Mark Steyn: Events at Haditha don't change need for victory

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | Mark Steyn

[croak]

Here are a couple of observations from two parents of American heroes fallen in Iraq. The first is from Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Army Spec. Casey Sheehan, a brave man who enlisted in 2000, re-upped for a second tour and died in 2005 after volunteering for a rescue mission in Sadr City:

"We've been talking about Martin Luther King Jr. this night. My son was killed the same day he was killed, on April 4. I don't believe in any coincidences. Casey was born on John F. Kennedy's birthday. He was born on the day, and died on the day, of two people who were assassinated by the war machine in my country."

The second observation is from Martin Terrazas, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas of El Paso, who was killed by a roadside bomb at a town called Haditha:

"I don't even listen to the news."

[ScaniaBoy]

In 2004, in the wake of Abu Ghraib, I wrote that "there is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites -- from the deranged former vice president down -- want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it's pain-free, squeaky-clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we're supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day."

WOW!!!!!

[metesky]

Steyn ping...

[metesky]

She (Cindy Sheehan) is the subject of a forthcoming movie, in which she will be played by Susan Sarandon.

Now there's some box office boffo for ya! NOT!

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

assume every dark rumor you've heard is true, that this was the murder of civilians by American service personnel. . . .

Anyone who supports the launching of a war should be clear-sighted enough to know that, when the troops go in, a few of them will kill civilians, bomb schools, torture prisoners. It happens in every war in human history, even the good ones.

. . . In the run-up to March 2003, there were respectable cases to be made for and against the Iraq war. Nothing that happened at Haditha alters either argument. . . . if you're one of the ever swelling numbers of molting hawks among the media, the political class and the American people for whom Haditha is the final straw, that's not a sign of your belated moral integrity but of your fundamental unseriousness.

Journalism promotes itself as the arbiter of what is important, but in practice journalism defines itself by the rules which make for profit for itself:

• If it bleeds, it leads.

• "Man Bites Dog," not "Dog Bites Man"

• Always make your deadline; there's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper.

What could be more "fundmentally unserious" than that?

[coconutt2000]

Cindy Sheehan was fortunate to have a son like Casey. The reverse however is not true.

Casey's mother was never there for him growing up. Suddenly she's his mother again now that he is dead.

[frankjr]

from http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/reporter-jailed-by-us-broke-haditha-has-familiar-name


"Haditha Reporter Was Jailed By US, Shares Name With Source

Given the breathless coverage (actually only repetition of the same paltry facts) from our one party media about the civilian deaths in Haditha, I am surprised that we have heard nothing about the curious background of one of the first journalists to report the story, Ali Omar Abrahem al-Mashhadani, from the "restive town" of Ramadi.

It turns out Mr. al-Mashhadani might not have felt the kindliest intentions towards the US, having been imprisoned for five months mere weeks before his Haditha scoop.

Al-Mashhadani was detained because images found on his camera and because of his ties to the insurgents," according to US officials.

Indeed, al-Mashhadani has since been detained by the US again, for two weeks. In fact he was only released today."

from Reuters:

"Reuters journalist freed in Iraq

By Alastair Macdonald

June 1, 2006

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi journalist working for Reuters was released from U.S. military custody at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad on Thursday after 12 days in detention.

Ali al-Mashhadani, 37, was arrested by U.S. Marines in his home town of Ramadi on May 20 when he went to a U.S. base to retrieve Reuters telephones taken from him earlier that week.

He spent five months in U.S. custody last year before being released without charge in January."
...
"Mashhadani, who reports and provides video and pictures, is one of a small number of journalists providing news from Anbar province, where U.S. Marines and Sunni Arab insurgents, including al Qaeda militants, are locked in a fierce conflict.

Killings of journalists by all sides in Iraq have made it the deadliest war for the profession and reporters in Anbar, like Mashhadani, work under permanent threat from militant groups hostile to the international media.

Among Mashhadani’s recent stories was reporting from the town of Haditha in March. Following Time magazine’s revelation of accusations that U.S. Marines shot dead 24 civilians there in November, he filmed fresh interviews with local officials and residents that were widely used by international media."

