Fraters Libertas

Steven Vincent's Homecoming

Steven Vincent was buried last week back home in his East Village neighborhood in New York. Alternative weekly The Villager provides an account, testifying to the non traditional context which produced this first rate political journalist.

The crowd was diverse, reflecting Vincent's wide-ranging interests. There were people from the art world, including from Art & Auction magazine, where he formerly worked, and from Sotheby's, where [his wife] worked. One of the twin hosts from "Antiques Roadshow" was among them.

The circumstances of his murder are still unknown, and may be never be fully understood in the maze of motivations, opportunities, and means that is Iraq under siege by terrorism. There was some speculation by the London Telegraph and professor-blogger Juan Cole that it was a so-called "honor killing," based on a romantic relationship between Vincent and his female interpreter. Cole's commentary included these unwarranted barbs:

Vincent did not know anything serious about Middle Eastern culture and was aggressive about criticizing what he could see of it on the surface, and if he was behaving in the way the Telegraph article describes, he was acting in an extremely dangerous manner.

Vincent's widow has responded to these allegations. She confirms the curious fact that Vincent had an agreement to marry his translator, but for reasons other than the salacious tabloids and university professors assume. He was trying to get her out of the country because her safety was at risk.

Regarding Cole's dismissal of Vincent's expertise and behavior, his wife's response bears mentioning:

Yes, Steven was aggressive in criticizing what he saw around him and did not like. It's called courage, and it happens to be a tradition in the history of this country. Without this tradition there would have been no Revolutionary War, no Civil War, no civil rights movement, no a lot of things that America can be proud of.

He had made many friends in Iraq, and was afraid for them if the religious fundamentalists were given the country to run under shari'a. You may dismiss that as naive, simplistic, foolish, but I say to you, as you sit safely in your ivory tower in Michigan with nothing threatening your comfy, tenured existence, that you should be ashamed at the depths to which you have sunk by libeling Steven and Nour. They were on the front lines, risking all, in an attempt to call attention to the growing storm threatening to overwhelm a fragile and fledgling experiment in democracy, trying to get the world to see that all was not right in Iraq.

And for their efforts, Steven is dead and Nour is recuperating with three bullet wound in her back. Yes, that's right - the "honorable" men who abducted them, after binding them, holding them captive and beating them, set them free, told them to run - and then shot them both in the back. I've seen the autopsy report.