THE NATURE OF OUR ENEMY

Two murders...two very different victims...one enemy.

They couldn't be more different. Margaret Hassan was an aid worker, born in Ireland, who had dedicated almost her entire adult life to helping the people of Iraq. She married an Iraqi. She lived among the Iraqi people. She lobbied on their behalf. She tried to bring food and medicine to those who suffered in that long-suffering country. Theo Van Gogh was a filmmaker. He was also known for being brash and combative. It appears that he deliberately tried to be insulting to Islam and Muslims, in his films and in his public statements (calling Muslims goat f....rs, for instance).

Two people, one who obviously loved an Arab-Muslim people (the Iraqis), and another who obviously despised Muslims. In the end, their differences meant absolutely nothing to the Islamist fanatics who murdered them. In the eyes of these butchers all that mattered was that both were, to them, infidels. Are there still people who deny, then, the nature of our enemy? Are there still people who cannot see that the fanatics who shoot a Dutch filmmaker in public, then cut his throat as he begs for his life, and the fanatics who take an aid worker hostage, then shoot her in the head on videotape, are truly a brutal enemy who cannot be reasoned with or bargained with? Are there still those who cannot see that we are in a fight to the death with an enemy at least as vicious and fanatical as the Nazis?

If there are such people, I hope these brutal murders will help them see the light.