Iraq 2007—Part I

Curt Mudgeon

October 2007

Harry Reid and his cohorts got egg on their faces this week.  The Democrats do not seem to understand that the brains are on the Republican side, except perhaps for John McCain who has a habit of getting hoodwinked by the likes of Teddy Kennedy.  Now, it is rather rich for Harry to write that stupid letter to Clear Communications, which somehow contrived that Rush Limbaugh would have insulted our soldiers in one of his radio programs.  It may be that Harry does not know much about Rush’s daily three hours of commentary, and so would not have gotten it that Rush is a fervent supporter of our warriors.  That forty senate Democrats co-signed that piece of rubbish is one more proof that brains are not on the side of Teddy Kennedy’s colleagues—Ann Coulter, who has brains, wrote a book about that.  If I remember well, it is Harry who officially announced to our enemies from the halls of the senate that our soldiers had lost the war.  Harry probably believes that the only way to end a war is by losing it.  George Orwell wrote that it was the “quickest way to ending a war,” but he did not mean it to be a generally advisable strategy or tactic. Harry may also have difficulties understanding the Constitution, which would explain why he may sometimes behave as if he were our commander-in-chief.  Harry is not too bright.

Harry made a big mistake when he targeted Rush, because Rush actually can run circles around Harry with “half [his] brain tied behind [his] back to make it fair.”  Rush auctioned the infamous letter, which brought in $2.2M for the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, one of our very best charities, which provides college scholarships for the children of law-enforcement and military personnel who died in the service of our country.  In addition, Rush made a donation that matched that bid.  He also urged the signatories of Harry’s letter to do the same, but, so far, no one has taken the challenge—where is sanctimonious, unctuous Senator Feinstein, whose husband’s business has nicely profited from Army contracts?  Well, I guess it is too much to expect that Democrats would show Limbaugh’s brand of class.

Harry Reid’s grandstanding over Rush’s comment about a “phoney soldier”—that soldier was actually a phoney—by insinuating that the epithet was directed at all soldiers had the goal of refreshing the Democrats’ image concerning the Iraq war.  Harry was trying to show that he cared about our soldiers, and that he would not tolerate negative comments about them.  Why such a show?  Well, to Harry and his fellow Democrats, all-out opposition to the war in Iraq is the main hope to win the White House next year and to reconstruct the kind of political power that they had enjoyed for most of the past century.  In that opposition, they have shown no restraint, no decency.   Not only has Harry announced that we had lost the war, but some of his friends have repeatedly accused our military of improper conduct.  Senator Kerry, failed candidate to the presidency and questionable warrior, denounced the war which makes “young American soldiers … [go] into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorising kids and children [sic], you know, women, …”  Well, we know that Mr Kerry has a habit of disparaging American soldiers with bogus accusations.  As military leaders have repeatedly pointed out, utterances of that sort by our politicians just encourage our enemy and may affect the morale of our troops.  Apparently, to the Democrats, this is not that much of a price to pay to gain political power.  Or is it that they are too dumb to realise the harm they are doing?   Because voters may get disgusted with such tactics, Harry wants to make them believe that, in spite of the despicable rhetoric, he and his forty drones truly support the soldiers.  Hence, the letter to slam Rush Limbaugh.  Now, Harry’s attempt to take credit for the charitable contributions generated by the auction is just pathetic.  

All the leftist brouhaha about the war in Iraq seems to have succeeded in making people forget some fundamental aspects of the situation.  This war is a world war, which Islamists declared on Western civilisation with a series of attacks—acts of war—against the United States and then Britain and Spain, starting with the takeover of our embassy in Teheran in 1979.   Iraq is but one battlefield of this conflict.  The Left, which insists on making the war a main component of its political games, does not seem to have grasped the seriousness of our plight.  Actually, because it is probable that most people have not gotten the true measure of the danger, it is useful to take a second look at the nature of our enemy.   

Good souls will probably object to my calling the enemy “Islamists.”  Well, this is no twisted interpretation of facts, given that their declared goal is the establishment of caliphates ruled by Islamic law wherever possible and by whatever methods, the ultimate goal being world domination.  These Islamists are helped in this endeavour by the immigration laws of the Western countries, which offer little protection against quiet invasions.  In addition, the basic freedoms and the religious tolerance built in the institutions of these countries also facilitate the recruitment and indoctrination of subversive groups and operational cells under the cover of religious practices.   The danger is that Western-style democracies are workable political systems only as long as their populations in good faith support their principles of government and are generally willing to obey the laws.  These democracies are not geared at all to fight internal, widespread, organised terrorism, the kind practised by Islamists.

