Posted on 03/24/2003 11:15:15 AM PST by mrustow
Toogood Reports [Monday, March 24, 2003; 12:01 a.m. EST]
URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/
We do not stand alone.
Contrary to the story suggested by much of the world's elite media, our boys do not fight alone. It is true, however, that our military allies are few. And thank G-d for that!
On the eve of battle, Lt. Colonel Tim Collins, commander of the 1st Battalion of The Royal Irish, addressed his men on the Kuwait-Iraqi border. The London Times' Sarah Oliver reported, "It is my foremost intention to bring every single one of you out alive, but there may be people among us who will not see the end of this campaign. "We will put them in their sleeping bags, and send them back. There will be no time for sorrow. "The enemy should be in no doubt that we are his Nemesis, and that we are bringing about his rightful destruction. There are many regional commanders who have stains on their souls, and they are stoking the fires of Hell for Saddam. "He and his forces will be destroyed by this coalition for what they have done. As they die, they will know their deeds have brought them to this place. Show them no pity. "We go to liberate, not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people, and the only flag that will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them. There are some who are alive at this moment who will not be alive shortly. Those who do not wish to go on that journey, we will not send. "As for the others, I expect you to rock their world. Wipe them out, if that is what they choose. But if you are ferocious in battle, remember to be magnanimous in victory. "It is a big step to take another human life. It is not to be done lightly. "I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts. I can assure you, they live with the mark of Caine upon them. If someone surrenders to you, then remember they have that right in international law, and ensure that one day they go home to their family. The ones who wish to fight, well, we aim to please. "If you harm the regiment or its history by over-enthusiasm in killing or in cowardice, know it is your family who will suffer. You will be shunned, unless your conduct is of the highest, for your deeds will follow you down through history. We will bring shame on neither our uniform nor our nation. "It is not a question of if [we will face chemical weapons], it's a question of when. We know he has already devolved the decision to his lower commanders, and that means he has already taken the decision himself. If we survive the first strike, we will survive the attack. "Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there. You will see things that no man could pay to see, and you will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous, and upright people than the Iraqis. You will be embarrassed by their hospitality, even though they have nothing. "Don't treat them as refugees, for they are in their own country. Their children will be poor, in years to come they will know that the light of liberation in their lives was brought by you. If there are casualties of war, then remember that when they woke up and got dressed in the morning, they did not plan to die this day. Allow them dignity in death. Bury them properly and mark their graves. "As for ourselves, let's bring everyone home, and leave Iraq a better place for us having been there. Our business now is north.""Wearing his kukri, the Gurkha blade that he is entitled to carry as a Gurkha commander, Colonel Collins spoke to his 800 men, an arm of Britain's 16 Air Assault Brigade, at Fort Blair Mayne, their desert camp 20 miles from the Iraqi border."
While I disagree with Col. Collins' claim that we are fighting to "liberate" the Iraqi people, mine is a piddling complaint, in the context of all that he said. The old soldier invoked the glory and the horror that are war, while never losing his humanity, and while demanding that his men never lose theirs. That is a tall order to fill.
Note too that while American G.I.s did hoist the Stars and Stripes following their first victory, they quickly took them down again.
'America Does Not Play Well with Other Nations'
In the wee hours of Tuesday night, I received a letter from Chinese dissident Pan Hu, who criticized my last column, and complained that America is alienating the world.
"If I were an anti-American strategist, possibly sitting somewhere in Paris, Moscow, or Beijing, I'd be totally thrilled if you were in charge of US foreign policy. Your patience with pesky multilateral institutions is running low, but so is the international community's tolerance for the cowboy attitude you bring to the world stage."
(He really said "cowboy"! This is the sort of thing that's a self-caricaturing cliche, when it comes in e-mails from Germany. But from Greenwich Village?! Does Pan waste his days and nights hanging out with frivolous Europeans in McDougal Street cafes?)
There is no such thing as the "international community," a rhetorical fiction advocates employ to suggest they enjoy much greater support than they in fact have.
