What Americans Are Thinking About Iraq

Rarely, if ever, has this column devoted any time to gratuitous name-calling and cavalier demonstrations against anyone or anything. But today will be different. Today, ''I settle all family business,'' as matter of factly declared by Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 gangster classic, ''The Godfather.''

The family I will speak of and per chance speak for in this tidy little philippic is the typical American family of citizens--the type of people who put their pants on one leg at a time. It is a large family, consisting of many races and religions, both men and women.

What typifies these people is not their inability to understand complicated issues, but the ability to boil these same issues down to their innate substance. This is the opposite of elitism, which agonizes over subtleties that are ''too complex'' for you and me to appreciate, much less understand. But to put that to one side, we are simply tired.

* We are tired of the transgressions of a handful of soldiers in Iraq that mistreated a few terrorist suspects being portrayed as indicative of the entire U.S. military and culture.

* We are tired of the non-stop apologies from the president on down to the Capitol Hill coat-room attendant.

* We are tired of the words ''atrocity,'' ''torture,'' and ''mutilate'' being misapplied to the abuses of Arab and Iraqi terrorist and jihadist insurgents. In most respects, college fraternity initiations strike a remarkable resemblance.

* We are tired of a decadent Middle East culture whose members lend themselves to selective outrage, all the while turning a blind eye to their own government-sponsored torture and murder.

* We are tired of nearly every elected official, including President Bush, reminding us that Islam is a ''peaceful religion'' and that ''the vast majority of Muslims are peace-loving people.''

* We are tired of Iraqis not stepping up to help remake their own country into a democracy and showing the Middle East, and the world, that they want it badly enough to die for.

* We are tired of the Monday morning quarterbacking that has become a cottage industry in relation to the aftermath of winning the war and establishing the peace. If it were that easy, France and Germany would have signed on from the beginning.

* We are tired of WMD’s and the search for them. One way or the other, they will turn up. Saddam had them, used them, and produced them. The question should be ''Where are they?” and not ''Did he have them?''

* We are tired of the more than five million Muslim/Americans who seem to have lost their ability to denounce terrorism. I call these Muslim mutes ''enablers,'' and quite frankly, so should anyone who has come out against terrorism.

* We are tired of respecting the sensibilities of other countries when it is demonstrably obvious that they use ours against us.

* We are tired of that paragon of virtue, the United Nations. It has become a sad and dangerous caricature of justice and democracy.

* We are tired of the liberal selections of the “Book of the Month Club,” penned by such leading lights as Richard Clarke, John Dean, Bob Woodward, and Ambassador-turned-politico Joseph Wilson.

* We are tired of the media ''gotcha'' news cycles that have only one reason for being: Pin the blame on George W. Bush.

* We are tired of the progressive media painting the economy as depressed and always receding. We are not a land of starving children, double-digit unemployment, and zero opportunity due to ''outsourcing.'' We are, and have been for some time now, economically revived.

* We are tired of the Ted Koppels and Katie Courics using this war as a spring board for propelling presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry towards the presidency.

* We are tired of the inability of John Kerry to talk about any issue that does not end with the words… ''and I served in Vietnam.''

* We are tired of an overstuffed Hefty-bag-with-a-hat, namely Michael Moore, and a whiny, hate-encrusted gremlin, surly Al Franken, receiving any serious thought as to what they have to say.

* We are tired of repeated references by Senators Ted Kennedy, Tom Harkin, and Frank Lautenberg to the country’s leaders as ''chicken hawks,'' thereby creating the standard that if you did not see action in the military, you are unfit to oversee it. Presidents Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin Roosevelt have shown otherwise, as has William Jefferson Clinton.

* We are tired of the ''bi-partisan'' 9/11 commission that turned the most important issue of the century into the partisan twaddle that it ended up as.

* We are tired of politicians, pundits, and panels that attempt to compare eight years of Clinton to eight months of Bush in the White House in regard to ''connecting dots'' and who’s at fault for 9/11.

* We are tired of assorted media types and political hatchet men striving to find someone to blame for 9/11. Word to the seekers: Think ''Terrorist.''

Most of all, we are tired of reminding the world and a few at home that 9/11 really happened, and we are at war. We will be at war for years to come, and we would do well to come to grips with this.

We understand that this is an election year, and the stakes are high. But the highest stakes lie in the future of the country’s very existence, whether we will stop the torrent of political bloodletting and outright fabrication, or step up and deal with the reality of war and the choices that come with it.

If your choice is to put politics ahead of country, and behave as if what has happened at Abu Ghraib prison is the defining moment of what the U.S. stands for, then I have no use for you, and I’m willing to say most of the country does not either. We are, I fear, at a junction in history that is as serious as it can get.

As far as offending anyone with the content of my tidy little philippic, that's tough.