Unfortunately, many of us refuse to recognise the religious component of this war.  George Orwell’s observation that “to see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle” is perfectly illustrated by an irrational, widespread sentiment in the West that all religions are equally “good” and that all religious people are our friends.  This sentiment is part of the fashionable current of self-denigration inherent in a political correctness dear to the Left, preached by some churches, and enforced by activist courts.  It has given rise to euphemisms such as “Islamo-fascists” to designate our enemy, and to the fatuous claim that “Islam, religion of peace,” has been “highjacked” by extremists.  To think that any of the Islamic clerics who day in, day out call their followers to join the jihad against the Great Satan could have drawn an iota of inspiration from Mussolini’s ideas is just ludicrous.  When President Bush calls Islam ”a religion of peace,” should we believe him or should we believe the clerics who call for the killing of “infidels”?  I would believe the clerics.  Their trade is the interpretation of the Koran.  They are the experts.

Considerations of this kind should lead anyone with a brain to believe that not all religions are equally good, and that some are much better than others.  A good friend of mine, good Christian, keeps telling me that harbouring such thoughts might be a bit arrogant.  I think not.  In my book, religions that have evolved to coexist with other religions are certainly better than those that seek their brutal annihilation.  I know, such thoughts are crassly pragmatic, but in these circumstances pragmatism has to take precedence over acceptance of lethal spirituality and its consequences.  The argument that past excesses of Catholic or Protestant zealots would establish some equivalence between Christianity and Islam does not hold water.  Over the centuries, Christian doctrine has come to reprove these excesses.  By contrast, Islam is still steeped in the seventh-century mentality by which its prophet despatched his troops on wars of conquest and conversion by the sword. 

Much is said about those great numbers of Muslims who disapprove of the extremists, just want to be our good neighbours, and have the same aspirations in life as the average American.  I have my doubts.  Opinion polls in these communities reveal that a substantial majority does not like Western principles of government and would favour instead Islamic law.  I take a dim view of Islamic law and of the kind of people who wish to bring it about.  It is just that I do not find a form of justice rendered by public stoning of women or finger amputation particularly appealing.  Somehow, a clear strain of barbarity seems to inhere in Muslim societies.   In Iraq, beheadings recorded on video tape and other incidences of torture attest to that.  But even these pale besides the unspeakable tortures and mutilations routinely committed by Islamic terrorists and mobs—including women and children—on European and Muslim civilians during the Franco-Algerian war of the 1950s and its aftermath.  Jihadists are still at it in that Muslim country, using the same methods to terrorise the population with the goal of imposing a sharia rule.  These facts somewhat temper my views on the idea that those Muslim neighbours who are urged to join the jihad in their regular visits to the mosques just want to be my friends.  I suspect that their interest in that friendship would vanish the very day their clerics would take over—and with dire consequences.

Such circumstances make the Democrats’ legalistic obstructions and propaganda to impede our war effort particularly incomprehensible, if not downright criminal.  The case of the Guantanamo camp is especially egregious.  That members of Congress want to reduce the status of these franc-tireurs, prisoners of war who are not even in a category protected by the Geneva Conventions to that of ordinary criminals entitled to legal advice is unconscionable.  In this context, it is useful to recall that prisoners of war covered by the Geneva Conventions can be held in camps until the cessation of hostilities without legal representation, and that in a past not too distant it was accepted practice to shoot franc-tireurs on the spot.  Equally unconscionable is the reluctance on the part of Democrats and some Republicans to control immigration and to secure our borders.   In this conjuncture, it makes sense to ask whether there is some sanity left in the Congress ruling majority, and whether the security of the country is taking a back seat to short-sighted policies driven by a lust for partisan power. 

Yet, more has to be said about the propaganda of the opposition party that impugns the motives of the White House in the Iraq war, and attendant criticisms concerning its conduct.   I shall dwell upon these depressing topics in a forthcoming column.