Mark Steyn: He was an American, a Jew -- a trophy

Will militant Islam's apologists finally put an end to their own 'misconceptions'?

The smile on the face of the tiger is the video recording of the death of Daniel Pearl. What an accomplished production it sounds. According to Pakistani authorities, somewhere between five and eight persons were present to choreograph and record the murder of The Wall Street Journal reporter. They wanted to get it right, and, from their point of view, they did. The Arab News describes the video thus:

"As he finishes the statement, a hand appears from behind and grabs his head, while another hand appears and with a sharp-edged weapon cuts his throat."

In an artistic touch, the camera zooms in for a close-up of Pearl's severed head. See? He is an American and a Jew. We hit the jackpot! And then we cut his head off. A pity the filthy Hollywood infidels have closed their Oscar nominations, or we'd be a sure thing for Best Foreign Short.

Three weeks ago, Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent of Britain's Independent, offered a familiar argument to Pearl's kidnappers: Killing the American would be "a major blunder, an own goal of the worst kind," "the best way of ensuring that the suffering" -- of Kashmiris, Afghans, Palestinians, whatever -- "goes unrecorded." Others peddled a similar line: If you release Daniel, he'll be able to tell your story, get your message out.

Somehow we keep missing the point: the story did get out; the severed head is the message. By now, the tape has been duplicated, and re-duplicated, and copies are circulating through the bazaars and madrassahs. It's a recruitment video -- join the jihad, meet interesting people, and behead them -- and a training video, too: this is how you do it -- the statement, the knife, the defilement of the corpse. But in a more profound sense it's a boast, an act of self-congratulation, a pat on the back for a job well done: the smile on the face of the tiger.

Daniel Pearl reckoned he could ride the tiger: he was promised a meeting with an Islamofascist bigwig, so he got in a car with intermediaries he thought he knew. George Jonas wrote a brilliant column the other day on the delusions of those who think they can "establish a 'dialogue' with fanatics" or, as some of Pearl's friends put it, "bridge the misconceptions." The "misconception", presumably, is that these men are ruthless, violent, depraved. As surely we know by now, the only misconception is that that's a misconception.

Pearl thought he had won their trust, that they had accepted him as an honest broker, recognized his genuine sympathy for Muslim suffering, were willing to treat with him as one human being to another. But in the end they saw none of that: To them, he was an American, a Jew, a trophy. So they set a trap. According to one witness in a Karachi court, Omar Sheikh boasted two days beforehand that they were about to seize someone who was "anti-Islam and a Jew." By the time Robert Fisk issued his plea for mercy on February 4th, Pearl was already dead.

In Saturday's Independent, Fisk reflected on the death of the man described as his friend: "But why was he killed? Because he was a Westerner, a 'Kaffir'? Because he was an American? Or because he was a journalist?" Anyone spot the missing category? It's the one Omar Sheikh used, and the one acknowledged by Daniel Pearl in his last words: "Yes, I am a Jew ..." Fisk can't bring himself to use the word in the entire column. Full disclosure: After noodling incoherently around possible reasons for the murder, Fisk settles on a "shameful, unethical headline" over an "article by Mark Steyn" in Pearl's own Wall Street Journal. It was about Fisk's bloody beating by an Afghan mob in Pakistan last December, after which he said that, in their shoes, "I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find." It's not their fault, he insisted, their "brutality is entirely the product of others." As Fisk sees it, the mob who attacked him were "truly innocent of any crime except being the victim of the world." In The Wall Street Journal, I called this "Fiskal responsibility -- it's always the Great Satan's fault."

Insofar as there's any connection between the mugging of this vain buffoon and the murder of Daniel Pearl, it's this: History repeats itself, but, in this instance, the usual order -- tragedy's recapitulation as farce -- has been reversed. Is it too much to hope that militant Islam's apologists might finally put an end to their own "misconceptions"? Islam is not "the victim of the world," but the victim of itself. Omar Sheikh is a British public schoolboy, a graduate of the London School of Economics, and, like Osama and Mohammed Atta, a monument to the peculiar burdens of a non-deprived childhood in the Muslim world. Give 'em an e-mail address and they use it for kidnap notes. Give 'em a camcorder and they make a snuff video.

Let's assume that all the chips fell the jihadis' way, that they recruited enough volunteers to be able to kidnap and decapitate every single Jew in Palestine. Then what? Muslims would still be, as General Musharraf told a conference the other day, "the poorest, the most illiterate, the most backward, the most unhealthy, the most unenlightened, the most deprived, and the weakest of all the human race." Who would "the victim of the world" blame next? The evidence of the Sudan, Nigeria, and other parts of Africa suggests that, when there are no Jews to hand, the Islamofascists happily make do with killing Christians. In Kashmir, it's the Hindus' fault. There's always someone.

