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One of Those Moments
The president has become the latest Western liberal to
try to hammer Daniel Pearl’s box into a round hole.
Barack Obama’s remarkable powers of oratory are well known: In
support of Chicago’s Olympic bid, he flew into Copenhagen to give a heartwarming
speech about himself, and they gave the games to Rio. He flew into Boston to
support Martha Coakley’s bid for the U.S. Senate, and Massachusetts voters gave
Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Republican. In the first year of his presidency, he gave
a gazillion speeches on health-care “reform” and drove support for his proposals
to basement level, leaving Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to ram it down the
throats of the American people through sheer parliamentary muscle.
Like a
lot of guys who’ve been told they’re brilliant one time too often, President
Obama gets a little lazy, and doesn’t always choose his words with care. And so
it was that he came to say a few words about Daniel Pearl, upon signing the
“Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act.”
Pearl was decapitated on video by
jihadist Muslims in Karachi on Feb. 1, 2002. That’s how I’d put it.
This
is what the president of the United States said: “Obviously, the loss of Daniel
Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it
reminded us of how valuable a free press is.”
Now Obama’s off the
prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he’s
talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to
see. Furthermore, the deceased’s family is standing all around him. And, even
for a busy president, it’s the work of moments to come up with a sentence that
would be respectful, moving, and true. Indeed, for Obama, it’s the work of
seconds, because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with
nothing to do but provide him with that sentence.
Instead, he delivered
the one above. Which, in its clumsiness and insipidness, is most revealing.
First of all, note the passivity: “The loss of Daniel Pearl.” He wasn’t “lost.”
He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was
specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the
circumstances of his “loss” merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Obama can muster
none.
Even if Americans don’t get the message, the rest of the world
does. This week’s pictures of the leaders of Brazil and Turkey clasping hands
with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are also monuments to American passivity.
But
what did the “loss” of Daniel Pearl mean? Well, says the president, it was “one
of those moments that captured the world’s imagination.” Really? Evidently it
never captured Obama’s imagination, because, if it had, he could never have
uttered anything so fatuous. He seems literally unable to imagine Pearl’s fate,
and so, cruising on autopilot, he reaches for the all-purpose bromides of
therapeutic sedation: “one of those moments” — you know, like Princess Di’s
wedding, Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, whatever — “that captured the
world’s imagination.”
Notice how reflexively Obama lapses into
sentimental one-worldism: Despite our many zip codes, we are one people, with a
single imagination. In fact, the murder of Daniel Pearl teaches just the
opposite — that we are many worlds, and worlds within worlds. Some of them don’t
even need an “imagination.” Across the planet, the video of an American getting
his head sawed off did brisk business in the bazaars and madrassas and Internet
downloads. Excited young men e-mailed it to friends, from cell phone to cell
phone, from Karachi to Jakarta to Khartoum to London to Toronto to Falls Church,
Va. In the old days, you needed an “imagination” to conjure the juicy bits of a
distant victory over the Great Satan. But in an age of high-tech barbarism, the
sight of Pearl’s severed head is a mere click away.
And the rest of “the
world”? Most gave a shrug of indifference. And far too many found the reality of
Pearl’s death too uncomfortable and chose to take refuge in the same kind of
delusional pap as Obama. The president is only the latest Western liberal to try
to hammer Daniel Pearl’s box into a round hole. Before him, it was Michael
Winterbottom in his film A Mighty
Heart: As Pearl’s longtime colleague Asra Nomani wrote, “Danny himself had
been cut from his own story.” Or, as Paramount’s promotional department put it,
“Nominate the most inspiring ordinary hero. Win a trip to the Bahamas!” Where
you’re highly unlikely to be kidnapped and beheaded! (Although, in the event
that you are, please check the liability-waiver box at the foot of the entry
form.)
