Pearl’s Killing Should Bring Clarity of Purpose

Re “Reporter Held Captive Is Dead, Videotape Shows,” Feb. 22:

Ironically, Daniel Pearl’s murderers performed a salutary function: Just in case--after Sept. 11--anyone was still unsure exactly what civilization is up against, they have erased all doubt by vividly showing how subhuman is the savagery we’re at war with. How else to describe reveling in the gratuitous murder of an innocent hostage for the benefit of cameras?

Should our response to these murderers and those directing them be any less than the Allied response when the Axis evils of Nazism, fascism and imperialism warred against civilization 60 years ago? Our response then was--and again should be--to turn it back, hunt it down, root it out, kill it. I hope our leaders will bring to this task the same clarity of mission with which Churchill and Roosevelt defended civilized values.

Jodie Munden

San Clemente

*

To say that Pearl was executed is a misuse of language. The correct term for what was done is murder. Execution is defined, according to my Webster’s New World Dictionary, as “a putting to death by a legal sentence.” Please note: a legal sentence.

Shirley Clement

Ventura