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.