Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

How many more Iraqis must die for our revenge? (GREELEY ALERT)
Sun-Times ^ | November 12, 2004 | ANDREW GREELEY

Posted on 11/12/2004 4:43:25 AM PST by Chi-townChief

The election is over and so we can forget about the Iraq war. It is no longer a political issue and hence matters to no one. The American electorate has followed the tradition of standing by a wartime president and thus endorsing the president's war. It was once his war. Now the election has made it our war. The issue is closed.

A recent report suggested that if one compares the number of deaths that usually occur in Iraq per year with the number since Bush's invasion, the cost of the war in dead Iraqis may be more than a hundred thousand human beings. Now Iraqi deaths don't count because they look funny and talk funny and have a funny religion. Besides they're Arabs, and we have a score to settle with Arabs because of their attack on the World Trade Center. Yet if we are able to sustain the number of deaths that have happened as a consequence of the invasion, we will soon have accounted for as many as Saddam Hussein did. That's a lot of dead Arabs -- and a lot of bereaved spouses, parents, children, other relatives and friends. How many before will we have to kill before we're satisfied with our revenge?

Someone might say that when leaders of a country have caused so many deaths that they might just deserve to be hauled before an international court of justice as war criminals -- especially if the war was based on false premises and conducted with an ineptitude that staggers the mind. It is an unnecessary, unjust, stupid, sinful war. The majority of Americans have assumed responsibility for the war. Therefore they share responsibility for all the Iraqi deaths.

OK, lets say there's only 50,000 extra dead. So that's not so bad, right? Americans are never going to have to render an accounting to their Creator for having supported such a massacre. Right?

I don't judge the conscience of anyone, leader or follower. I am merely saying that there is objective sin in the Iraq war, and our country as a country is guilty of sin. I'll leave it to God to judge the guilt, because that's God's job. I also leave it to God to judge whether there ought to be punishment for that sin. However, I think Americans -- so serenely confident that the Lord is on our side -- should live in fear and trembling about punishment.

The terrorists blew up the World Trade Center because they believed that the United States has done terrible things to Palestinians. The next explosion will be revenge for what we have done to Iraqis. We may not have been responsible for the plight of the Palestinians -- though very few Muslims believe that. We are certainly responsible for what we have done and will do to the Iraqis during the next four years of folly. God help us all.

Because we are the only superpower, there is little chance that our leaders will be indicted as war criminals or that an invading army will punish the American people the way we punished the Germans after the war.

Don't give me that stuff that the Iraq war is not comparable to World War II. That argument deliberately misses the point that a country is responsible for the deaths it causes because of an unjust war, even if the deaths are numerically small compared to deaths from another war. An unjust war is an unjust war and the death of innocents is the death of innocents. Where does one want to draw the numerical limit after which the unnecessary deaths of the innocent become a horrible crime? How many hundred thousand?

The United States has fought unjust wars before -- Mexican American, the Indian Wars, Spanish American, the Filipino Insurrection, Vietnam. Our hands are not clean. They are covered with blood this time, and there'll be more blood this time.

The one faintly bright spot is that our victorious wartime president, now that he has been re-elected, might be able to extricate himself from Iraq more quickly than John Kerry. The war will never end unless and until the American government or the American people say that it's time to get out.

Will that require four more years?

(And before Catholics write me hate mail saying that I'm a disgrace for attacking the war, they should ponder writing a letter to the pope who has made no secret of his opposition.)

mailto:agreel@aol.com


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Illinois; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: andrewgreeley; greeley
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-35 last
To: Chi-townChief
How many more Iraqis must die for our revenge?

As for myself, I don't know the answer to that question.

Let's just start with the head choppers and take it from there.

21 posted on 11/12/2004 5:51:54 AM PST by San Jacinto
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Chi-townChief

Who died and made him Pope?
Why does anyone listen to this piece of crap?
He is the perfectly modern secular priest, my guess is he no longer believes in God but keeps the trappings of faith about him.


