Bullets can speak for both sides

The circumstances surrounding yesterday’s brutal murder of U.S. Spc. Keith M. Maupin by Islamic fanatical killers should be raising some eyebrows. Americans should be asking: After holding Maupin hostage for more than two months, what was the catalyst for the sudden decision to kill?

It is possible, and quite likely, these hoodlums killed Spc. Maupin out of frustration and anger at the news the United States transferred sovereign power to Iraq two days early — before the terrorists had time to subvert and derail the process.

By acting early, the U.S. government swept the ball into its own court, and the only thing terrorists could do was kill their unarmed prey. Terror had failed, and its perpetrators had no other recourse because they knew the game had been played and that they had lost. “That’ll show ’em,” they probably thought.

It did.

It showed us they have mercy for nothing, for nobody. It showed us their motives are anything but honest, their logic anything but rational. And it showed us that, despite Keith Maupin’s tragic death, American troops are fighting a just and noble fight against terror.

But they are fighting an even greater battle: one for freedom. The death of Keith Maupin showed us that above all else, military action is overdue everywhere the shadow of tyranny prevents the blossom of freedom.

This is but one frame in an ongoing cinema that justifies U.S. presence in Iraq. In the past 18 months, we’ve seen that Islamic terrorists supplant themselves to places where tyranny is under siege. These terrorists will stop at nothing to prevent democratic progress in a nation ruled for so long by their own. Saddam Hussein was just one such savage.

But the deed has been done, and the people of Iraq are free, as are the people of Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein will stand trial, and terrorists soon will see their efforts are futile. That moment likely will occur as they stare at the dangerous end of a U.S. military rifle.

And at that moment, the terrorists who killed Keith Maupin will know that though he meant nothing to them, his execution did not go unnoticed by America. They will face justice, Keith Maupin’s death will be avenged, and the senselessness of the terrorists’ cause will be unveiled before their very eyes.

That’ll show ’em.