Time Magazine documents a horrible tragedy from November.
...According to eyewitnesses and local officials interviewed over the past 10 weeks, the civilians who died in Haditha on Nov. 19 were killed not by a roadside bomb but by the Marines themselves, who went on a rampage in the village after the attack, killing 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes, including seven women and three children. Human-rights activists say that if the accusations are true, the incident ranks as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. service members since the war began.
...The military announced last week that the matter has been handed over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), which will conduct a criminal investigation to determine whether the troops broke the laws of war by deliberately targeting civilians.
I don't have what it takes to even read through the whole article. For anyone interested, there are slides and further descriptions at the link.
Hammer of Truth blog has a synopsis with predictable carping in the comments.
Independent On-line story (UK)
This is madness. Sheer madness.
In yesterday's press conference the president came across to me as sincere in his convictions and absolutely sure of his moral stand. I can remember as though it were last week that many people I knew and loved, even my own family members, came across the same way years ago when they argued against both the civil rights movement and opposition to another war. And they were wrong. Tragically, sincerely and inescapably wrong. So, too, is the president.
It has been said that war is an extension of diplomacy by other means. That may be true, but it fails to go far enough. At its most powerful, war is an extension of faith itself. At some point the fulcrum of faith moves from divine to secular. At that point our efforts no longer serve the forces of light and fall into a great deception which unwittingly serves the forces of darkness.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
"Was it self-defense, an accident or cold-blooded revenge?"
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2 comments:
Comparing a geopolical necessity - the War in Iraq - with racism, seems, well, a little stretch, doesn't it?
Being opposed to the civil rights movement was a bias of an age, just as being anti-war has become another bias.
Diplomacy, thus far, has not discouraged Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Nor will it. As the number one supporter of terrorism in the world, it's not hard to discern their purpose. Nor was it difficult to understand that Iraq, along with Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria and Libya are determined to promote muslim extremism, along with a non-judgemental media that still refers to terrorists as "separatists" or "bombers" or "dissidents" or anything but murderers.
The culmination of a forty year campaign to radicalize the Middle East -- the last ten years of which were dedicated to establishing the victimhood of the PLO and the gun-toting terrorist Yassir Arafat -- was 9/11.
The terrorists who invaded our country and killed 3,000 people in the worst attack on this country in our history, were emboldened to do so by certainty that we would do nothing. They were confident in the sure knowledge that the MSM, here and internationally, would not call them terrorists. Just as the homocide bombers would not be called terrorists for crossing into Israel and blowing up pizza parlors.
War is never an extension of faith. It is a necessary evil undertaken at times by brave men who see what others do not. FDR was a man who had such a purpose. I believe GWBush does as well.
Because we cannot live in a world where terrorism is allowed to rule and dominate. Muslims can kill 100,000 innocents in Algeria and it will not be recorded in human memory. They can kill tens of thousands more in Darfur and the MSM will blame the lack of foreign bureaus to document the killing. And radicalized sects in Africa can kill 800,000 in Rwanda and few notice, few mourn, and no one recalls the insanity of Pol Pot anymore.
War against evil is a necessity. And if you can't recognize the evil, then that, too, is a bias of the Age of Aquarius. I am the same age as you. It isn't one I share.
Thank you for reading and leaving a comment. I'm sure that nothing I say in a comment thread will change your opinions so we must respectfully agree to disagree on a good many points, including...
***I do not trivialize moral misjudgements as mere bias. I see them included among "sins unknown," serious enough to merit repentance and forgiveness when they come to light.
***The second part of my refernce to both the civil rights movement and opposition to another war referred specificlly to another "geopolitical necessity" which proved to be misdirected.
***I have never been comfortable with the notion of any "necessary" evil.
***Finally, all war is "against evil." Ask any warrior, any time in history. And opposition to war, like civil disobedience, predates the age of Aquarius by several centuries.
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