Insurgents behead Hassan; American shoots to death wounded insurgent

On the same day, Margaret Hassan was found decapitated and a U.S. Marine shot to death a wounded insurgent in Falluja.

The GI claimed it was a mercy killing. The insurgents claim self defense again the juggernaut. That was certainly the argument in my literature class. “I’m not justifying it,” said Yassine, whose father is this country’s foremost psychiatrist. “But all the same she is a symbol of occupation, of the colonial period. And if she was partly Iraqi, it doesn’t matter. She was working for them.”

Sometimes I call the students ignorant, to their face. I have no compunction. Eventually, they’ll get rid of me for that, but in the mealtime when the students tell me these things — or that women under the Taliban have it much better — I tell them, “you’re ignorant. You’re like what we call people in America, in the south, when they talk that way about niggers.”

“I’m not saying I agree with it,” Yassine replied. And he might have added that I’ve begged them to disagree. I’ve tried to encourage anarchy as much as I can. Ah because they all want to go into business, to make money, why not what else is there?

“You are ignorant,” I repeated.