The latest appropriation is that his “loss” “reminded us of how
valuable a free press is.” It was nothing to do with “freedom of the press.” By
the standards of the Muslim world, Pakistan has a free-ish and very lively
press. The problem is that some 80 percent of its people wish to live under the
most extreme form of Sharia, and many of its youth are exported around the world
in advance of that aim. The man convicted of Pearl’s murder was Omar Sheikh, a
British subject, a London School of Economics student, and, like many jihadists
from Osama to the Pantybomber, a monument to the peculiar burdens of a
non-deprived childhood in the Muslim world. The man who actually did the deed
was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed in March 2007: “I decapitated with my
blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the city of
Karachi.” But Obama’s not the kind to take “guilty” for an answer, so he’s
arranging a hugely expensive trial for KSM amid the bright lights of
Broadway.
Listen to his killer’s words: “The American Jew Daniel Pearl.”
We hit the jackpot! And then we cut his head off. Before the body was found, The Independent’s Robert Fisk offered a
familiar argument to Pearl’s kidnappers: Killing him would be “a major
blunder . . . the best way of ensuring that the suffering” —
of Kashmiris, Afghans, Palestinians — “goes unrecorded.” Other journalists
peddled a similar line: If you release Danny, he’ll be able to tell your story,
get your message out, “bridge the misconceptions.” But the story did get out; the severed head is the message; the only misconception
is that that’s a misconception.
Daniel Pearl was the prototype for a new
kind of terror. In his wake came other victims from Kenneth Bigley, whose last
words were that “Tony Blair has not done enough for me,” to Fabrizzio
Quattrocchi, who yanked off his hood, yelled “I will show you how an Italian
dies!” and ruined the movie for his jihadist videographers. By that time, both
men understood what it meant to be in a windowless room with a camera and a man
holding a scimitar. But Daniel Pearl was the first, and in his calm, coherent
final words understood why he was there:
“My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a
Jewish American from Encino, California, U.S.A.”
He didn’t have a
prompter. But he spoke the truth. That’s all President Obama owed him — to do
the same.
I mentioned last week the attorney general’s peculiar
insistence that “radical Islam” was nothing to do with the Times Square bomber,
the Pantybomber, the Fort Hood killer. Just a lot of moments “capturing the
world’s imagination.” For now, the jihadists seem to have ceased cutting our
heads off. Listening to Obama and Eric Holder, perhaps they’ve figured out
there’s nothing much up there anyway.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is
author of America Alone. © 2010 Mark Steyn.
support of Chicago’s Olympic bid, he flew into Copenhagen to give a heartwarming
speech about himself, and they gave the games to Rio. He flew into Boston to
support Martha Coakley’s bid for the U.S. Senate, and Massachusetts voters gave
Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Republican. In the first year of his presidency, he gave
a gazillion speeches on health-care “reform” and drove support for his proposals
to basement level, leaving Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to ram it down the
throats of the American people through sheer parliamentary muscle.
Like a
lot of guys who’ve been told they’re brilliant one time too often, President
Obama gets a little lazy, and doesn’t always choose his words with care. And so
it was that he came to say a few words about Daniel Pearl, upon signing the
“Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act.”
Pearl was decapitated on video by
jihadist Muslims in Karachi on Feb. 1, 2002. That’s how I’d put it.
This
is what the president of the United States said: “Obviously, the loss of Daniel
Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it
reminded us of how valuable a free press is.”
Now Obama’s off the
prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he’s
talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to
see. Furthermore, the deceased’s family is standing all around him. And, even
for a busy president, it’s the work of moments to come up with a sentence that
would be respectful, moving, and true. Indeed, for Obama, it’s the work of
seconds, because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with
nothing to do but provide him with that sentence.
Instead, he delivered
the one above. Which, in its clumsiness and insipidness, is most revealing.
First of all, note the passivity: “The loss of Daniel Pearl.” He wasn’t “lost.”
He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was
specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the
circumstances of his “loss” merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Obama can muster
none.
Even if Americans don’t get the message, the rest of the world
does. This week’s pictures of the leaders of Brazil and Turkey clasping hands
with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are also monuments to American passivity.
But
what did the “loss” of Daniel Pearl mean? Well, says the president, it was “one
of those moments that captured the world’s imagination.” Really? Evidently it
never captured Obama’s imagination, because, if it had, he could never have
uttered anything so fatuous. He seems literally unable to imagine Pearl’s fate,
and so, cruising on autopilot, he reaches for the all-purpose bromides of
therapeutic sedation: “one of those moments” — you know, like Princess Di’s
wedding, Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, whatever — “that captured the
world’s imagination.”