Pan argued that we are being shunned by the world, and implied that to be unpopular, is to be in the wrong. Ultimately, Pan assumes that leadership itself is evil.
"'Let them hate, so long as they fear' is not an acceptable policy for a civilized Western nation," he continued, "especially one that possesses such disproportionate global might."
Such talk was echoed by the reporter who at Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Friday press conference, suggested that America will be seen by the world as a bully, because we are trying too hard for his taste, to win the war. A corollary to such thinking, is that too few American G.I.s are dying, leading to "disproportionate" casualties. Such critics will surely be heartened by reports of American POWS being executed, in violation of the Geneva Convention (which we have scrupulously honored, in both Gulf wars) by the Iraqis.
(Coalition forces are in fact showing a restraint never seen in the annals of war, in bowing to political pressure, to prevent civilian casualties. Hence, American and British Marines waited for hours outside a building at Umm Qasr, in a situation that conventional methods would have mastered in minutes. And yet, such restraint wins us no friends. Indeed, on Sunday, BBC reporter Ben Brown opined that, "Umm Qasr is a small place, but a big embarrassment for the Americans.")
Indeed, Pan went on to imagine that the entire world might join together, in a crusade to defeat America. Pan speculated with too much relish for it not to have been his own hope. According to him, we're a bully, when we win without a mob to help us, and because we are not part of a mob, we deserve to be stomped to death by a mob. Such "heads, I win, tails, you lose" logic is a classic expression of hatred. Like so many critics, Pan Hu is not angry, because we don't have more allies; he is angry, because he wants Saddam Hussein to prevail.
"If the world's other Great Powers coordinate their actions in an anti-American axis and enlist the support of not only the Islamic but the entire Third World, the lone superpower will be handcuffed. Pro-American governments everywhere will fall like flies: Thanks to people like you, nowadays it's a political liability to be pro-American! It's just the kind of humiliation that our adversaries want to inflict on us."
"Us"? Who is "us"?
Did I mention that Chinese "dissident" Pan Hu leads a life of safety, prosperity, and privilege, in New York, as a student at the overpriced, private university, NYU? Today, not only do Americans have to put up with foreign nationals who, from halfway across the world, wish destruction upon America, but with immigrants who do so while enjoying our hospitality, and who live better than most Americans, right here at Ground Zero. (If the Anti-Americans' fantasies of a world that defeats America came true, they would lose out on their luxuries. Well, I never said they were logical.)
Being unpopular, being shunned, is often a measure of honor. The herd may just run off a cliff. Or it may simply stand in place, chewing its cud, until it is slaughtered. Critics, including but not limited to Pan Hu, emphasize America's unpopularity in the world, while ignoring the popular support for the war right here at home. People seek for majorities -- or even minorities -- on their behalf; such is the nature of political rhetoric.
In any event, a policy's rightness stands in no necessary relation to its degree of popularity.
But if one is convinced that one is right on the facts, and about what must be done, to yield to mere pressure, as opposed to superior arguments, is a sign of moral depravity. Like so many other critics of the war, privileged "dissident" Pan Hu attacks my conviction that the U.S. is in the right. To him and his comrades, I say, Why are you so certain of the rightness of the French, the Germans, the Russians and the Chinese?
Why do the Pan Hus come to America (or stay here, if their parents brought them here), rather than the nations they consider so superior to us? They can't live as well elsewhere. Anti-Americanism pays best ... in America! And yet, like so many American leftists, they engage in what one observer has called "reverse loyalty" -- loyalty to whosoever is opposed to America.
The opposition to America's prosecution of the war, is not based on moral considerations. In France's case, it is based rather on jealousy of America's power, the opportunism of having illegally sold Iraq military parts (illegal arms, in Germany's case), a billion-dollar oil business with Saddam Hussein, and having earlier sold Hussein a nuclear reactor, with which he openly sought to produce nuclear weapons to annihilate Israel. (In 1981, Israeli air power destroyed the reactor.)
