    MURDER MOST FOUL
    By Israel Shamir

    War is a crime, but this is a manly crime defying effeminate mores and
    rigid society. The most convinced pacifist can get carried away by the
    sight of charging cavalry, attacking troops, roaring tanks and fighter
    jets taking off a desert strip. Not in vain, women admired warriors,
    poets sung their mighty deeds, and priests anointed their heads. We can
    fetch a Roman adage or a Koranic verse, a line from Shakespeare or
    Nietzsche to praise a leader of men and disregard the costs of war. We
    can forgive a bloodshed, it’s sordid affairs that can’t ever be
    forgiven.

    Murder of the deposed Arab ruler’s young sons is the ultimate sordid
    crime of President Bush. It transformed him from a fool into a villain,
    from the dubious vanquisher of a disarmed state into a vile murderer,
    from a deceiver into a bloody crook, from the vainglorious chieftain on
    board of the aircraft carrier into a vicious monster. Whatever we think
    of Saddam Hussein, cynical and cruel murder of his sons is an abysmal
    collapse into archaic mode. This is worse than Napoleon’s murder of
    young Duc d'Enghien, worse than the crimes of Richard III. Stalin and
    Hitler, Churchill and Roosevelt killed millions, but they did not hunt
    down children of their adversaries. Indeed, Hitler did not lay hands on
    Stalin’s son he [1] captured .

    If the president were to tear their noble hearts and gobble them
    dripping blood on his starched shirt he would not be more disgusting. It
    is a moral collapse of the ruling class: his schools, Harvard and Yale,
    once aristocratic breeding ground of American gentlemen, reached a moral
    nadir under the guidance of Lawrence Summers the Platitudinous, Samuel
    Huntington the Trivial, Leo Strauss the Godless and Alan Dershowitz the
    Torturer. Probably Sing Sing would produce a more suitable ruling class
    at a lesser cost.

    It is a moral collapse of the army. Hundreds of heavily armed American
    soldiers who participated in the execution brought shame on themselves
    and the Armed Forces. Copycatting the Israeli assassins, they rained
    missiles at the handful of men. They are not soldiers anymore, their
    place is with hangmen. Their cowardly deed will delegate them into the
    lower recesses of Hell, within a shouting distance from Judas.

    It is a moral collapse of the media. This docile tool of Empire stepped
    into moral abyss beyond the cowardly murder. TV pundits discussed price
    of blood in dollars and shekels, they argued whether the murder would
    put paid to the Iraqi resistance. The TV screens were turned into stakes
    posting the bloodied heads of two handsome young men, a scary sight, but
    even scarier was the joyous crowd of brokers and investors at Wall
    Street, celebrating the Dow Jones’ rise by guzzling Arab blood. It was
    not the first vicious murder in mankind’s history; but the first one met
    with equanimity; a bloody sacrifice to Mammon. The healing spasm of
    moral disgust did not shake the sick society.

    The dead and torn body of the fourteen-year-old boy, a grandchild of
    Saddam Hussein, will haunt Bush whenever he looks at his own children
    and grandchildren, like Banquo’s bloody ghost on Macbeth’s feast.
    Indeed, the Texan killer of Hussein’s sons is but a remorseless replica
    of the Scottish murderer of Macduff’s sons.

    In a Christian land he would be excommunicated, for a vengeful murderer
    of his enemies’ children has no place in the Kingdom of Christ. Not in
    vain he befriended Sharon and Perle who are used to laud the murder of
    Haman’s children at the feast of Purim.

    Noble and brave, the sons of Saddam Hussein did not escape to a faraway
    land; they did not pocket billions for surrender, they did not lounge in
    Minsk or Riyadh as the dishonest mainstream media suggested. The Young
    Lions of Baghdad, they fought the superior forces of the invader, and
    fell defending their homeland. Kusai and Udai were together in their
    lives; and in their death they were not divided. They will be forever
    cherished in the collective memory of mankind, with other tragic and
    courageous fighters against the Empire from Vercingetorix the Gaul to
    the Sioux chief Sitting Bull, from Che Guevara of Santa Clara to Abdel
    Kader al Husseini of Qastal. Their last stand and their death redeemed
    Iraq and returned self esteem to the Arabs. They died in flesh but
    remained alive in spirit; their murderers are but living dead. When the
    Middle East will regain its independence, their names will be written on
    the precious porphyry of our monuments.