The American Spectator

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Outrage Outage

6.23.06 @ 12:01AM

TAKE OFF THE GLOVES
Re: Paul Beston's Where Is the Outrage?:

By the grace of God, these young men are at peace now. One of the young soldiers was from my town of Madras, Oregon. I am sickened by the ways these young soldiers died. No, we cannot bring troops home at this time. Think of the Revolutionary War, and what this "country" would be like now. Think of the Holocaust and WWII and Pearl Harbor. What would those soldiers who gave their lives think of our situation now if we pulled the troops out before a resolution in Iraq? We must stay on and fight. If our country left Iraq now, we could not hold our heads up, and we would be shamed as a nation.

I seem to recall an email that was sent to me about "sheep dogs, border collies, working dogs, and sheep," written by someone who had served in the military. It was an excellent article. He wrote the article in response to a cancelled request for a military person to speak at a college graduation ceremony. "We don't want these types of people here" is one of the reasons for the cancelled request. It is worth reading, and sums up anything else that I could say.

We must be ever vigilant, and present a united front. These terrorists don't care if you are a liberal lefty who empathizes with the terrorist groups and their "philosophy" -- if they have a chance, they will kill every one of us: death to the infidel, you know. These individuals are worse than any nightmare, and people in this country and others had better wake up before it's too late. We are at war, and many refuse to believe it. So be it, and let them handle the consequences.
-- Jackie J. May
Jefferson County Library
Madras, Oregon

More outrageous than President Bush's silence after this abomination are the rules of engagement he has devised for this war. It is absurd to have our troops in a perpetual Stalingrad-in-Iraq -- handcuffed by the rules, unable to allow even one civilian casualty, having to fight over and over again in places like Fallujah. Having to go house-to-house everywhere, day after day, month after month, to extract individuals. Being therefore, spread thin, isolated and exposed to capture as were these two soldiers.

Were more reasonable rules of engagement in effect, our troops would not have been so vulnerable. For that matter, towns like Fallujah, or others in the "Triangle of Death" would not exist anymore, let alone be an active headquarters for the enemy forces, let alone a theater of operations. Let alone need a checkpoint, the likes of which were the last assignments of Pfc. Menchaca and Pfc. Tucker. The "Triangle of Death" should be a "Triangle of Glass" by now.

Why does the President insist on such rules of engagement? It seems to be a way of moral preening for him, one that allows him to claim that no excess loss of innocent life should occur in this war. The problem is, the torture-decapitations of Pfc. Menchaca and Pfc. Tucker constitute yet another public relations victory for the enemy. Therefore it emboldens them, and all the millions of civilians sympathetic to them. So it leads to a prolongation of the war, and paradoxically, more civilian and American lives lost.

Mr. Bush ought to internalize this reality: The sort of creatures we are dealing with here see such rules of engagement as a sign of our weakness. To win this conflict, and to ensure a lasting peaceful coexistence with the Muslim world, the gloves must come off. Some towns must be destroyed; those "civilians" harboring combatants must be considered combatants too, and some of them must die too. But mostly, our troops must receive more respect, not just as troops, but as human beings. They should not be treated by Mr. Bush as pawns in the weird moral hairsplitting game he plays.

The Democrats have one thing right: The American people do not have the will to put up with a decade-long Vietnam-type pseudo-war where all-out warfare is taboo and endless footsie with the enemy is the order of the day. Why in hell should they have to? With all the expensive weaponry and technology, all the overwhelming horsepower, all the trillions in taxes paid and the millions of lives put at risk in so many silly, mismanaged conflicts from Vietnam to Delta Force to Beirut to Somalia to the inane "almost victory" in Iraq I, why in the world should the American people be pleased with the mediocre-to-bad results of these engagements? Why on earth would they want to buy into another one in Iraq?

The bravado of the enemy is bogus. In reality, they will respond to the deterrent effect of all-out destruction. Not all-out footsie, but all-out destruction. It will have to be so overwhelming and so odious that the Iraqi man in the street starts getting fed up with things, and HE and other Iraqi civilians start killing the insurgents themselves. Not out of anger or for political motives, but because they are afraid of EVERYONE getting killed by us. When the whole Iraqi population, civilian and combatant, is on the same page in this regard, then, the war will end.

One way or another, the enemy combatants must yet make the connection between their toxic philosophy and their own destruction. Sad to say, sheer deadly force appears to be the only way to communicate this to these barbarians.

But we Americans need to understand this connection first, on a deep level. That their philosophy will irretrievably lead to our destroying them. Until we commit to this, the Iraqis will remain unconvinced, and the war will go on.
-- Francis Dillon
Indianapolis, Indiana

The article "Where Is the Outrage?" was very poorly researched. There are several publicly stated reasons why President Bush would not want to make a public statement about the POW soldiers at this point. Most important is that the bodies were so mutilated that the military is still not certain that they are indeed the remains of the two captured U.S. soldiers. The bodies and surroundings were booby trapped, and one "defense official" told Reuters they might be non-U.S. bodies put there as a trap. Besides being a huge propaganda victory for the enemy, it would be an absolute horror for the soldiers' families to have the President announce they are dead, then later find out they are still POWs.

Second, many experts have said that the alleged terrorist message which Beston quoted in the article was a fake. It was not posted on the web in the normal fashion of other terrorist messages. Again, it would hurt the soldiers' families and the U.S. image to respond to a phony message.

Perhaps even more importantly, if the facts are confirmed, it is clear that the enemy deliberately tortured and mutilated in order to create a propaganda event, to invoke an angry U.S. reaction. Shouldn't we think twice before doing exactly what the torturers of our soldiers want? According to CNN, "The military said that because of sensitive details of the soldiers' deaths, it will not be making a public statement after medical exams are conducted, although family members can learn the details if they wish." And Maybe the U.S. military is right in that approach. The enemy sees propaganda value in having the U.S. report the way they mutilated our troops' bodies; perhaps one of the best forms of revenge is to not do it. We should quietly report that our soldiers died as heroes in captivity, and that they will be avenged.
-- Russell Van Zandt

Letter to the Editor

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