It's hard to be critical of a man who just had his son murdered, but Michael Berg is disgracing and dehumanizing his son when he blames President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld for Nicholas Berg's murder.
Nicholas Berg went to Iraq to find work, entirely of his own volition and not at the request of the American government. He went to try to take advantage of an opportunity created by the invasion; he went to make money, and to help out the people of Iraq. His intentions were good and honorable, and he made his own decisions. He saw the rebuilding of Iraq as a chance to do business, and to help his fellow-man, despite the obvious danger.
When Michael Berg strips his son of the dignity of free will, he turns his son back into a child. Nicholas Berg was a victim, but the guilty parties are the cowards hiding behind black scarves in the video, not any American officials. Michael Berg said this:
"My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this," Berg said in an interview with radio station KYW-AM.That's absurd. Nicholas Berg was no Rachel Corrie. From other articles, it's clear that he supported the invasion of Iraq, and I highly doubt he would have been best friends with the inhuman monsters who murdered him.In the interview from outside his home in West Chester, Pennsylvania, a seething Michael Berg also said his 26-year-old son, a civilian contractor, probably would have felt positive, even about his executioners, until the last minute.
"I am sure that he only saw the good in his captors until the last second of his life," Berg said. "They did not know what they were doing. They killed their best friend."
