Grief and Foolishness

I was asked by a friend recently why I hadn't commented on the murder of Nicholas Berg. The whole event made me feel like a can of warm beer that had been put in a paint shaker. There was almost no way I could be coherent. I'll try to muster some discipline to do more than just inveigh, though I make no promises.

Ironically, my outrage isn't against Berg's murderers. They are so subsumed with evil that all they need is three rounds placed center of mass. God will recompense their sins. Best to think of them as dead until they are, then think of them no more.

My outrage is for Berg's father. I have touched the hot stove his hand is now stuck to, and I can appreciate his agony. However, his agony is not justification to belittle his son's memory by using the occasion of media attention to draw equality between his son's cause and country to that of those who butchered him.

By all accounts, Nick Berg believed in our mission in Iraq. On the other hand, Berg's dad is an anti-war activist of the lunatic variety. When cameras were shoved in his face to exploit his pain, he did not speak of pride in his brave fallen son. He instead vented his spleen, uttering verbatim a list of particulars from ANSWER, the insane leftist fringe for whom no despot is so vile, so brutal that they might hate him more than our President.

The elder Berg is poster child for the worst of the Baby Boom generation. In that day every tradition and convention was suspect, and cast aside without thinking. In a world full of violence and evil, they took it upon themselves to remove the speck from our nation's eye with a hatchet rather than recognize the murderous beam in the eyes of our enemies. They slandered those who fought for us, they embraced a crippling collective guilt. They worked desperately to toss the American baby out with the bath water.

Loathing of a freedom loving if flawed America overwhelms the sense of men like Nick's father. It's as if they hope for our national suicide if we cannot be perfect. Berg equated the Bush Administration to Al Quaeda, sick idiotic bile told instead of a fitting eulogy. His boy was not a human shield, he ventured to Baghdad to make a little money and improve their telecommunications.

I pity Berg his loss, I truly do, but much of my compassion evaporated when he used his son's tombstone as a soapbox from which to dump on what his boy believed in.

Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan lost their four boys in one awful day during WW2. They did not rail at FDR, though there was a sizable isolationist movement in the U.S. They toured the nation selling war bonds. Victory would bring them solace.

Grieve your loss Mr. Berg, but not at the expense of your son's memory. May God rest both your souls.

Tim McNabb