Q: Dr. Hurd, I know you favor a strong stance against terrorism. However, I’m sure you disagree with the policy of the Bush Administration and Tony Blair in Britain to refuse to negotiate with the groups who practice beheading. People are dying in the most brutal fashion possible, just so Blair and Bush can be stubborn.
A: I couldn’t possibly disagree with you more. The executions by beheading are appalling beyond description. I cannot begin to imagine what it’s like for their loved ones to go through this, not to mention the victims themselves. However, these victims are people who chose to enter Iraq–perhaps the most dangerous place on earth right now, especially for any “infidel”–either to pursue business or to perform social work. As much as they do not deserve to die in this fashion, we can’t sacrifice our national security–what you call merely being “stubborn”–for the sake of those who chose to take those risks. If we negotiate with terrorists, we elevate them to the status of civil people with whom we happen to have some disagreements. This will put us on even more dangerous footing in the long run.
By negotiating with terrorists, we elevate them to the level of, say, the government of Canada, France or Japan, with whom we might be having a trade dispute. In case you haven’t noticed, these are not civil people and our disagreements are not remotely civil in nature. These disagreements did not arise from our entry into Iraq; they arose from 25 years of attacks against our own country, culminating most dramatically in 9/11. The fundamentalist Moslems who commit these atrocities are some of the greatest barbarians the world has ever known and it makes our already dangerous world environment even more dangerous if we give in to them. And, by the way: don’t be so naive as to assume that negotiations would even work in saving lives. We can all see how well “negotiations” have worked with the governments of Iran and North Korea, who happily and openly pursue the development of nuclear weapons they hope to someday use against us.
The best way to prevent beheadings is for civilians to stay out of these terrorist hellholes until–or unless–the people of Iraq (and places like it) stand up, develop democratic republics such as our own and earn the status of places to do business. Needless to say, they have a long way to go. This is not our fault, and it’s no reason to sacrifice our national interests to cave in to the primitive sadism of terrorists.