[stopem]

Who will direct it Michael Moore? Now there is a movie to boycott, of course probably no need to no self-respecting Republican would go to see it. YUK!!

[sgtbono2002]

Cindy dosnt believe in coincidences. Makes you wonder who's birthday she was born on. Probably Tokyo Rose, or maybe Quisling.

[Bahbah]

A superpower that wallows in paranoia and glorifies self-loathing cannot endure and doesn't deserve to.

Hard line to follow.

[ClaireSolt]

I , for one, am not wallowing but barely tolerating it.

[jeremiah]

There were more civilians killed in WW II than people in uniform. Those that decided war was killing only troops was the "just" way to operate did us no favors.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

A "Well, it is Mark Steyn" Bookmark and Bump.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

There were more civilians killed in WW II than people in uniform. Those that decided war was killing only troops was the "just" way to operate did us no favors.

The Geneva Conventions (there's more than one) provide a rational standard for limits which the international community agrees should apply to the ruthlessness which inheres in war. The problem with the Geneva Conventions is that the international disapprobation which the Conventions call for are applied cynically. The UN (Oil for Food, Darfor, Rhwanda, . . . ) is notoriously cynical, and it is typical of the generally.

The problem is not that the international community respects the Geneva Conventions, but that it does not. When people speak of American "violations" of the Conventions, they beg the question as to whether those conventions apply at all. The conventions apply to the treatment of people who are ensnared is the toils of war and who themselves adhere to the rules of the conventions). People who are noncombatant civilians or, if not, are uniformed combatants in the service of a government with an address and carrying their weapons openly.

Al Qaeda is perfectly cynical about the Conventions, and so is American "objective" journalism, and so is the UN. I think it is fair to say the the US has never fought against a country which was serious about adhereing to the Conventions. Saddam's Iraq, with its legions of ununiformed suicidal attackers and its use of American uniforms to trick unreliable troops into surrendering to people who summarily executed them, use of all mosques, hospitals, and schools as defensive points and/or ammunition dumps . . .

During WWII the Roosevelt Administration pretended to be avoiding bombing civilians. The Norden bombsight was declared to be super-accurate in a way that was at the time technically impossible for high-altitude level bombing, and the mothers of bomber crews were assured that only miltary targets were being hit. It was a lie, never more so than in the firebombings (and ultimately nuking) of Japanese cities. The problem is not rules, but the cynical application of rules. American "liberals" promote the idea of rules upon rules, because they intend that the enforcement of those rules shall be one-sided against Republicans. Like Al Qaeda they like rules because they are scofflaws and the rules constrain them not at all.

Just as criminals like gun control laws.

[Pokey78]

Thanks!

Steyn ping!

[Right_in_Virginia]

"And, if you're one of the ever swelling numbers of molting hawks among the media, the political class and the American people for whom Haditha is the final straw, that's not a sign of your belated moral integrity but of your fundamental unseriousness"

I love Mark Steyn!

[FairOpinion]

Another important point in the article:

"It happens in every war in human history, even the good ones. Individual Americans, Britons, Canadians, Australians did bad things in World War II and World War I. These aren't stunning surprises, they're inevitable: It might be a bombed mosque or a gunned-down pregnant woman or a slaughtered wedding party, but it will certainly be something. And, in the scales of history, it makes no difference to the justice of the cause and the need for victory."

[FairOpinion]

"it's hard not to agree with the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto, that these days America can only fight Vietnam, over and over: Every war is "supposed to become a quagmire, which provokes opposition and leads to American withdrawal.'' That's how the nation demonstrates its "moral virtue" -- i.e., its parochial self-absorption.

A superpower that wallows in paranoia and glorifies self-loathing cannot endure and doesn't deserve to."

====

Which is exactly why the liberals want us to withdraw, they hate America, want to see her destruction and most definitely don't want her to be a superpower.

Of course, someone should make an assessment about what the world would look like, without US as a superpower -- Israel would have already ceased to exist, there would be nothing to deter Russia and China to go conquer the world, the terrrorists would have already turned half the world into a Taliban style caliphate.

[george76]

Insurgents in Haditha executed 19 Shiite fishermen and National Guardsmen in a sports stadium."


Our Marines did not kill these people.

The terrorists did.

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005321.htm