More Beheadings

I'm afraid that we will - as much as possible - need to steel ourselves for more beheadings, both in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. It's a horrible gruesome thing for us to consider, of course, and far worse for the victims and their families. All murder is terrible, but the very nature of the act of decapitation brings with it a whole extreme level of violence that cannot be ignored.

And the terrorists know the message has been effective. In S Korea, many citizens blame the S Korean government as much as the terrorists for the death of the 33-year-old South Korean translator who begged for his life. Here, the hate speech ramped up, even as others pretended this one mattered less "because it's not one of ours."

Still, in the Arab world, beheadings are not that uncommon. I may be wrong, but I've read in several sources that beheadings are sometimes used by the Saudi government and extremist Islamic organizations to deal with rapists and homosexuals. Thus, some of them may be far more ... how do you say this... used to the concept than we are.

As long as we insist on remaking the Middle East and the Arab world in the model we want to project, as long as we try to lure people to work there with lucrative contracts (and let's face it: the big corporations whose execs will never get anywhere near the danger make out very well while I suspect the beheaded 33-year-old translator really wasn't well paid even before his grave sacrifice), and as long as we pursue this "War on Terror" with simple rhetoric and terrible behavior on our part, I don't see how we will escape more horrific acts.