Nicholas Berg

I saw the video of the murder of Nicholas Berg.

I will get into my motivation for watching it later on. At this point however I want to discuss the motivation of the murderers.

There are actually two separate issues here.

1. Why kill Nicholas Berg at all?
   
2. Why kill him in this particular fashion?

Why kill Nicholas Berg?
This latter question is actually the more difficult of the two to answer. Rationally speaking, the murder seems to have no dividend. The Western world certainly (even the part made up by people always ready to excuse every atrocity perpetrated by Muslims) was appalled and sickened by the images, and the public slaying of Berg therefore made no new friends for the murderers. It might even have caused some existing friends to back away, if only slightly and very temporary. So what's the pay-off?

Berg murder was a demonstration, and it was intended for two audiences.

• The US, and the West in general
• Arabs, and Muslims in general

The less important audience was the West. The extremists hope to sicken the US, to demoralize, and hopefully even strike a little fear into our hearts. But even if this would succeed, it would only be a bonus to the real motive, and that is to show their fellow Muslims what type of men they are, their "courage", their "manliness", their ruthlessness (which obviously they regard as an admirable quality). The extremists hope to show their fellow Muslims the lengths they'll go to in order to fight "the oppressor", the Great Satan.
The fact that committing such barbarities constitutes nothing but violent perversion is lost on both the perpetrator AND their intended audience.
If the brutal and tortuous decapitation of Nick Berg was an isolated incident, it would not be possible to draw such conclusions, but as recent events in Iraq and Israel have shown, Muslim extremists revel in torture, gore and murder. Why they make it a point to do this in public is addressed below.

Why kill Nicholas Berg in this particular fashion?
They could have shot Nick Berg. They could have given him a lethal injection. Once the decision was made to kill him, There was a nearly infinite number of ways to do it, but it would be very difficult indeed to think of way more gruesome than sawing a persons head off with a knife.

• The "official" reason: The Koran orders it
• The real reason: They are psychopaths

Somewhere in the Koran (Koran sura 47, verse 4) it says: "you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their] necks". There are a few more instances like this, where Mohammed orders decapitation in one form or another performed on an enemy. It would seem that if only you are extreme enough, you may take this literally, and decapitate any non-Muslim.
But of course it takes a lot more than that. There are roughly 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, and although I disagree with every single one of them about their idea of God, the number of Muslims willing to perform SUCH atrocities is relatively minute. This is because you may be a Muslim, you may be a fundamentalist, you may even be an extremist, but it takes a rare kind of psychopath to murder another human being in such a fashion. In cold blood.
The Arab world has been steadily acquiring a reputation for bloodlust, for reveling in gore, but this is nearly always steeped in hysteria, in mob rule.

Not so with the decapitations of Daniel Pearle and Nicholas Berg. Here was a deliberate abomination, meant to inflict the greatest amount of horror, fear and pain before death, intended for public display via videotape.

Try and imagine if you can what would move you to do this to a person. I am willing to bet that NOTHING on this earth could.
Only a psychopath could commit such an act. And as such, the act is not religious. It is not political. It is not even revenge.
It is simply a wanton act of violence by a clinically insane person, under the guise of religion, politics and revenge. Muslim fundamentalism is attractive to such psychopaths, because it allows them rationalize and even justify their homicidal cravings. It gives them the enemies they need, it affords them every outlet for their needs to be satisfied.

I just hope it is clear that no dialogue is possible with such creatures. And that the only cure that works is a quick and painless Hellfire missile.