Can we please stop with the empty rhetoric? The men who killed Nicholas Berg are not "enemies of freedom," as White House spokesman Scott McClellan called them.
Do not mistake me. I hold no sympathy for Berg's killers. If they really wanted something there are countless options open to them that do not involve the murder of an innocent civilian. Neither Gandhi nor George Washington arbitrarily beheaded anyone to achieve their goals.
Let's capture them, try them, and punish the hell out of them. But dismissing terrorists and insurgents as evil-doers who attack only for the destruction of freedom, democracy, puppies and flowers everywhere misses the real reasons they are fighting or angry -- and actually increases the danger to our nation and our troops.
Terrorist recruits would not join and commit suicide just to further the power of a madman. They might hate our political and economic practices in the Middle East, or hate living in oppression, poverty and starvation. They may want a homeland. But I doubt they hate freedom. And dismissing them this way does nothing to prevent future generations from being recruited as terrorists as well.
I have yet to hear serious plans to eliminate or address the economic, political, or social root causes of terrorism. I have yet to hear this administration talk frankly or informatively about what really motivates our enemies, or our own role in those motivations.
All I hear is the president talking about evil evil-doers and madmen attacking freedom. But bottom line, there's not a lot you can do to banish "evil" as a motivating factor -- except maybe a global exorcism.
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