Meet the enemy and understand

As you might expect, the MSM has missed (or perhaps avoided) a wonderful teachable moment in the release of Fox's Steve Centanni and freelance camera dude Olaf Wiig. Howard Kurtz noted the conspicuous absence of coverage by other major media outlets:

Still, the kidnapping received no mention on the CBS, ABC or NBC nightly news until the first hostage video was released Wednesday. The relative paucity of coverage, compared with the intensive chronicling of (Jill) Carroll's captivity, may have reflected the fact that there are many more journalists in Iraq, and that the war in that country is a focus of far greater debate in the United States than the long-running conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Wartime or not, television also tends to play up kidnappings involving young women, which often become cable melodramas.

Or it could be due to the disdain with which Fox is regarded by the rest of the MSM due to its perceived conservative bent.

But the teachable aspect came not with acknowledging that the kidnapping had taken place, but with the broadcast of Centanni's and Wiig's conversion to Islam at the point of a gun.

Rather than simply reporting that the two journalists had been released unharmed, what should be of note to everyone concerned is this brief but all-too-clear look into the kind of world that the jihadis are trying to bring about. One in which the infidels either renounce their heathen religion and convert to Islam or get a bullet in the head.

It's very fashionable among leftists and Bush haters to preach that we only need to understand why they hate us and address their greivances. If we only would listen to them, they won't hate us any more and they won't threaten us with terrorism. Bush is too simplistic and hard-headed. He sees everything in black and white. What we need is a more, um, sophisticated and nuanced approach.

Hogwash. What should be painfully evident is that we're fighting against people with whom talk, reasoning and negotiation are of no use whatsoever. The Islamic fascists want to kill anyone who won't convert to the violent, extremist version of Islam to which they subscribe. Our only option is to find them, fight them, and defeat (read kill) them. If we do not, they will surely fight against us (as they have for two decades) and will happily repeat the Centanni/Wiig conversion exercise with the rest of us every chance they get.