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At Large
On Massacres and Motivations
A reply to Glenn Greenwald regarding rationalizations and excuses and moral equivalence.
Commenting on the recent massacre of 17 Afghan civilians that was allegedly carried out by Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, Glenn Greenwald, a leading pundit on the American political left, wrote the following:
There is, quite obviously, a desperate need to believe that when an American engages in acts of violence of this type, there must be some underlying mental or emotional cause that makes it sensible, something other than an act of pure hatred or evil. When a Muslim engages in acts of violence against Americans, there is an equally desperate need to believe the opposite: that this is yet another manifestation of inscrutable hatred and evil, and any discussion of any other causes must be prohibited and ignored.
This is a typical example of how Greenwald engages in overblown rhetoric. To take just a couple of examples that refute his inaccurate generalizations here, no one attempted to rationalize the Mahmudiyah killings in 2006, which involved the massacre of an Iraqi family — including the gang rape and killing of a 14-year old girl — by some U.S. soldiers from the 502nd Infantry Regiment.
Indeed, the unequivocal condemnation was entirely justified, and the motivation for the massacre was made clear for all observers: namely, a hatred for Iraqis as a people and a desire to engage in a punitive revenge attack. We know this because that is how one of the perpetrators — James P. Barker — explained it. As he said in an interview in 2009, “Because I hated Iraqis. They smile at you, then shoot you in the face.”
As for acts of violence perpetrated against Americans by individual Muslims, one need only look at the cases of Nidal Malik Hasan, who was responsible for the spree shooting at Fort Hood, and Faisal Shahzad — the failed Times Square bomber — to see how many commentators, officials, and media outlets tried to explain their actions in terms beyond “inscrutable hatred and evil.”
For example, on NPR radio in the aftermath of the Fort Hood massacre, Tom Gjelten — covering the story for the outlet — referred to “a phenomenon that you could maybe call a pre-traumatic stress disorder” as an underlying cause behind Hasan’s rampage.
In a similar vein, Muqtedar Khan, writing in the Washington Post’s “On Faith” section, made the following argument: “It is important to understand that Major Hasan is an isolated, alienated and sad individual who was clearly not well adjusted to his life. In a community that values family life, he was single at 39 and still looking desperately for a wife, according to his former Imam.… He was frequently taunted and harassed for being a Muslim by his own colleagues… [H]e did not feel as if he belonged and perhaps that was the key to why he could turn on his own.” It is hardly as though Khan was subject to widespread condemnation for what he wrote.
Likewise, many observers were quick to note that Shahzad “had faced the loss of his family home to bank repossession,” a supposed stepping-stone on his path to radicalization. Others primarily focused on Shahzad’s anger over American drone attacks in Pakistan.
Greenwald’s writings on this matter come in the wider context of attempts to equate the Afghan massacre with the recent spree killing in Toulouse, the work of a French Muslim called Mohammed Merah. A case in point is a blog post by Harvey Morris at the New York Times, in which the author rhetorically asks: “Robert Bales? Mohammed Merah? Maybe they were both mad.”
The issue of massacres and motivations behind them needs to be clarified on several counts. When it comes to incidents of spree-killings, it is always good to start by asking whether the attack is planned in advance and the targets are intentionally chosen.
In the case of Merah, who killed three Muslim paratroopers and then four Jews at a Sephardic school, it is clear that the perpetrator’s attacks were premeditated, and in keeping with al Qaeda’s jihadist ideology that not only deems non-Muslims who do not live under Sharia as legitimate targets for jihad — whether “offensive” or “defensive” — but also Muslims perceived to be apostates for serving in the armed forces of Western countries, inter alia.
The latter concept is known as takfir, and is well illustrated in statements made by Islamist thinkers in the West aligned with al Qaeda. For example, Abu Izzadeen, a former spokesman for the banned Islamist group al-Ghurabaa, was filmed proclaiming that any Muslim who joins the British Army should be beheaded. Further, Merah proclaimed himself to be a “mujahideen,” and Jund al-Khilafah (“Army of the Caliphate”), a group linked to al Qaeda, took responsibility for the attacks. It is therefore evident that Merah’s acts were driven by his ideology.
