Ok. So ya do what you gotta do and sometimes it's not pretty.
All in all, much like the sport of fishing, which pits the two most diverse extremes of the evolutionary food chain against each other, this world's modern super power, using the most advanced technology throughout all recorded history has managed to (after years of effort)track down and annihilate one of it's most recent annoying ideological, desert dwelling, fugitive enemies.
Like I said, sometimes you simply do what you've got to do.
I guess the problem I have with it, if any, is the once again global publication of the photograph of the corpse of the vanquished.
Such too, was the case with the sons of Saddam. And I thought we had perhaps learned better by now.
In the past in Somalia and in Bahgdad, when photos of our own murdered native sons and daughters we're put into global publication by the perpetrators, the general reaction from American leadership and it's public was outrage over such a callous display of barbarism and inhumanity. This went well beyond spiking the football after a touchdown. This was mean spirited and irreverent, a ridicule unbefitting the dead.
We on the other hand; who rally so often about the breech to moral and legal compacts and conventions when the "heathens" and "savages" do it, seem to have no compunction to respond in kind when it is we who manage to declare victory through the act of extinguishing the life force from any major (or minor) adversary in our chosen arena of battle. And then in our own manner, albeit elctronically, we prance the head of our victim on the tip of a spike so all the world can see our grand accomplishments.
A double standard?
You bet.
One in a list of many.
But if we ever think we can justifiably demand a higher set of moral standards from the world around us, be they friend or foe, we had better start honoring the same standards we demand of others. Or this whole civility of war and rules of engagement myth that everyone keeps demanding for themselves but shun for all others, will keep getting nastier and nastier as time and battles wear on.
Of course there's the option of refraining from killing for revenge, power, strategic positioning, resources and territory...but obviously, we have a huge way to go before we reach that level in the moral evolutionary progress.
While it is true that Zarqawi wasn't literally dragged through the streets and "nobody had a foot on his head", it is equally true (or perhaps simply self-evident) that we are being treated to the electronic equivalent of having his head paraded through the whole global village. It may as well be a bloody head on a stake for all apparent implications.
I would sooner have someone discredit the evidence and call "scam" because full blown, larger than life photos in color and b/w were not made available for max saturation, public appreciation as has been done for the last 24 hours.
It seems the lesser of two evils considering that the call going out during the publicity tour of this dead guy's head for the next few days is going to be yet another genius American marketing campaign for Jihadist recruitment in over 60 different countries world wide.
As if invading Iraq for pretenses less than founded in truth wasn't enough of a Madison Avenue gimme for a thousand "Osama Wants You!" posters.
Ah,we just give and give, don't we?
There just seems no end to our generosity, that way.
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