Ultimately, opposition to America is not a reaction to perceived American "arrogance," but perceived American weakness. On 911, the Arab world may have cheered openly, but many of our critics and so-called allies cheered privately. Seeing America's blood in the water, they seek to snare us in the bureaucratic nets of the U.N., while siccing terrorism's sharks on us.
And yet, on the eve of battle, the French suddenly offered to help us, should the Iraqis attack us with chemical and/or biological weapons. Should we have embraced such an "ally"? But of course, not. The French would have contributed nothing to victory, while looking out for their investments, and making mischief with the peace, as they have done in wars they had little or nothing to do with winning, since 1866.
America's enemies cheered, as the Turks refused our overtures and the bribes we offered them, to get them on board. While refusing to fight alongside us, the noble Turks have now sent up to 1,500 soldiers into northern Iraq, in addition to the units already in the region. As a Fox News reporter observed with droll understatement on Saturday, "Turkish troops are there for humanitarian reasons, to aid the influx of refugees, though how tanks could aid refugees, one wonders."
The Turks' incursion was with the hope of butchering Kurds, and looting northern Iraqi oil fields. Since the Turks are Moslem, Leftists are silent about their particular brand of unilateralism.
G-d save us from such allies!
Jimmy Carter has written that it is incumbent upon George W. Bush, to convince the world to support us. Carter, who is destined to go down in infamy as having sought, in wartime, both domestically and abroad, to undermine one of his White House successors, used weasely language, to make it seem as if George W. Bush had been elected president of the world -- but a curiously impotent president -- rather than president of the U.S. of A.
The Last Hard Men
But we do not fight alone. Two stouthearted men, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have sent men to fight alongside our own.
Mr. Howard argued to the Australian public, 71 percent of which, according to the newest polls, opposed allying with the U.S., that such an alliance was lawful, in Australia's interest, and that it was essential to maintain Australia's "fifty-year" alliance with the U.S., in the face of the North Korean threat.
"The Americans have helped us in the past and the United States is very important to Australia's long-term security. It is critical that we maintain the involvement of the United States in our own region where at present there are real concerns about the dangerous behavior of North Korea."
With all due respect to Mr. Howard, however, this has been Tony Blair's finest hour.
During the Clinton years, I was no fan of Blair. The man is a socialist, and I am not. And yet, when America needed him, he was our most stalwart ally. Israel is our ally, but it is also our client. The United Kingdom is not our client. Tony Blair risked his political life, going against huge majorities of Britons, and against his own party, many of whose leaders plotted his demise, or who publicly deserted him, to support America. For that, he will always occupy a special place in my heart.
Blair worked himself to exhaustion, trying to get members of the Security Council to agree to a new, 18th resolution on Iraq, and trying to get members of Parliament to support him. Ultimately, he relied on Tory MPs, who crossed the aisle to support him. Blair prevailed, due to his emphasis that he was trying to get U.N. support, and the realization by millions of Brits, that French PM Jacques Chirac was determined to sabotage diplomacy, by vetoing ANY U.N. resolution. And then, on March 18, came Blair's speech to Parliament, which carried the day.
The Speech
"So: why does it matter so much? "Because the outcome of this issue will now determine more than the fate of the Iraqi regime and more than the future of the Iraqi people, for so long brutalised by Saddam. It will determine the way Britain and the world confront the central security threat of the 21st Century; the development of the UN; the relationship between Europe and the US; the relations within the EU and the way the US engages with the rest of the world.... "But first, Iraq and its WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. "In April 1991, after the Gulf War Iraq was given 15 days to provide a full and final declaration of all its WMD....""The question most often posed is not why does it matter? But: why does it matter so much? Here we are: the Government with its most serious test, its majority at risk, the first Cabinet resignation over an issue of policy. The main parties divided....
