ryan is the supernicety wrote:
] ] n Arabic TV news network said Friday that American
] ] hostage Paul Johnson Jr. has been beheaded by his Saudi
] ] captors.
]
] Totally preposterous. I suppose we now know the method. It
] doesn't matter what happened with Nick Berg, this is now the
] method of choice. Dear god help us. I just don't understand
] the thought-- how can you not have good at the very base of
] your being?

Of course this is an appalling act against an individual. Those affected deserve our sympathy and condolences.

But what makes you think that these people do not have good at the very base of their being?

I grew up in a time when a standard B movie would show "Cowboys and Indians" at war. The good guys, the Cowboys, heroically fighting the evildoers - the Indians. Of course the Indians did appalling things, such as scalp the poor captured cowboy, and no doubt did unspeakable things to his woman. How could they not have good at the very base of their being? Savages, right?

I grew up and came to understand that the native American Indian had been dispossessed, murdered, raped, tortured, abused, imprisoned and humiliated by colonial occupiers seeking to better themselves on the natural resources of another peoples land. Their culture destroyed, their people herded into "reservations". For hundreds of years, the colonial occupiers fed this image of the "savage Red Indian" to the people as an "evildoer", less than human with his cruel rituals and barbaric religion.

Open your eyes.

In the end, history teaches us that we learn nothing from history.

RE: CNN.com - Report: U.S. hostage beheaded - Jun 18, 2004