Ending the Reactionaries' Reign of Terror

Amsterdam helps explain the stakes in Fallujah -- the Amsterdam of Nov. 2, 2004, where an Islamist radical murdered Dutch libertarian filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Fallujah is Iraq's murder capital -- or more precisely, the outlaw town used as a staging area for murder committed by Iraq's secular and religious reactionaries. ...The secular reactionaries want to return Iraq to a Sunni-dominated dictatorship -- the corrupt, murderous hellhole Iraq was in March 2003. The religious reactionaries have a grander target, with their "golden age" a bit deeper in time. They want to run the entire world along the lines of an 11th or 12th century Muslim caliphate. While Iraq's secular and religious reactionaries have irreconcilable political differences, at the moment both groups think they can use the other as a means to an end. They intend to spill enough Iraqi and American blood to convince Iraqis and Americans that they cannot be defeated. The United States will then withdraw, and the new Iraqi government will fall. That's when the reactionaries will fight it out over which past (March 2003 or a theo-fascist 12th century) will control the Middle East's future. The secular and religious reactionaries also share a common "political tool," murder. This isn't news. Dictators and religious zealots have always used murder as a tool to enforce oppression and conformity. In order to maintain his regime, Saddam murdered at least 300,000 Iraqis... ...Van Gogh's murder in oh-so-Euroliberal, oh-so-politically correct, oh-so-ostensibly multicultural Amsterdam stems from the same reactionary roots. Van Gogh received numerous death threats from Islamist radicals after he produced a movie criticizing what he called Islam's abysmal treatment of women. His killer, a second-generation Arab immigrant named Mohammed Bouyeri, shot Van Gogh, stabbed him, then slit the filmmaker's throat. Bouveri left a five-page letter on the body that said, "There will be no mercy for the wicked, only the sword will be raised against them" and that Holland, the United States and Europe will be destroyed. Like the people of Afghanistan who demonstrated a month ago in the Afghan presidential election that democracy is an attractive alternative to states run by political and religious fascists, the people of Iraq look forward to freedom. Ending the reactionaries' reign of terror in Fallujah and other outlaw towns in the Sunni Triangle won't eliminate terrorist murder in Iraq, but it will put a severe crimp in the killers' ability to intimidate en masse... ...Is the international press describing Bouveri as a Dutch insurgent or an Islamic insurgent? No, and he certainly isn't, except perhaps in the demented, self-loathing minds of arch-leftists like Michael Moore. The thugs in Fallujah, whether inspired by Saddam or bin Laden, aren't insurgents, either. They are reactionaries whose only route to power is murder. Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi now says the rule of law is coming to Fallujah. It would be nice to see a few of van Gogh's film-land friends (who claim to value political and artistic freedom) send Allawi a letter of thanks.

Austin Bay: Ending the Reactionaries' Reign of Terror