Posted on 06/17/2006 10:52:17 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
No? You try holding your arms in place for a full day. Get back to me if that "physically harm[s]" you. And recall - this man had been convicted of no crime other than complaining about servicemen dropping their garbage on the kid's soccer fields. Hardly a terrorist.
And the people who did that to this guy are spending hard time at hard labor. When these things come out, people are punished. We don't need Rick Warren and his merry band of "people against torture" dragging up the past and saying "gee, we oppose torture" as if they are better people than the Marines they seek to investigate. How about we start a National Religious Campaign Against Self-Righteous Hypocritical Religious Campaigns?
A couple of 500 pound bombs on the head is not torture, a rifle butt to the head is. Hmmmmmm.
Maybe we should just jail them and make them listen to Rick Warren tapes 24-7. Or better yet, let Tammy Faye's make up artist and hair stylist have a go at them.
Time to let them hang out to dry for a while.
A pastor's job is to teach his congregation - and his society - what is morally acceptable and what is not. When there are several distinct episodes where torture or other injustices in war have taken place, it is a pastor's duty to teach his congregation that these are unacceptable for an allegedly just war.
In my high school Sunday School class, I asked how many kids were thinking about joining the military. More than half the kids raised a hand - and so was mine. I have a duty, therefore, to make sure that those kids have thought through what it means to fight in a just war. If, in a curriculum where "Thou shalt not kill" is a topic, I don't have those kids think through when it is acceptable to kill someone, than I have been negligent. So would be Rick Warren or any pastor.
A pastor should be honest with the congregation on any subject. Torture doesn't have a special place in that regard...but I don't think you're saying that.
Nonetheless, that honesty should cause him to hesitate before he's certain of his facts. If he has any uncertainty, then he should carefully and at length point out that he's engaging in conjecture.
Conjecture can be prophetic, but in that case, it's subject to evaluation by the other prophetically gifted who are in the congregation.
There are a few things that really tip me off on this Haditha charge. First, there's the promotion of the squad leader to the next higher rank. Promotion is such a carefully controlled process in the military, and it can be sidelined by even the tiniest deviation on the part of the soldier. His local commander can "flag" his records, as they say, and that will stall that promotion until the situation is cleared up.
My read is that the sergeant's CURRENT unit does not buy into the idea that there was a problem. Remember...his CURRENT unit of assignment, and where he receives his UCMJ, is at Camp Pendleton. That was his location when he pinned on his new rank.
Therefore, the NEW UNIT commander has to have received some assurance for the promotion to have gone through.
There are other little things like this that give me confidence in these troops.
For example, they are not confined at all, but those Marines from the Hamdaniya accusation are all imprisoned. There are legal bases for these things that go beyond the fact that they have different commanders.
If I had to worry about a case, I'd worry more about that one than about Haditha.
The status of the lawyers taking up the Haditha cases is also significant to me. Big name, resume-laden lawyers are taking up the Haditha cases. Their review of the facts must be indicating that they see them as winnable if they go to trial.
Time will tell.
Another thing that has struck me, and I don't know if you saw it, is that the ROE (rules of engagement) changed AFTER the Haditha incident. At that time, troops under fire were permitted to clear suspect buildings with firepower and then enter and clear again. This was considered normal operating, safety procedure.
That changed afterwards to a more restrictive ROE.
So, we must look at Haditha through the lens of a wide-open ROE that LATER was scaled back.
He's off my list, too. Rick Warren. Disgusting that they would take on the US Military. And the Global Warming Evangelical Initiative a while back -- what in the world? I want nothing to do with this kind of Christianity.
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