As for Robert Bales, the problem is that many details of the massacre have still been withheld from public disclosure, hence the wide variety of speculation on causes and motives and whether the attacks were premeditated. What might suggest premeditation is that Bales may have carried out the massacre in “two episodes, returning to his base after the first attack and later slipping away to kill again.”
If this be the case, then it is plausible to suggest that Bales was driven by a desire to carry out what he saw in his mind as a punitive revenge raid on Afghans, not dissimilar to the perpetrators of the Mahmudiyah massacre. What will be crucial to determining Bales’ motivations is his own testimony at his forthcoming trial, where he could be facing the death penalty.
In fact, the Bales affair demonstrates the failure of trying to draw equivalence between his actions and those of Mohammed Merah. The very fact that Bales is being prosecuted shows that the U.S. military does not have a policy of inciting hatred against Afghans, does not encourage soldiers to engage in revenge attacks on civilians, and does not promote any sort of supremacist ideology. On the contrary, the American armed forces pursue a policy of accommodation towards local cultures.
About the Author
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University. His website is http://www.aymennjawad.org.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (35) | Leave a comment
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John786| 3.28.12 @ 8:22AM
More islamophobia from mr Javad. One topic that this site never tires of. Mr bales ( alleged rogue) actions can not be seen in isolation. He was the end point of the islamophobia that pervades Sections of the US population. Only in that context can his actions and those of US foreign policy be fully understood. So yes mr Javad by fanning islamophobia you too share responsibility with the 'mad' men that you now disavow.
markenoff| 3.28.12 @ 11:48AM
A phobia is an irrational fear. Considering recent history it is quite rational to fear the influence of followers of Mo, the pedophile bandit and their potential for violence with or without cause.
Aces and Eights| 3.28.12 @ 2:14PM
"Islamophobia?" Really?! If a street thug walks up to me and puts a gun in my face demanding my money, does that make me a "crime-o-phobe?" Islam is quite deliberately and purposefully "pointing a gun" in the World's face and the World is reacting to the very real threat. At least, PEOPLE are reacting, while quislings in Government cower and quail, and apologists for genocide use words like "islamophobia."
Riff Raff| 3.28.12 @ 2:16PM
Perhaps you are guilty of "thug-o-phobia", a well practiced "hate-crime."
Teaghan| 3.28.12 @ 8:45AM
Really John? did you notice with what speed the American soldier was arrested AND charged? The Fort Hood killer is still not charged.
Teaghan| 3.28.12 @ 9:25AM
Stupid evil muslim gets to lanquish on our dime, not charged with killing 13 Americans while they sat at their desks. But no, we can't upset the muslims by charging the bastard. And I bet this comes from the White House from the muslim sympathizer in chief.
markenoff| 3.28.12 @ 11:50AM
Fourteen Americans. PVT Francheska Velez had returned from Iraq because she was pregnant.
John786| 3.28.12 @ 9:55AM
Notice how quickly he was whisked away from afghan jurisdiction. Wiki leaks is full of stories like this. People renditioned away from Italy, Germany etc tortured , murdered in some hell hole. US threatens any state who tries to bring these people to justice.
markenoff| 3.28.12 @ 11:51AM
Are you implying that Bales was "renditioned away....to be "tortured, murdered in some hell hole."? Sounds like you would agree with that.
DRed| 3.28.12 @ 11:52AM
Teaghan, if you're talking about Hasan, he was charged in 2009, about a week after the massacre.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,574551,00.html
JP| 3.28.12 @ 12:58PM
John,
Bales' actions fall under the UCMJ. As since Afhganistan has no real civil laws (sharia doesn't count), our soldiers are tried under military rules. We do not have a SOFA agreement with Afghanistan.
Teaghan| 3.28.12 @ 2:41PM
John would rather have had our soldier turned over to those cave dwelling women hating animals to be torn limb from limb.
DRed, thanks for correcting me. It was that he hasn't been tried then. His case in not wrapped up.
Riff Raff| 3.28.12 @ 3:13PM
Notice how quickly John786 changes the subject.
