why we must stay in Iraq and win the war

This report, from The Times of London, holds the key to understanding why we must win the war in Iraq.

It makes for unbearable reading. It makes Daniel Pearl’s beheading—from what we know of it—sound good (because it was swift) by comparison. And Nick Berg’s, too. I didn’t watch either video, so I don’t know.

Just reading this newspaper account makes me sick. The victim was 30, a female Iraqi journalist. The un-Jill Carroll, if you will.

Even by the stupefying standards of Iraq’s unspeakable violence, the murder of Atwar Bahjat, one of the country’s top television journalists, was an act of exceptional cruelty.

Nobody but her killers knew just how much she had suffered until a film showing her death on February 22 at the hands of two musclebound men in military uniforms emerged last week. Her family’s worst fears of what might have happened have been far exceeded by the reality.

You can read the grisly details by following the link. I won’t reprint them here. I will reprint the grim realities:

Bahjat’s reporting of terrorist attacks and denunciations of violence to a wide audience across the Middle East made her plenty of enemies among both Shi’ite and Sunni gunmen. Death threats from Sunnis drove her away to Qatar for a spell but she believed her place was in Iraq and she returned to frontline reporting despite the risks.

We may never know who killed Bahjat or why. But the manner of her death testifies to the breakdown of law, order and justice that she so bravely highlighted and illustrates the importance of a cause she espoused with passion.

Bahjat advocated the unity of Iraq and saw her golden locket as a symbol of her belief. She put it with her customary on-air eloquence on the last day of her life: “Whether you are a Sunni, a Shi’ite or a Kurd, there is no difference between Iraqis united in fear for this nation.”

We say we went to war to free the Iraqis from tyranny.

We have occupied their country for three years and they are not yet free. Not even close.

We must stay, and help them do the job, and make sure that they do the job. And then we can start to think about leaving.