October 11, 2004
GOD FORBID, BUT WOULDN"T YOU RATHER THEY KILLED YOU BEFORE THEY USED YOU?:
THE QUALITY OF MERSEY (Mark Steyn, 10/11/04, Steyn Online)
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.I’d written about Kenneth Bigley, seized with two American colleagues but unlike them not beheaded immediately. Instead, sensing that they could exploit potential differences within “the coalition of the willing”, for three weeks the Islamists played a cat-and-mouse game with Mr Bigley’s life, in which Fleet Street, the British public, governments in London and Dublin and Islamic lobby groups in the United Kingdom were far too willing to participate. As I always say, in this war the point is not whether you’re sad about the dead people, but what you’re prepared to do about it. What “Britain” – from Ken Bigley’s brother to the Foreign Secretary – did was make it more likely that other infidels will meet his fate.
I suppose the Telegraph felt the column was a little heartless. Well, this is a war, and misplaced mawkishness will only lead to more deaths. [...]
Here’s the column the Telegraph declined to publish:
Whether or not it is, in the technical sense, a “joke”, I find myself, with the benefit of hindsight, in agreement with Billy Connolly’s now famous observation on Kenneth Bigley – “Aren’t you the same as me, don’t you wish they would just get on with it?”
Had his killers “just got on with it”, they would have decapitated Mr Bigley as swiftly as they did his two American confreres. But, sensing that there was political advantage to be gained in distinguishing the British subject from his fellow hostages, they didn’t get on with it, and the intervening weeks reflected poorly on both Britain and Mr Bigley.
None of us can know for certain how we would behave in his circumstances, and very few of us will ever face them. But, if I had to choose the very last last words I’d want to find myself uttering in this life, “Tony Blair has not done enough for me” would be high up on the list.
We're fighting headhunters and yet even conservative newspapers get knock-kneed at tough truths? Posted by Orrin Judd at October 11, 2004 4:54 PM
Notice that Al-Jazeera and the psychotic webpages never showed video of Fabrizio Quattrocchi's execution...Not enough groveling, I guess.
Posted by: brian at October 11, 2004 6:53 PMNone of us can be sure of what he would do in this situation. I would prefer not to be taken, to avoid the protracted fear and pain: enough so that I would haul leather, no matter the odds, holding suicide by camel-jockey to be no suicide.
Posted by: Lou Gots at October 11, 2004 7:37 PMHere's a great quote Steyn mentions from a previous column:
3,000 people died on September 11th, leaving a gaping hole in the lives of their children, parents, siblings and friends. Those of us who don't fall into those categories are not bereaved and, by pretending to be, we diminish the real pain of those who really feel it. That's not to say that, like many, I wasn't struck by this or that name that drifted up out of the great roll-call of the dead. Newsweek's Anna Quindlen "fastened on", as she put it, one family on the flight manifest:
Peter Hanson, Massachusetts
Susan Hanson, Massachusetts
Christine Hanson, 2, Massachusetts
As Miss Quindlen described them, "the father, the mother, the two-year old girl off on an adventure, sitting safe between them, taking flight." Christine Hanson will never be three, and I feel sad about that. But I did not know her, love her, cherish her; I do not feel her loss, her absence in my life. I have no reason to hold hands in a "healing circle" for her. All I can do for Christine Hanson is insist that the terrorist movement which killed her is hunted down and prevented from targeting any more two-year olds. We honour Christine Hanson's memory by righting the great wrong done to her, not by ersatz grief-mongering.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at October 11, 2004 11:29 PMCan someone tell me why we, at the very least, don't take the Ka'aba hostage?
Posted by: carter at October 12, 2004 1:39 AMThere's a typo in the main post; it should read:
"Tony Blair has not done enough for me" would not be high up on the list.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at October 12, 2004 6:51 AMIMHO, not one of Steyn's best, I don't blame the Telegraph for pulling it.
Posted by: Bret at October 12, 2004 11:47 AMMichael,
You have to read it twice:
"But, if I had to choose the very last last words Id want to find myself uttering in this life, Tony Blair has not done enough for me would be high up on the list."
A double negative. An uncharacteristically infelicitous phrase, for Steyn.
Posted by: Eugene S. at October 12, 2004 1:56 PMYeah, I agree with Bret.
It seems pretty incoherent.
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