Skippy| 3.28.12 @ 3:47PM
Collaborators always do.
sirbourbon| 3.28.12 @ 10:49PM
"The Fort Hood Killer " was a capitan in the US Army.
It's convenient to leave out that fact: he was/is a US army officer. That he murdered indiscriminately with a sidearm while those he was shooting at were disarmed is a travesty in that they were surrounded by tanks and all sorts of guns!
Why were they disarmed?
Are you avoiding the fact that Nedal Hasan was/is a US Army officer?
The only difference between the two alleged killers is that one used a side arm and the other alleged murderer pulled the trigger on children and disarmed mothers and fathers with a rifle. Then he set fire to their bodies after he shot them. Perhaps the kids he burned were still alive when he torched them?
The US foreign policy is insane. Or if you agree with the present policy explain the reason why US soldiers defend Aghani borders while our borders are wide open!
The war on terrorism is a fraud since our borders remain wide open! But the war on our Bill of Rights hardly gets a complaint from the fans of Cheney, Obama and the rest of the neocon/Liberal coalition. That is the insanity of Partisan politics and the depth whichour nation has been allowed to sink into tyranny due to liberals picking Clintons and Obamas and the neocons picking from the bottom of the barrel- The two Bushes, McCain and now Romney and Santorum who don't know the difference between a republic and a democracy.
uniform
nathan| 3.28.12 @ 8:53AM
Take it a step further. Explain why Sharon let the Falangist militia go into those two camps outside Beirut and then when the massacres started there, made no effort, with the IDF totally surrounding the camps, to move in and stop the slaughter of innocent women and children, some who, when caught trying to flee the carnage, were forced back in by the IDF. No accurate death toll has ever been given but it was surely in the hundreds if not perhaps in the thousands and innocent civilians, women and children in particular, are innocent civilians no matter what language they speak and what religion they attend to.
No action was taken against Sharon and he was later elected prime minister. How do we explain that?
We read much about the suicide bombers (not a particularly new tactic, watch the interviews with the Japanese who volunteered but did not go on kamikaze missions) but little is said about Israeli settlers who go beserk on the West Bank and kill and injure several innocent civilians there and then are treated with undue deference in Israeli courts. Israeli security forces have been told not to use deadly force against said settlers and to capture them alive even if that means prolonging the massacre. Are these settlers engaged in their own "holy war"? We read very little about them but in all too many instances we are given to understand that they are viewed by many of their fellow settlers as heroes.
For that matter recall the video of the helicopter pilots who opened fire on civilians killing who knows how many apparently treating it as a video game. When people attempted to come to the assistance of the victims, they were gunned down too.
How we view these incidents, ghastly actions on both sides, and what lessons we learn is important. But one lesson we have to take from this is that our behavior, and that of the Israelis do not always measure up to the standards we claim to follow. The survivors of those two camps outside Beirut would be the first to testify to that. And the survivors of the attack by those helicoptor pilots, plus any number of similar incidents going all the way back in our history to Sands Creek (far worse than Wounded Knee but less well known) would equally attest to that.
Paul Kotik| 3.28.12 @ 2:08PM
Well, you see, when it's our enemies getting killed, that's a good thing, Nat.
Sabra and Shatilla? No tears from me, pal. Those dead kids didn't grow up to be suicide bombers or Hamas thugs, did they? Nope.
No tears for Arabs in Judea and Samaria, either. They're in the wrong place and should leave.
You forgot to mention the bloodletting in Syria while the world stands by and does nothing. You'll be pleased to know I'm doing something.
I'm smiling. By my reckoning, at least one future battalion of Syrian infantry will never be.
Yes, Nat, when it's our enemies getting killed that's a good thing.
Tiddly| 3.28.12 @ 3:22PM
Sand Creek was retaliation for many brutal killings, kidnapping/rapes, and torturing of innocent farmers and travelers by savage Indians (see the Hungate family, murdered and butchered to the last little child). Not saying two wrongs make a right, but those rough Denver militiamen were sick of enduring these attacks only to have the perpetrators vanish into the prairie when pursued. At Sand Creek they knew they had a stationary enemy to attack, and unleashed their pent-up fury on him. At Wounded Knee the captured Indians had concealed weapons and started to use them on their captors when stopped by return fire. As usual in war, women and children get the worst of it. But the barbarian blood-feud culture of the Plains Indian was doomed anyway in the face of civilization, and that's how it played out. But of course, to liberals, America is always wrong.
