Remember Fallujah

Remember Fallujah
by Jennifer King, Managing Editor

April 5, 2004

"The Heretical Housewife"

Managing Editor Jennifer King The images were horrific. A group of men, bringing food to a beleaguered city, set upon with RPGs and small arms fire. Their car ablaze, their burnt bodies exhumed and defiled, dragged behind cars and hacked at. Their broken corpses finally strung from a bridge, shattered limbs twisting grotesquely in the breeze. In the midst of this medieval barbarism, an exultant crowd danced, chanted and cheered.

What are we to make of this murderous thuggery, so depressingly common in the Islamic world? Almost weekly, it's a new atrocity - appallingly regressive and barbaric to the civilized world, yet - horrifically - celebrated and glorified by its adherents. Palestinian men dip their hands into the body of murdered Israelis, then display their bloodied hands as trophies to the cheering crowd. Daniel Pearl is gruesomely beheaded on film, after being forced to declare himself a hated Jew. Radical clerics are left free to incite their devotees, who pour out of mosques on Friday night determined to wage war against the "infidel". Have any prominent Arabs credibly denounced them?

In World War II, the Bushido Code was partially blamed for the harsh militarism which seized Japan and the atrocities which occurred throughout the war. However, determined propaganda also played a part. As detailed by Iris Chang in "The Rape Of Nanking", Japanese schoolboys were subjected to a relentless barrage of indoctrination. They were taught that Japan's destiny was to rule Asia, and hatred and contempt of the Chinese and Korean people were instilled in them from an early age. Schools were run like military camps, and the boys were taught absolute obedience as a supreme virtue. Their sense of individualism and self worth was sublimated into being a part of the common good. They pledged undying loyalty to the Emperor.

When the Japanese invaded Nanking, they encountered thousands of Chinese soldiers who promptly surrendered, posing a problem for the Japanese Army who couldn't possibly feed them all. The Chinese soldier's unwillingness to fight also deepened the contempt that the battle hardened Japanese felt for them. The decision was made to annihilate the soldiers. Elaborate precautions were taken to reassure the Chinese, then they were divided into columns and marched off to be shot. Women in the town were systematically raped, often by 15-20 men at once, then murdered so that they wouldn't talk. "Soldiers impaled babies on bayonets and tossed them still alive into pots of boiling water", said Nagatomi Hakudo, who also admitted to "beheading people, starving them to death, burning them and burying them alive". Hakudo remembers wild dogs chewing at corpses, and receiving the freshly severed head of a young Chinese boy as a souvenir.

When the air finally cleared, over 250,000 Chinese men, women and children had been slaughtered in Nanking. Some estimates put that number closer to 400,000. The news of the victory at Nanking was received with ebullient joy in Japan. Celebrations were held and children marched in parades carrying globe shaped paper lanterns that symbolized the rise of the Japanese empire. When news of the atrocity leaked out and met with international condemnation, the Japanese government tried to cover up the massacre.

Today's Islamists resemble the fascists who preceeded them. Like the Nazis or the Japanese, their youth is subject to a relentless diet of propaganda. They are indoctrinated to wage war on civilization. They are incited against the Jew. Their philosophy is irrational, yet they are not allowed to examine it. Intolerance is rampant and tyranny inevitable. Their barbarism comes naturally, since their victims have been dehumanized. It is easier, after all, to kill someone you consider a child of "apes and pigs" rather than a human being with intrinsic worth in the eyes of God.

The West was slow to act, in the 1930s, despite the horrific precursors like Nanking. Likewise, we've been unresponsive during the growth of terrorism since the 1970s. The terrorists, like the fascists before them, have been emboldened. The attack at Fallujah has garnered the usual hysterical responses from the usual suspects, appeasers now as they were in 1937. What Fallujah should inspire, instead, is burning anger and steadfast resolve. We shall see our defiled dead revenged. We shall see the loathsome and cowardly attackers pay. We will not be deterred in our goal and in our duty - of defeating Islamofascism in our time. ***

Photo of Jennifer King courtesy of staff files