Jack Wheeler
Tuesday, March 25, 2003

If conflict were taking place anywhere in the civilized world and a pilot had to eject over enemy territory, he could expect to be captured upon parachuting to earth. He would expect his captors to be cautious toward him but know that he, a lone individual with at most a side arm, could not present much of a threat.

Contrast this with the televised scenes we saw yesterday of Iraqi soldiers firing wildly into the Tigris River and setting riverbank reeds on fire in a crazed attempt to murder a defenseless pilot they thought was there.

The operative words in the first paragraph above are “the civilized world.” What we saw yesterday, firing into the Tigris, the bodies of American soldiers taken prisoner in Nasiriyah with execution bullet holes in their heads and dumped in a pile, was evidence that the War in Iraq is a continuation of the world’s oldest war.

It is a war that began 25 centuries ago, when a few thousand Athenians, representing the founding culture of Western Civilization, faced a Persian horde many times their size on the field of Marathon.

The Persians thought they had a holy right to conquer and rule anyone they wanted to. The Greeks looked upon them as Barbarikos, barbarians who valued neither individual freedom nor the individual as such, who lived instead in an anthill society and were willing to subject themselves to the rule of an almighty dictator.

The Persian dictator, Darius, was sure he would crush these impudent Greeks who dared to demand their freedom from him. At the end of that fateful day in 490 BC, 6,000 Persians lay dead, versus 200 Athenians. Barbarism’s first attempt to subdue civilization was defeated.

There have been many, many attempts ever since. For centuries, the Roman Legions held off vast human wolfpacks, but finally succumbed, resulting in the Dark Ages. Islam has conducted a Jihad against the West for 13 centuries. The barbaric insanities of Marx and Hitler erupted from within Western Civilization in the 20th century. Today the Oldest War continues, now against al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

There could not be a clearer demonstration that the War in Iraq is one between Civilization and Barbarism than the Iraqi behavior we saw on television yesterday. The Oldest War is one that must be continually fought and won anew.

Civilization will face other Saddams in the future. But for civilization to continue to flourish in our day, this Saddam, this particular barbarian and all those barbarikos who set riverbanks afire and torture prisoners of war and fight to preserve a monstrous tyranny must be eliminated from Earth right now.

Jack Wheeler is editor of ToThePointNews.com.

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Saddam Hussein/Iraq

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