Mark Steyn's spiked column

Mark Steyn's preface to his first spiked article states:

Today, for the first time in all my years with the Telegraph Group, I had a column pulled. The editor expressed concerns about certain passages and we were unable to reach agreement, so on this Tuesday something else will be in my space.

Styen’s article was concerned with Kenneth Bigley (the Brit who was recently murdered by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), Zarqawi’s attempt to use Bigley as a wedge to split the Brits from the Americans and the way the non-islamofascist players conducted themselves in general. Apparently the editor couldn’t handle Steyn’s unapologetic annoyance with:

• the terrorists’ expectation that Britain’s government would have a propensity to be influenced by showcasing the intention to behead Bigley’s


• the British government’s effeminate handling of what is basically a POW situation


• the undignified way Bigley’s conducted himself in the face of death


• the way the Bigley’s brother rewarded the terrorists by claiming that Kenneth Bigley’s blood was on Tony Blair’s hands instead of Zarqawi’s hand—which is where Bigley’s blood literally was

I agree with Steyn: nations and peoples with backbone are most suitable to conduct war. Backbone is needed to resist flinching when faced with the atrocities that are committed for the sole purpose of breaking our will. The inability to resist flinching is simply provocative to Zarqawi and causes future reoccurrences of the atrocities.

Steyn thought it was noteworthy that the two Americans Bigley was captured with were beheaded immediately. The terrorists knew that it was pointless to parley with Bush. The Zarqawi letter (a memo from Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden that was intercepted by coalition troop) said, in part:

But America did not come to leave, and it will not leave no matter how numerous its wounds become and how much of its blood is spilled.

Zarqawi knew that any attempts to influence Bush would be a waste of his time. He also correctly suspect that jacking Tony Blair around would be somewhat more profitable.

You should read Mark Steyn’s article, if only to discover how low the The Daily Telegraph’s editor’s breaking point is.

Hat tip lucianne

Update:

I'd no sooner posted this when I encountered another excellent post by Wretchard on this subject:

... Steyn [has] put [his] finger on the simple error that everyone from Bigley to those campaigning for his release have made. Not only is it impossible to put a rational construction on these events, it is a waste of time to try. Bigley thought he was too old; the schoolchildren in Beslan thought they were too young; the French journalists thought they were too French to be the victims of terrorism. And they were wrong. Wrong because they assumed that enemy intent rather than capability was the limiting factor to their mayhem. It is an odd statistical fact that fewer Americans have died from terrorist attacks in Iraq than Iraqi children. The one thousand US combat deaths in the months since OIF is only slightly larger than the number of Canadians killed in the 1942 Dieppe Raid over the course of 9 hours; and not because the terrorists are eager to "show the world the justice and mercy which Islam teaches us" but because they cannot kill more.