The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it - Henry David Thoreau

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

It seems that maybe, just maybe, Iraqis are finally starting to get it.

Iraqis reacted with anger and disbelief Wednesday to news that British-Iraqi aid worker Margaret Hassan, who worked in Iraq for decades before being kidnapped a month ago, had been killed by her captors.

Irish-born Hassan, 59, moved to Iraq more than 30 years ago after marrying an Iraqi engineer. She learned Arabic and became a pillar of support in local communities, often helping the needy in the face of opposition during Saddam Hussein’s regime. ...

One of the hospitals she regularly supported was a spinal cord clinic in Baghdad run by Qayder al-Chalabi, who said her loss was a huge blow to all Iraqis.

The killers “made a very big mistake. This was the wrong person,” he told Reuters Wednesday.

“I cannot imagine that these things could happen to her because she was a very humanitarian person. She felt our suffering, she understood the suffering of the Iraqi people.

“We need to admire and remember her. We must have a ceremony every year to remember her,” he said, adding that he believed a statue should be erected in her honor. ...

“These people are savage beasts,” said a man working close to the now shuttered Care offices in Baghdad. He would not give his name for fear of reprisals.

“The whole idea of kidnapping is completely wrong. If people want to resist the occupation they can fight American troops, not kill Iraqis or innocent foreigners,” he said.

The reason they kidnap innocent foreigners is because the kill ratio in Iraq is 50 or 60-1 when you mess with American troops.  And besides, killing a soldier doesn’t strike terror in the hearts of the population at large, and that’s what these executions are trying to do.  It’s much easier to ignore evil when its acts are being perpetrated against infidel foreigners.  It’s much harder when that evil takes the life of someone who had dedicated theirs to helping yours.