Blair recited the history of Iraq's "12-year game," in which it has released one report after another, denying that it has any weapons of mass destruction, been caught lying, admitted that it has some WMDs, and then submitted yet another false report. He continued,
"What is the claim of Saddam today? Why exactly the same claim as before: that he has no WMD.... When the inspectors left in 1998, they left unaccounted for:
10 thousand litres of anthrax
a far reaching VX nerve agent programme
up to 6,500 chemical munitions
at least 80 tonnes of mustard gas, possibly more than ten times that amount
unquantifiable amounts of sarin, botulinum toxin and a host of other biological poisons
an entire Scud missile programme
"The threat is chaos. And there are two begetters of chaos. Tyrannical regimes with WMD and extreme terrorist groups who profess a perverted and false view of Islam.... "The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.... "And these two threats have different motives and different origins, but they share one basic common view: they detest the freedom, democracy and tolerance that are the hallmarks of our way of life.... "And let us recall: what was shocking about 11 September was not just the slaughter of the innocent; but the knowledge that had the terrorists been able to, there would have been not 3,000 innocent dead, but 30,000 or 300,000 and the more the suffering, the greater the terrorists' rejoicing.... "11 September has changed the psychology of America. It should have changed the psychology of the world.... "The UN should be the focus, both of diplomacy and of action. That is what 1441 said. That was the deal. And I say to you to break it now, to will the ends but not the means, that would do more damage in the long term to the UN than any other course.... "And then, when the threat returns from Iraq or elsewhere, who will believe us? What price our credibility with the next tyrant? [And if we pull back British troops] "What will Saddam feel? Strengthened beyond measure. What will the other states who tyrannise their people, the terrorists who threaten our existence, what will they take from that? That the will confronting them is decaying and feeble. "Who will celebrate and who will weep?...""We are now seriously asked to accept that in the last few years, contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence, he decided unilaterally to destroy the weapons. Such a claim is palpably absurd....
It was another Briton, Shakespeare, who penned the most eloquent speech of all on the necessity of fighting the good fight, allies or no. In Henry V, King Harry responds to his cousin and advisor, Westmoreland's timidity, on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt in France, in which Harry prevailed against the French, on October 25, 1415.
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
This day is called the feast of Crispian....
This story shall the good man teach his son;
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more....
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
And "gentlemen" in France and Germany, and 'round the world, shall think themselves accursed, and hold their manhoods cheap, whiles any speaks that fought with us in Iraq.
Dissident? About what in China is he complaining? Sounds like he would fit right in with the Chinese leaders!
Apparently, he hangs around dissidents, in order to steal attention for himself.
Last Thursday and Friday I hit about five stores for a British flag to wave along with Old Glory at our Sarasota, Florida rally on Saturday.
Our stores carry them because of the large amounts of English citizens who have vacation homes on the Gulf Coast.
I couldn't find any Union Jacks at all. They were all sold out. I was unhappy on one hand that I had a dry run, but on the other hand was delighted to be told the flags had all been snapped up in the past several weeks.
God Bless America and President Bush. God Bless Prime Minister Tony Blair and our British cousins.
Think I'll have an English muffin and marmalade with a cup of Earl Grey tea before bedtime tonight, LOL!
Leni
"As for the others, I expect you to rock their world. Wipe them out, if that is what they choose. But if you are ferocious in battle, remember to be magnanimous in victory.
This is one of the most stirring pieces of prose I have ever had the honor to read. There are so many quoteable parts of it, I have had to really prune it down. I wonder if he wrote this, or if he did this extemporaneously. Thanks so much for the ping.
Regards,
Mark
BTTT
"As for the others, I expect you to rock their world. Wipe them out, if that is what they choose. But if you are ferocious in battle, remember to be magnanimous in victory.
This is one of the most stirring pieces of prose I have ever had the honor to read. There are so many quoteable parts of it, I have had to really prune it down. I wonder if he wrote this, or if he did this extemporaneously. Thanks so much for the ping.
Recalling Sam Clemens' saying that nothing takes more time than a good, "extemporaneous" speech, and the thought that went into Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," I doubt it was off the cuff. But it's possible the commander, who is obviously a highly literate man, and gave much forethought to this speech, had sketched out some notes, and filled in the rest on the spot.
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