Musharraf is by far the most interesting character to emerge in that part of the world in some time, and those of us who've long backed him (see my column of October 21st, 1999) as Pakistan's least worst option have been impressed by his actions since September 11th. As I wrote recently, the British should never have created Pakistan (it was a typical botched job by that silly old queen Mountbatten). Nor should the British have created the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service whose "rogue elements" (a term covering about 97% of employees) have their fingerprints on at least some of the outlying parts of the Pearl crime scene. Nor should Pakistan's charming, urbane, westernized elite -- a ruling class whose only deficiency is that they're incapable of ruling -- ever have acceded to the Islamicization of Pakistan's British-derived legal system, under which, for example, Muslims who behead Muslims face the death penalty but Muslims who behead non-Muslims don't. No matter how zealously the Pakistani police pursue Daniel Pearl's murderers, in law his life is of less value than theirs.

This then is Musharraf's moment. Will he allow his country's darkest forces to maintain his people in their squalor? Or will he do as Ataturk did after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire? If Pakistan did not exist, it would not be necessary to invent it. But it does exist, so it's necessary to reinvent it, to reverse the vast catalogue of errors made by every wretched administrator from Lord Mountbatten to Nawaz Sharif. At the very least, the General needs to dismantle the ISI and announce immediately that the Islamic biases of the justice system are being abolished and that all individuals are equal before the law.

The Americans will provide certain incentives for him to do this. If Musharraf demurs, Washington will make other arrangements. It's his choice: He can try to ride the tiger, or resolve to kill it and hang it in his trophy room.

Hhahahahhaa
Robert Fisk, ever the faithful shill for the Islamics and other "oppressed" 3rd worlders. Even after a bunch of Pakis kicked the tar out of him few weeks back.

Unfortunately the fools who need to absorb this article the most never will. I've never understood the British love of the Levant. The Fiskers would offer themselves as an Eid sacrifice rather than admit the faults of their beloved.

It is amazing how few remember how Pakistan was created, even Ari Fleisher seemed to have forgotten (I'm generous) the other day. An Islamic case of nerves caused millions of people to be uprooted from a land where their anscestors probably lived for a 1,000 years to become free Muslims and slaves to each other. Pakistan, if I remember from Naipul correctly, is supposed to translate as Islamic paradise on earth. They have been so close to Hades all these years that Hell is a local call. How many innocent people died just because Islamics couldn't live next to Hindus and Sikhs? It's the same pattern all over the world. In the Philipines the Muslims can't live with the Christians, in Inodnesia, in Israel. When will it be the US' turn to feel the unease?

I knew that Steyn would open up a can o' whoopass on Fisk for leaving out the fact that Pearl was a Jew. Fisk left it out intentionally, and Steyn called him on it.

Mark Steyn vs. Robert Fisk?

No effing contest...

Be Seeing You,

Chris

Man, is this right on. Squishy, I-Want-to-Buy-the-World-a- Coke-and-Sing-in-Perfect-Harmony, multicultural diversity, "valuing the difference," moral equivalency Liberals like Mr. Pearl just never get it. Without taking from the horror of what happened to him (and his wife and unborn son), I cannot fathom the mindset of American Liberal Jews like Pearl. And hold the cries of anti-Semitism: I am also a Jew, but a Conservative, Vietnam vet type, JPFO kind of Jew. The only one in my congregation, but that's another story... This article nails it. Radical Islam is about converting the world to Islam or killing resisters, plus death to all Jews. But Mr. Pearl and his likethinks don't get it. Yet.

Who would "the victim of the world" blame next? The evidence of the Sudan, Nigeria, and other parts of Africa suggests that, when there are no Jews to hand, the Islamofascists happily make do with killing Christians. In Kashmir, it's the Hindus' fault. There's always someone.

"... and thats the bottom line" </stonecold>

I wonder how long the 'Phoney War' as Peggy Noonan called it in her column will go on? How many and how large will the conflagrations heaped upon us by the islamo-nazis have to be to actually arrouse the American people and our government to effective and appropriate action?

The limited engagement so far initiated has been a decent prelude. If the fascists are smart they will lay back with only small harrassment type ops for a while so that we move many of our men and munitions back to the comforts of home. Then another WTC sort of attack. Maybe bigger this time.

What will it take for us to recognise that we are at war with Islam? That an inferior, indeed disfunctional and insane culture has called us out? They will not stop untill they are utterly decimated. And if any remnat survives, which it will, it shall needs be decimated again in fifty years or so.

There is no redeeming virtue or aspect to Mohamed and the sick religion he fostered. It is a culture of death. We must give it what it so thoroughly craves and lusts after.

We must prove to them that their god is no god at all. Just a bad dream that has lasted too long.

I know this is utterly un-PC but it's throat cutting time folks. It's either them or us.

When will it be the US' turn to feel the unease?

9/11 did it for me, and I expect most FReepers. And that unease has only grows stronger as I learn more about recent (last 50 years, say) history of Muslims in the world.

For the rest of the country, I fear it's going to take another 9/11-style event with at least a few hundred casualties before the masses will awaken.

The press has not done themselves a favor by covering this story so vigorously.

There are a lot of hostages in the world, some of them American. They are not getting this coverage. The hostage has to be a member of the press to get the story covered.

Just as paying ransomes begets more kidnappings, press coverage begets more kidnappings.

Expect more press-nappings -- it's the best way to publicize a position.

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