Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

EDITORIAL: Parading the dead
Staff Editorial
Daily Texan (U. Texas)
06/09/2006

(U-WIRE) AUSTIN, Texas — Something emotional happens when the face of the dead is exposed for all to see. A frozen countenance, perhaps bloodied, looking up to the heavens leaves a viewer with a sense that "this is death." It stops you in your mortal tracks, a reminder that one day you will join their fate in the ground.

On Thursday, Gen. George Casey and company held a press conference in Baghdad announcing the death of Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. airstrike. A close-up photograph of the bearded Zarqawi, bruised and in a pool of his own blood, eyes permanently closed, was the center point of the announcement. It was disseminated (and published) in one form or another all around the world.

The photograph of Zarqawi stares back, a trophy on the wall, like Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay Hussein three years ago. It stares as a reminder that murder can be lauded, praise heaped from on high. It stares as a reminder that death can be used as a political tool.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi became the face of the insurgency in Iraq as leader of the group al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Unlike Osama bin Laden, many American and Iraqi officials believe Zarqawi spent time carrying out terrorist attacks himself on the front lines.

His group masterminded the October 2003 bombing of the United Nations building in Baghdad, as well as the grotesque beheading of U.S. telecommunications contractor Nick Berg. Zarqawi was directly responsible for the deaths of American troops and countless innocent Iraqi civilians. He was worthy of a fiery death by 500-pound bombs.

But war plays funny games with morality. We feel a collective need to rejoice. The murderer will murder no more! The military not only instantly provides but encourages the news media to transmit footage of the terrorist that once was.

It is time to parade the murdered.

A similar thing occurred at an anti-war demonstration on campus last semester, but with opposite political implications. At the rally, Carlos Arredondo displayed an oversized photograph of his son, Lance Cpl. Alexander Arredondo, who was killed in An Najaf, Iraq in August 2004. The photograph, pictured below, shows the American soldier dead in his casket, arms crossed, in crisp uniform. A sharply folded American flag rests behind his head.

Arredondo was murdered by a sniper. His life was cut disgustingly short by an Iraqi insurgent, perhaps one that praised Zarqawi.

Murder is not dignified. It is not worthy of praise. It is not worthy of exploitation. It is not a tool to score political points. It is not a means to sell more newspapers or drive up traffic to a news Web site.

It is a hideous consequence of the world we live in, and of wars we create.

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