Posted on 06/02/2006 10:13:00 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
God, our Muslim brothers remind us, is the merciful and the compassionate. There- fore, we do not make moral judgments on morality of others. It is up to God to make such judgments. So the moral guilt of the American Marines who apparently murdered perhaps two dozen civilians in Haditha, Iraq, last November must be left to heaven. Yet, in the objective order these murders of men, women and children are a disgrace to the United States and to the Corps and to all the dead we honored last Monday. Their actions are likely to lead to the murder of many Americans by Islamic terrorists who are not quite as compassionate and merciful as God.
Yet questions must be asked. What are the Marines doing in Iraq, much less riding in patrols down isolated, dusty desert roads? The Marines are an elite unit. They charge through Belleau Woods, they land on beaches at Tarawa, they climb Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima and raise the American flag, they push toward the Yalu River in North Korea in the depth of winter cold and then, cut off from main American forces, "redeploy" from the Chosun Reservoir and out of the trap.
During this epic retreat, Curtis Kiesling, one of my seminary classmates, only a few months out of Notre Dame, volunteered to storm a Chinese machine gun above his platoon of the 11th Marines. He silenced the gun and fell back among his comrades, dead.
That's what Marines are trained to do. They are not trained to be bait for terrorists. They do what they're told to do, of course, and try to live up to the ideals of the Corps. Yet, without excusing what happened, one must ask what in the world they were doing on patrol in western Iraq, where they would be an excellent target for an ambuscade, many of them on their third deployment to Iraq? Indeed, what are any Americans doing dodging roadside bombs in that country?
It will be said that they were defending American freedom. Doubtless they believed that they were. Yet there is no evidence that Iraq was ever a threat to American freedom. Or, it will be contended, they were fighting in the cause of democracy in Iraq. Anyone familiar with the disasters of the early 1920s when the English tried to civilize the new and artificial country (using poison gas, as Saddam Hussein did) will understand that democracy in that tribal society is a pipe dream.
In fact, they were there because the president of the United States "decided" that God wanted him to invade Iraq, and the defense secretary declared such an invasion would require only a small force -- less than half the size his military leaders said would be necessary -- and that there was no reason to provide an elaborate plan for the time after the war was over. So reservists, national guards and elite groups like the 11th Marines were deployed and redeployed and redeployed again, and 2,400 Americans (so far) died in a war that has turned out to be folly. We sank into the Big Muddy again.
I will leave to God the most merciful, the most compassionate, to decide about the moral guilt of Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld. Doubtless they acted with good intentions and confidence that God was on their side. In the objective order, however, the only one we can know, they are in part responsible for the murders at Haditha. I doubt that they will be troubled by the TV clip of the young girl who hid under the bed while the Marines executed her family.
They will never be held to this responsibility. The buck no longer stops in the Oval Office, as it did in President Truman's day, or at the Pentagon. It stops with the young men who cracked under strain and their superiors who tried to cover it up. They will be punished and the leadership of the country will proclaim their own great virtue for serving justice. They will not ask themselves, nor will the country ask them, if they might be in part responsible for war crimes.
As for the cover-up, I am part of a group of men who covered up for abusive brother priests. In great part we deny responsibility for what our colleagues did, even though we knew about it or should have known about it. And our leaders, our commanding officers, if you will, still exercise their offices and still presume to prescribe proper morality for the laity.
No one is responsible anymore. For anything.
mailto:agreel@aol.com
There. Sounds better in the original, dunnit?
Is Greeley offering up an admission of guilt here?
He was right. And, yes, Greeley didn't blow the whistle on any of these guys, either, though he very well could have.
If confronted for evidence to back up this claim, he will give you a B. Dalton coupon for remaindered copies of his romance novels.
>>>God, our Muslim brothers remind us, is the merciful and the compassionate<<<
Our Muslim 'brothers' also remind us, daily, that if we do not submit to the doctrine of the cult called Islam we will be killed by them, our Muslim 'brothers'.
New motto for Leftists--Semper Fickle
It's funny. The fires hadn't died in the the rubble of 9-11, before libs were making excuses for the terrorists, asking what we had done to cause such ill-will and hatred.
So let me ask--what did that community in Haditha do that might have led to Marines to react as they did? What did that rat's nest of Al-Qaida and Saddamists do?
We won't be judging you for all of that soft core porn you've churned out over the years or your failure to faithfully live up to your promise of celibacy, while you've been masquerading as a Priest, Andy. We'll leave the eternal state of your soul up to God, too.
Points of fact: 2/3 of those who served in the Vietnam era were volunteers. 2/3 of those who served in WWII were draftees.
b>This is the first war that we have liberated more territory and freed people, all the while lost fewer soldiers then what were killed on 9/11. This war is pure genius, but Bush is an absolute dimwit conveying this point, thus allowing liberals to trash the war and endangering our fighting men, and loosing the war for the hearts and minds at home!
President Bush made the mistake of assuming that the American people are not children who have no sense of history. He was wrong.
Have fun with that Greeley.
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