Ready to hear it? Here’s the murderer of Theo van Gogh:
[T]ranscripts of recorded statements allegedly made by Mr. Bouyeri and introduced in the trial offered a window into his way of thinking. “I knew what I was doing,” Mr. Bouyeri told his brother in a phone conversation shortly after the killing, according to the transcript. “I slaughtered him.” Then Mr. Bouyeri laughed, said Judge Udo Willem Bentinck, who was reading the transcript aloud.
Then there’s this, Bouyeri’s address to van Gogh’s mother in court:
He argued that he did not kill her son, “but I have chopped off his head according to the law that orders me to do so to everyone who offends Allah. I do not not feel your pain as I do not know what it is to suffer the loss of a child.”
Can anyone seriously believe that not invading Iraq would have changed the mindset of this fanatic? Or leaving Afghanistan alone? What we’re learning, especially from the home-grown bombings in London, is that our fundamental enemy is a medievalist theological fascism, buried in the recesses of a legitimate religious faith. It would be nice if we could talk these people out of it, or hand them concessions to buy them off, or hug them till they saw the joys of the New Age. Until then, we have to bring them to justice – on the battlefield or court-room. And the people who are most able to bring them to justice are Western Muslims; and the democratically-inclined Muslims in Iraq.
The Dish 