Notice how reflexively Obama lapses into
sentimental one-worldism: Despite our many zip codes, we are one people, with a
single imagination. In fact, the murder of Daniel Pearl teaches just the
opposite — that we are many worlds, and worlds within worlds. Some of them don’t
even need an “imagination.” Across the planet, the video of an American getting
his head sawed off did brisk business in the bazaars and madrassas and Internet
downloads. Excited young men e-mailed it to friends, from cell phone to cell
phone, from Karachi to Jakarta to Khartoum to London to Toronto to Falls Church,
Va. In the old days, you needed an “imagination” to conjure the juicy bits of a
distant victory over the Great Satan. But in an age of high-tech barbarism, the
sight of Pearl’s severed head is a mere click away.
And the rest of “the
world”? Most gave a shrug of indifference. And far too many found the reality of
Pearl’s death too uncomfortable and chose to take refuge in the same kind of
delusional pap as Obama. The president is only the latest Western liberal to try
to hammer Daniel Pearl’s box into a round hole. Before him, it was Michael
Winterbottom in his film A Mighty
Heart: As Pearl’s longtime colleague Asra Nomani wrote, “Danny himself had
been cut from his own story.” Or, as Paramount’s promotional department put it,
“Nominate the most inspiring ordinary hero. Win a trip to the Bahamas!” Where
you’re highly unlikely to be kidnapped and beheaded! (Although, in the event
that you are, please check the liability-waiver box at the foot of the entry
form.)
The latest appropriation is that his “loss” “reminded us of how
valuable a free press is.” It was nothing to do with “freedom of the press.” By
the standards of the Muslim world, Pakistan has a free-ish and very lively
press. The problem is that some 80 percent of its people wish to live under the
most extreme form of Sharia, and many of its youth are exported around the world
in advance of that aim. The man convicted of Pearl’s murder was Omar Sheikh, a
British subject, a London School of Economics student, and, like many jihadists
from Osama to the Pantybomber, a monument to the peculiar burdens of a
non-deprived childhood in the Muslim world. The man who actually did the deed
was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed in March 2007: “I decapitated with my
blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the city of
Karachi.” But Obama’s not the kind to take “guilty” for an answer, so he’s
arranging a hugely expensive trial for KSM amid the bright lights of
Broadway.
Listen to his killer’s words: “The American Jew Daniel Pearl.”
We hit the jackpot! And then we cut his head off. Before the body was found, The Independent’s Robert Fisk offered a
familiar argument to Pearl’s kidnappers: Killing him would be “a major
blunder . . . the best way of ensuring that the suffering” —
of Kashmiris, Afghans, Palestinians — “goes unrecorded.” Other journalists
peddled a similar line: If you release Danny, he’ll be able to tell your story,
get your message out, “bridge the misconceptions.” But the story did get out; the severed head is the message; the only misconception
is that that’s a misconception.
Daniel Pearl was the prototype for a new
kind of terror. In his wake came other victims from Kenneth Bigley, whose last
words were that “Tony Blair has not done enough for me,” to Fabrizzio
Quattrocchi, who yanked off his hood, yelled “I will show you how an Italian
dies!” and ruined the movie for his jihadist videographers. By that time, both
men understood what it meant to be in a windowless room with a camera and a man
holding a scimitar. But Daniel Pearl was the first, and in his calm, coherent
final words understood why he was there:
“My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a
Jewish American from Encino, California, U.S.A.”
He didn’t have a
prompter. But he spoke the truth. That’s all President Obama owed him — to do
the same.
I mentioned last week the attorney general’s peculiar
insistence that “radical Islam” was nothing to do with the Times Square bomber,
the Pantybomber, the Fort Hood killer. Just a lot of moments “capturing the
world’s imagination.” For now, the jihadists seem to have ceased cutting our
heads off. Listening to Obama and Eric Holder, perhaps they’ve figured out
there’s nothing much up there anyway.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is
author of America Alone. © 2010 Mark Steyn.
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