http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1720197,00.html

I believe one thing we can do besides making sure his family and the translator are provided for, would be to make sure someone picks up where he left off.

The blogosphere can honor him most by finding others to carry his work forward, because it is the work of freedom. It will be an important achievement to find and punish those responsible for his death; it will a much greater achievement to heed his warning of the deteriorating situation in southern Iraq and do what is necessary to alter that course.

A good start would be to encourage President Bush to award Steven Vincent the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to honor the ‘soldier’ who sacrificed his life in the President’s quest to advance freedom in the Middle East. Such high profile acknowledgment of the debt we owe him would send a signal to our enemies; it would then be up to us to make sure we as a nation follow through.

I guess it is my warmongering nature, but canít we dispose with all that Religion of Peace nonsense? And start fighting like we really mean it? Handling Korans with gloves at Gitmo is not helping.

If the victim was someone more like Peter Arnett or Robert Fisk, there’d be no doubt how this story would be played. But it’s a little more problematic for the Times when a journalist with the temerity to support the war effort dies.

Vincent ought also to be celebrated as one of the few journalists willing to leave the comforts and safety of the Green Zone and do some actual reporting. I can just picture the MSM journalists in the Green Zone gulping down their poolside margaritas a little bit faster upon hearing the news.

As long as it is not that cockroach Sadr it might not be so bad when the old boy dies. Let’s hope. But they gotta crawl before they can walk.

I was reading on Yon’s site that 10 out of 17 provinces are completely peaceful in Iraq, but when these terrorists manage to kill 21 Marines in three days or shoot a well known journo like this it seems the whole country is in flames. And I am sure that is just what they want the world to believe.

I hear AlSunna has some video of the Marines they killed on their website. So charming. Of course there is much less outrage over that than there was ABuGhraib. No human pyramids, just dead warriors.

How did they get to those guys? How many enemy did the Marines kill? I read somewhere that the terrorists gave them the chance to surrender and they said hell no. Like any Marine would hand his weapon over to one of these bozos. But I still do not understand how they got to them in the first place. I wonder if they were betrayed. And then the road side bomb. Yon said that the adopt a highway program is successful. But the road side bombs while less frequent, are more deadly.

I read that in Thailand the Islamists have killed 800 Buddhists since the first of the year and over 100,000 have fled the south. They want guns so that they can fight. I guess the Thai government can not protect them.

Buddhists in Thailand.

Hindus in Kashmir.

Muslims in Iraq.

Everyone in the UK and the US.

Jews in Israel.

Who is next? The scientologists?

Notice how they leave the Chinese alone. The Chinese deal with their radicals by killing them. I suppose they are afraid China will nuke them for real.

On the other hand Kurds seem to managed to establish some form of democratic, civic society

And even there the two main parties spent some time fighting with each other.

Terrye:

The truth is we are trying to drag the Muslim world into the 21st century kciking and screaming in the hopes that we don’t have to blow it up someday.

Yep. I will be happy if the Iraqis can write a constitution, abide by it, and avoid civil war. One advantage of a federal Iraq will be different strokes for different folks. If the south is too rigid and overrun with religious enforcers, people can look to Baghdad or the Kurdish areas.

I do worry what will happen when Sistani dies, though. Who else has his authority?

I just don’t know.

I realize that it was always a long shot. No doubt that is why Saddam and people like him have been tolerated for as along as they were. Realpoliticsk was not just about taking the easy way out. To a lot of people it was the only way out because those folks over there were considered a bunch of crazed back asswards barbarians. But that oil wealth gave them a power that their own sorry culture could never have accomplished on its own.

I think this is like the wild west. My Okie grandfather used to take a 22 to the fields just in case of desperados when he was a young man. And that would have been the early 19th century. And I think of Iraq like that. No doubt that was why Saddam turned the criminals loose, just to keep the new authorities busy.

So now there is a combination of crime, terrorism, poverty, political uncertainty, tribalism and of course corruption. We put people in jail for that here, but in much of the world it seems it is the way things are done.

It is no wonder the electricity is slow in coming on if the people who are running things are a bunch of Islamic clerics who have no practical knowledge but like to control things anyway.

The truth is we are trying to drag the Muslim world into the 21st century kciking and screaming in the hopes that we don’t have to blow it up someday.

That’s the sound of Linda Foley condemning the shooting.

Jamie,

The Iraqis were under dictatorship for 30 years. That was on top of traditional tribalism of that part of the world. It is not easy to shake up this kind of conditioning and suddenly embrace the rule of law. Look at former communist countries. Corruption and bribery are still ways of life there (e.g. try to visit a doctor without a traditional gift – running from flowers to cash – and see what kind of care you will get there).

We take our honesty and respect for the rule of the law for granted, but it is a fruit of generations. Civilizations are not built within the frameworks of Five Year Plans.

On the other hand Kurds seem to managed to establish some form of democratic, civic society (though I do not doubt that some corruption is common there, too). So, it is not impossible, it is just incredibly hard. All we know is that humans respond well to incentives ñ so, incentivisation of an honest society should be our priority.

First, letís kill all the terrorists.

KLo at NRO reports that Steven’s family has suggested donations to Spirit of America for those who wish to “do something”. It’s a fine idea and a fine organization which I have supported in the past. I sent an email to Jim Hake suggesting that he set something up with Steven’s name attached.

Jamie, I think we all realized (or should have realized anyhow) from the beginning that Iraq was a crap shoot. Liberation could create instability that could lead to civil war. Democracy could lead to theocracy. And so forth. My money is still on the Iraqi people, but it won’t be easy in the short haul, or long, and it won’t be pretty. Birth is a messy, painful and often chaotic process. Why should the birth of a nation be less so? Our own history demonstrates as much. At the time, most of us would have preferred dispatching al-Sadr and his cohorts to Paradise over the concilatory approach taken instead which brought him into the mainstream and lead to the current state of affairs in Basra. On the other hand, such action might have created an even worse situation–we have no way of knowing. We just have to keep keepin’ on and do the best we can.