What Americans Are Thinking About Iraq
Excerpt:
Tired of what, you ask? Well, let me tell you:
* We are tired of the transgressions of a handful of soldiers in Iraq that mistreated a few terrorist suspects being portrayed as indicative of the entire U.S. military and culture.
* We are tired of the non-stop apologies from the president on down to the Capitol Hill coat-room attendant.
* We are tired of the words ''atrocity,'' ''torture,'' and ''mutilate'' being misapplied to the abuses of Arab and Iraqi terrorist and jihadist insurgents. In most respects, college fraternity initiations strike a remarkable resemblance.
< snip >

* We are tired of an overstuffed Hefty-bag-with-a-hat, namely Michael Moore, and a whiny, hate-encrusted gremlin, surly Al Franken, receiving any serious thought as to what they have to say.
* We are tired of repeated references by Senators Ted Kennedy, Tom Harkin, and Frank Lautenberg to the country’s leaders as ''chicken hawks,'' thereby creating the standard that if you did not see action in the military, you are unfit to oversee it. Presidents Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin Roosevelt have shown otherwise, as has William Jefferson Clinton.

Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my General Interest ping list!. . .don't be shy.

-"Carlos, better than anyone, would have understood that ordinary humanity is a mere canvas upon which the truly elect can write their Message: that in a media driven war blood must ink the presses -- and that the "militant's" first duty is to ensure that the presses never stop."

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/

Monday, May 31, 2004

Knock, knock
A Reuters article by Samia Nakhoul entitled Cool gunmen hunted down Christians begins with a question asked by Islamic gunmen who seized an expatriate housing complex and killed 22 residents:

"Are you Muslim or Christian? We don't want to kill Muslims. Show us where the Americans and Westerners live," Islamic militants told an Arab after a shooting rampage against Westerners in Saudi Arabia. The four gunmen, aged 18 to 25 and wearing military vests, grabbed Abu Hashem, an Iraqi with a United States passport, in front of his home in the Oasis compound in Khobar, but they let him go when he told them he was a Muslim. "Don't be afraid. We won't kill Muslims - even if you are an American," he quoted them as saying. ... "[The gunman] told me, 'Our jihad is not against Muslims, but against Americans and Westerners'. He asked me to show him which villas had Americans and Westerners."

The shooting "rampage against Westerners" included Indians, Filipinos and Sri Lankans. The Deccan Herald reported eight Indians killed, mostly janitors. The other dead included three Filipinos, identified by the Arab News as an accountant, driver and cook. The victims were neither particularly Western nor obviously Christian. The actual breakdown of deaths was:

Indians 8
Filipinos 3
Saudis 3
Sri Lankans 2
Americans 1
Britons 1
Italians 1
Swedes 1
South Africans 1
Egyptians 1
TOTAL 22

So it was a trick question. But someone who might have known the right answer was Carlos the Jackal, once a Marxist, now a convert to Islam and an international celebrity. A British reporter who lunched with his French lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, describes the experience.

[Isabelle Coutant-Peyre] laughs throatily and lights another Cuban cigarillo. We are sitting in the Palais de Justice bar in Paris, where she swaps her lawyer's robe for a chic leather jacket. Gamine, with jetblack hair, kohl-rimmed eyes and a husky voice, she has an air of rebelliousness. Her mobile phone, which has already rung several times, trills again. She lowers her head and mutters into it: "I'll tell you later. Me too, me too." Snapping the phone shut, she announces: "That was Carlos."

There is no need to ask "Carlos who?". Ilich Ramirez Sanchez — alias "Carlos the Jackal" — was once the world's most wanted terrorist before anyone had ever heard of Osama bin Laden. He has been implicated in a number of international terrorist attacks and recently, in an interview on French television, claimed responsibility for killing more than 1500 people in the cause of Palestinian liberation (he is a convert to Islam). He was imprisoned in 1997 for the murder of two French policemen and an informant 22 years earlier. Today he is Madame Coutant-Peyre's husband — and the author of excruciating love poems penned from his cell. "I am jealous of the sun that tans you," he writes. "Of the shade that caresses you; Of your sheets that do not cover me. Of your legs not intertwined with mine."

He would known that the response was not 'I was a just a poor Muslim with a family. Spare me' or 'I am just a Filipino cook who prepares food' or even 'I am a Swedish European who is on your side'. The gunmen at the Oasis Housing complex, weighed each of these lives and decided to pull the trigger, not according to the human worth of their victims, but according to the column inches they would provide. The cooks and drivers were killed the better to hammer home the implacability of terror. Saudi staff were killed to convey the penalties for associating with the kuffar. The assorted Europeans to provide variety.

The American Muslim was pointedly spared so Reuters could emphasize the magnanimity of Jihad. Carlos, better than anyone, would have understood that ordinary humanity is a mere canvas upon which the truly elect can write their Message: that in a media driven war blood must ink the presses -- and that the "militant's" first duty is to ensure that the presses never stop. The correct answer was, 'I am one of you'; and the angel of darkness would have passed him by.

posted by wretchard | Permalink: 11:13 AM Zulu

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