Horror

It's not too often I find myself in agreement with the front pages of New York's tabloid papers. But today at least, the Post ("SAVAGES") and Daily News ("PURE EVIL") both got it right in reaction to the news from Iraq yesterday that terrorists had beheaded Philadelphia-area native Nick Berg. I haven't watched the clip online; I was never much for the "Faces of Death" movies, and just reading about it made my blood boil. My first reaction, which hasn't changed in the 24 hours since, was that I wanted the perpetrators hunted down and killed. Period. Reading more about Berg has deepened my anger, if anything.

Sadly and inevitably, the right-wingers quickly picked up on this in their efforts to justify, or at least rationalize, the news of torture and prisoner abuse coming out of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Impervious to rational thought as most of them seem to be, they're missing the most important point: just as we argue--correctly--that the world shouldn't judge the United States, or even the U.S. military, on the actions of a few depraved prison guards, we need to remember that there's an important distinction between these monsters and the general Iraqi populace into which they try to blend in.

Appreciating the operational difficulty of making that distinction--and this is the central dilemma and the real parallel to Vietnam, or indeed to any guerilla war--is key to understanding just how difficult a task we've set for ourselves in Iraq. If there's an example in history of a successful effort to simultaneously fight off an insurgency, rebuild a nation's infrastructure and transform its political culture, I'm not familiar with it.

It's not a point I'd expect Rush Limbaugh or Jim Inhofe to grasp, but it is the best way to repudiate their messages of mindless belligerence and hatred.