Will Malven
11/28/2005
In an earlier comment on the Houston Conservative webpage, I
expressed the opinion that the Iraqis must the ultimate arbiters of what is or
is not acceptable in the conduct of this war against the insurgents and terrorists
who are killing their and our people.
The article was titled Shiite
Urges U.S. to Give Iraqis Leeway In Rebel Fight. It expressed the opinion of Abdul Aziz Hakim,
head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shiite
Muslim religious party that leads the transitional government that,
"The
more freedom given to Iraqis, the more chance for further progress there would
be, particularly in fighting terror.”
I do not believe that it is the place of American diplomats
to “instruct” the Iraqi military, the Iraqi provisional government, or the
Iraqi people on how they should conduct the war in which they are engaged. The differences between our two cultures vary
both morally and culturally. It is
arrogance in the extreme for American political correctness to interfere with
the leaders of the Iraqi nation, now taking their first fumbling but resolute steps
toward a representative form of government, in conducting its war for
survival. And that is just exactly what
they are doing. The Iraqi nation is now
fighting for its very existence. The
niceties of our own cultural views on how to conduct a war, impaired and
corrupted as they are by the absurd belief that war can be conducted by rules
agreed upon in another time and place by cultures which are alien to those
currently involved, have no place in the Iraqi war for existence. Just as we have been repeatedly instructed by
those on the Left, that Christianity has no claim to moral superiority over
Islam (a view with which I’m not entirely certain I agree), it must follow that
Western cultural norms and mores have no claim to superiority over those of the
Middle East.
The concerns of those in our nation like Extreme Liberal
Democrat Senator Dick Durbin and former Attorney General and Erstwhile Betrayer
of Our Nation Ramsey Clark over “torture” of the type which so horrified
Extreme Liberal Democrat Senator Dick Durbin that he ceremoniously and without
apology described our guards at the Guantanamo, Cuba holding facility as using
tactics reminiscent of those used “in the Gulags” or “the death camps of Hitler,”
are not the concerns of our allies in Iraq.
Our cultural standards are not those of our Iraqi allies or of their
people. It should be the exclusive
province of the Iraqi government as to how the terrorists who are killing
innocent Iraqi men, women, and children everyday should be treated, not
American Congressmen back safe and sound in their leather bound chairs in their
carefully protected offices. We are in Iraq to give
the Iraqi people a chance for self government, not to run their government for
them. American arm-chair generals who have
been brainwashed by the constant bombardment from the left telling them how we
must treat our enemy prisoners like honored house guests, believe that war
should be clean rather than messy and apparently place no real value on the
lives of our soldiers. For them, better
a thousand Americans die than one terrorist suffer humiliation.
Each people must be free to choose their own path to
freedom. It is a moral imperative that
those who enjoy the privileges of freedom should strive to help others to
achieve the same. However, once
self-determination is achieved, it is not up to other nations to dictate how
that nation should develop culturally or morally. In 1776 America was not
constrained in our behavior by any outside influences. How we conducted our war for freedom was a
decision made by us. Our forefathers were constrained only by their personal
beliefs in what was right and what was wrong. Our War for Independence was fought in the manner in
which our forefathers chose, not our allies, the French, and certainly not that
of our enemies, the British. In the end, this is what must happen in Iraq. They too
must be allowed to resolve the conflict in their own way, with the logistical
support of our military and with the support of our might where needed, but in
a manner consistent with their own cultural standards. Some of their techniques
may be questionable by our Western standards, but they are techniques invented
by a culture and civilization which is centuries older than ours and may be
more acceptable by those standards. We
are horrified that thieves in Saudi
Arabia may have their right hands cut off. We do not have the moral authority to declare
such a punishment as wrong or right. To
be certain it is a deterrent to further theft by that individual. Such a punishment is not mere brutality for
the sake of brutality, but must be seen in its cultural context. By chopping off a criminal’s right hand, he
is ostracized from society. An Arab’s
left hand is viewed as “dirty” and socially unacceptable. The threat of being ostracized for life,
while it may appear brutal to us in the West, is a mighty deterrent in a
tightly knit society bound by Sharia (Islamic Law). Truthfully is such treatment any more
“barbaric” than it is for our culture to slap those who would victimize others
on the wrist with a 2 year sentence in prison and then return them to the same
society to victimize more citizens, again and again? Are we not then complicit in their assault
against our own citizens? Are we not
then guilty of caring more for the criminal than for the victim of the
crime? You tell me which culture has the
correct approach.
Political correctness in war is a disease which tells us
that it is okay to blow someone up, but somehow it is unacceptable to humiliate
or degrade him or his faith when in captivity in order to extract information
which might be vital to saving lives.
Political correctness tell us that when captured enemy soldiers are
“tortured,” the information obtained is useless, that the “victim” of this
“torture” will make things up to tell his captors. Yet they will simultaneously claim that there
is a “nuclear scenario” in which it may be permissible to subject a prisoner to
extreme torture to extract information which could save hundreds of thousands
of lives. This is a contradiction which
cannot be reconciled, and our own recent experience teaches another
lesson.
As a simple example I will refer you to the case of Lt.
Colonel Alan B. West, an African American officer who received news that his
men had been targeted by a group of thugs associated with an Iraqi policeman
named Yahya Jhodri Hamoodi. Hamoodi was apprehended and interrogated for
several hours. Witnessing the failure of the interrogators to obtain
results and growing frustrated at the risk to his men, Colonel West took Hamoodi
outside, shoved his head into a sandbox and threatened to kill him. The Colonel
then pulled out his sidearm and fired a warning shot into the sky. West then
carefully held Hamoodi’s head aside and fired a shot over Hamoodi’s shoulder,
into the Iraqi sand. Hamoodi sand like a
canary and the resulting information obtained prevented an ambush of West's
troops and resulted in the capture of its intended perpetrators without the
Iraqi prisoner being harmed. For his
efforts, the diplomatic and military PC police forced him to resign his command
or face a court martial for violating the niceties of war, as they saw it. He was cashiered out of the Army and was
lucky to retain his pension. West’s crime was offending the sensibilities of
our Left-wing media and our Extreme Left-wing Democrat Congressmen. How the war in Iraq is conducted must ultimately
fall to the decision of the Iraqi people and their government.
In the end, when “diplomats” and “do-gooders” interject
themselves into war, the results are usually devastating. Wars are longer and bloodier, more civilians
are killed, the economies of the warring nations can be damaged almost beyond
recall, and in the end, Criminal societies are allowed to flourish, because
their leaders escape punishment. Abdul
Aziz Hakim is correct. It is time for
the diplomats to but out and allow the Iraqi soldiers to fight the war in their
own manner with our soldiers their to support them and instruct them where
needed, but they must be allowed to conduct combat operations by their own
ethical standards, not ours. After all,
our goal is for them to be capable of protecting themselves without our help,
is it not?