22 posted on 11/12/2004 6:24:13 AM PST by steve8714 (Urban sprawl and citizens' guns will save this country.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: JusticeTalion

You nailed it! This is not about revenge. It's about dealing with the problem (radical Islam) before it's too late.


23 posted on 11/12/2004 6:29:29 AM PST by airborne (God bless and keep our fallen heroes.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: Chi-townChief
Now Iraqi deaths don't count because they look funny and talk funny and have a funny religion

Andrew Greeley has it all mixed up.

It's Liberals who look funny and talk funny and have a funny religion!

24 posted on 11/12/2004 6:44:05 AM PST by Gritty ("Hillary Clinton... an East Coast, liberal, feminist überbitch"-Gerald Warner, The Scotsman)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Chi-townChief
( How many before will we have to kill before we're satisfied with our revenge?)

How many are left? seriously though, this 100,000 number is bogus.#1 it assumes that all Iraqi civilian casualties are"innocent" #2 it's based on surveying Iraqis about how many people they knew who were killed, is it possible that some of them "knew" the same person? or that some may have simply lied about it to make the U.S. look bad?
25 posted on 11/12/2004 6:48:58 AM PST by edchambers ("Rock n Roller with one foot in the grave")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Chi-townChief
Ya'know one of my in laws commented to me that we will never solve the problem with radical Islamics until we 'understand' them better.

My response to him was that holding six inches high at a hundred yards and letting out a half breath before squeezing gently didn't take a whole lot of mental effort to grasp.
26 posted on 11/12/2004 6:50:30 AM PST by ManMountain (In case of social breakdown remember Liberals... The other white meat.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Chi-townChief
Ummmm... maybe the Rev. Greeley needs to look in the mirror and decide how God will hold him accountable for publicly shilling for a presidential candidate that openly defied the Church, desecrated the Sacrament of Holy Commmunion, and championed the slaughter of 40 million unborn babies....

Oh - oh! And then he can explain how he KNOWS about an active underground gay/pedophile priest society in the Chicago archdiocese and a supposed related "homicide", yet does - not - go - to the police or do anything to stop them...

27 posted on 11/12/2004 6:55:48 AM PST by Rutles4Ever ("...upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Chi-townChief

Greeley should stick to his forte: writing pornography and breaking his vow of celibacy.


28 posted on 11/12/2004 8:06:07 AM PST by A.A. Cunningham
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Chi-townChief

How many? As many as it takes to show the fanatics that we mean business and have the will to prevail.


29 posted on 11/12/2004 8:27:25 AM PST by wildbill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: wildbill

How many Greeleys does it take to screw in a light bulb?


30 posted on 11/12/2004 8:36:12 AM PST by NRA1995 (Free Republic Inaugural Ball II, here I come!!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: NRA1995

I dont know. I'll bite. How many Greeleys DOES it take to screw in a light bulb?


31 posted on 11/12/2004 8:52:00 AM PST by wildbill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: Chi-townChief

wow...ANDREW GREELEY is the pig.


32 posted on 11/12/2004 8:54:03 AM PST by martin gibson
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Chi-townChief
Consider this, watching the wonderfull soliders fighting on the street by street in Fallugh, this could happen on the streets of America, you can never put anything past these morons, are capable of anything.
33 posted on 11/12/2004 9:09:20 AM PST by lillybet
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: wildbill

just a rhetorical question......


34 posted on 11/12/2004 9:09:42 AM PST by NRA1995 (Free Republic Inaugural Ball II, here I come!!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: Chi-townChief
The election is over and so we can forget about the Iraq war. It is no longer a political issue and hence matters to no one.

This guy is an idiot. It matters to me -- I'm deployed over here! I cringe when I read this kind of drivel. And to think, in another two years we'll have to suffer through another two years of hearing the loony leftists shill over and over again, "America is ready for change. The failed policies of this administration blah blah blah..." Hopefully we can get Iraq stablized in the next 18 months, so the liberals won't have much to speak about.

35 posted on 11/12/2004 9:20:47 AM PST by gcraig
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-35 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson