America, You Must Not Look Away (How to Finish Off the Jihad)

To this day, our media doesn't show us the videos of people leaping to their certain deaths from the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11, 2001, to avoid the flames that would kill them if they stayed. We just don't see them when we discuss Islamist terrorism. We don't see them on the anniversaries of the attack. They are too much for us to handle. Bitter clingers would be enraged enough to start a pogrom against all Moslems, apparently. Islamists recruit with snuff films of killing Infidels in gruesome fashion. But we are the ones who cannot see the results of their handiwork.

I believe someone in our media – a grieving parent, an upset firefighter, a citizen who has seen enough of this carnage – somebody, someday soon, is going to use the videos of people plunging to their deaths from the Twin Towers on 9/11 rather than die in the inferno. And when the American people see what pavement from a fall from a burning skyscraper does to a human body, that's the day the jig will be up for the jihadis. It will be the day the debate on fighting terrorism will come to an end. There will be nothing left to argue over. It will just be over. And every sane American will demand action.

So do we just release images that one side believes are advantageous?

Michael Moore might believe the sight of dead children will galvanize Americans into doing something to stop that horrible crime from happening again. But the public might not react by banning guns. Americans might react by putting violent criminals away for far longer rather than trying to rehabilitate them. Americans might react by insisting on the death penalty for killers. The American public might react by locking up the mentally ill and making identifying potential killers such a high priority that nobody will risk seeing a mental health professional for help lest they be flagged as a potential threat.

Actually, I don't actually believe that if people routinely saw the Twin Tower "suicide" falls (they were murdered as surely as those who stayed and burned) that America's debate over fighting jihadis would come to an end. I used to think they should be shown. I still do, I suppose. But I no longer think the videos would change the debate. Those who think we regrettably "deserved" the attacks (or that we really brought them on ourselves, so we need to change more than we need to fight) won't change their minds.

And I don't think that leaking the images of dead children will change minds. It is blatant manipulation. I don't need those images to be sick at the thought of little children being cut down by a lunatic. It breaks my heart. It should not happen.

But that isn't how policy affecting basic rights should be made. We surely want to keep our children safe. That's a problem that calls for reasoned debate. Just as fighting terrorism requires reasoned debate, no? How does making each side sure the other side is demented for not reacting as you do to horrifying images lead to good solutions?

And what if seeing those images of dead, mangled, children just inspires other sickos to commit crimes like that, too? Don't some want to censor violent video games or movies to keep us from being desensitized to violence? Why are real images of death somehow curative of the problem that fictional images cause?

Yet even after we change laws and make some more things crimes, things that should not happen will continue to happen. It was illegal to kill people before Sandy Hook and before 9/11, I'm pretty sure. And our hearts will be broken when many things beyond the scope of our laws take place. Laws designed to keep killers from slaughtering children will be used to convict people in situations far removed from what was intended, just as laws to prevent terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction are used to convict people far removed from the world of terrorism. Emotions have to be expressed in words to be laws and they can never be focused enough to deal only with the problem we want to address.

We can never finish off evil. Looking away from the brutal images of that evil is just a means to preserve our sanity in this world. That doesn't mean we ignore what we know happened. Just work the problem rather than ignore it, of course.