can watch it too, if you like, for the video of Daniel Pearl's murder is freely available on the Web. An alternative paper, the Boston Phoenix, linked to a Web site hosting another Web site -- admittedly, a despicable, vile one -- that carried the footage. Yesterday, the creature who organized the killing, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, was himself justly sentenced to death by a Pakistani court.
The Pearl footage isn't what has been called a "snuff film," since those are urban myths. This was real. The execution of The Wall Street Journal reporter is the triumphant climax of a short video released, obviously, by the al-Qaeda front-group which arranged it (currently touting itself as the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistan Sovereignty). Coinciding with the soundtrack of Pearl's voice are images of Ariel Sharon, George Bush and the various other stock visuals that periodically compel mobs of bearded, besandalled Middle Easterners into bursts of Two Minute Hates. Just in case we don't get the hint, Pearl's words, "I am a Jew," are replayed a dozen times.
His voice is calm, but he sounds rushed, as if he is reading from a script and wants to get it over with. At the time, Pearl must have believed that if he issued the boilerplate denunciations of himself, American imperialism and Zionist domination he would be released. That was never on the cards. He was kidnapped to be killed. It's strange to think that Omar -- a man who loathes the West -- is being allowed to appeal his sentence (how Western!), whereas an innocent man was never afforded the same opportunity.
The video targets potential Islamist recruits who find the decapitation of a Yid and a Yank (what a glorious double whammy!) ghoulishly thrilling -- a real turn-on for the kind of people who would otherwise be gang-raping village women and speciously claiming it is Allah's will. Its blunt, emotive imagery is designed to appeal to the illiterate, the wrathful and the stupid. More sophisticatedly (relatively speaking, of course), it is also supposed to frighten us with its subplot about the vengeance that will be visited upon the West if we do not heed Pearl's doom.
Now, we are all familiar with the rather repetitive and frequently self-serving freedom-of-speech argument about censorship, so I will not bother wasting time debating whether the video ought to be banned. It exists, it will not go away and that is all there is to the matter. I am more concerned with the question, should I have watched it?
Let me answer that. Unless one is doing so purely for prurient reasons, I think it is important to watch people die. To do so is a task certainly not suited to all temperaments, but there are times when literary description -- no matter how minutely detailed -- is insufficient to describe and realize the monsters lurking in the realm of horror and evil. The most powerful and visceral medium for transmitting indescribable -- literally -- experiences is that of sight. For this reason, even at the risk of giving them nightmares, it is necessary for people to see obscene, unbelievable, unforgettable images of the Holocaust, the slave-clogged Gulags and, say, severely wounded soldiers missing their faces. Like the Pearl footage, these things must be real: while movies can be scary, we comfortably know that the actors, after being shot, go home at the end of the shoot. But by glimpsing the unedited, absolute perimeter of what humans have done to ourselves, we can not only comprehend the fragility of security, life, civility and happiness but gird our determination to defend them against their foes.
Watching Pearl -- I don't think I deserve to call him "Daniel" -- die is not terrifying, nor is it the worst sight you are ever likely to see. In my case, that dubious honour goes to the several hours' worth of Nazi footage of concentration camp medical and physiological experiments on "volunteers" I watched -- necessarily, for academic reasons -- back at university.
In fact, it is the film's very conciseness that makes the blood boil, more so than with the Nazi films that I soon got used to. More searingly than a thousand words, the quickie pornography of Pearl's end (the execution lasts less than 30 seconds) indelibly demonstrates the savagery, irrationality and mercilessness of this Islamo-fascist enemy.
If you want to insert a little reality in your life watch it, then remember that he has a baby and wife at home.
Just be thankful my finger isnt on the button, I would have dropped a couple nukes by now.
People to often think we have to be merciful when in fact the correct response is vengeful justice.
American mass media: "No, because that might make you want to go to war to avenge their deaths."
By these words alone.... the title of this thread is answered.
By these words alone.... our standards not falter
by these words alone... we proffer doom upon those who would have our lives forfeit
By these words alone....you shall not trespass my country again.
I have already seen the 'clean-up' of the Nazi deathcamps.
I will watch the hanging of Pearl's murderers, if it happens.
The pukes who murdered Pearl deserve a tall tree and a short rope.
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