Petronius| 3.28.12 @ 9:44AM
The only "issues" concerning the DoD when there's blood on the ground is the politics of the victims, the perps, and the mileage to be gained by what they say on camera.
Dmac | 3.28.12 @ 10:05AM
Nathan,
You left out part of the story didn't you? the part about how terrorist from those same camps repeatedly killed innocent Jweish civilians. And repeatedly those in the camp harbored those terrorist. Is that situation any different than how the Taliban (and as we now know, the Pakistani's) harbored Al Queda? No, its not.
It's dangerous to let your pet rattlesnake loose in your neighbors house and then go retrive it and play with it like it's a puppy. It may bite you, or your justifiably angry neighbor may come over kick your ass and then kill your pet.
I'm not going to take the side of the Arabs or Muslims ever again, not for any reason. They've shown their true colors. They are a cowardly people inherently evil at heart. Like the soldier said, they'll smile at you then kill you.
the only possiblility they have of ever changing how I feel abou them is to have their own crusade against the evil factions within their religion, and that will never happen.
nathan| 3.28.12 @ 11:05AM
DMAC: Occupying powers which the IDF was in this case have absolute obligations to protect the lives of innocent civilians under their direct control. Make a case otherwise. Assume there were terrorists in that camp. Are you going to say that justified the deaths of all those women and kids? That's like saying that because there were some Indian warriors in the vacinity of Sand Creek that it was okay for those soldiers to go in and massacre those women and children too.
Again, women and children are women and children regardless of what they look like, what language they speak, and what religion they adhere to. They deserve protection without conditions. If we or anyone else consider ourselves to be "civilized" then we protect them at all costs.
Sir you forget don't you it wasn't Muslims that created those death camps in Poland were they? What religion did those people adhere to? What religion did the guards adhere to? 60 short years ago, the "civilized" Europeans killed more Jews than were ever killed in the entire 1400 year history of Islam. I remind you all of this because we need to have a certain sense of humility as we deal with these people. How holier than thou can we be as we look back to that ghastly past? And it wasn't just the Germans, they had willing collaborators in virtually every country in Europe. Watch the Military Channel's series on Hitler's collaborators. Chilling stuff.
But also be aware that under the right circumstances it can happen here. Studies, some to be sure controversial have shown that under the right circumstances ordinary people will obey orders that will result in what they think are serious injuries to totally innocent people. In one such study well over 70 percent complied with the instructions to harm someone they could not see.
We have to be careful here.
But we also have to make sure that we do adhere strictly to our own stated ideals and principles. And that means in this day and time ensuring to the degree possible that we limit civilian casualties as much as possible even if our own soldiers are put at risk.
Children are children. We have to protect them whoever they are where ever they are. They have as much right to protection as children here do. And we can not be casual about this. The days of being blase about "collateral" damage where tens of thousands of civilians die because of our actions have to come to an end.
Tiddly| 3.28.12 @ 3:32PM
At least killings of women and children by American arms is "collateral." Contrast that with the brutal and very deliberate killings of millions of innocent Christian Armenians and Greeks by the muslim Turks between 1895-1295, when they were torn from their homes and, when not immediately tortured and killed, were sent on death marches into the Syrian desert. The Turkish killers periodically halted the death marches to get down on their prayer rugs and pray toward Mecca. There is your muslim mentality. To hell with Islam, the cult of Satan.
martin j smith| 3.28.12 @ 11:12AM
Actually it is as usual a case of look who is calling the kettle black. The Uncivil discourse, the thuggery
and amoral behaviors advocated are largely if not entirely on the LEFT--Its all projection but againt it must be thrown back into their faces.
Slacker| 3.28.12 @ 12:42PM
On some level we may need men like Sergeant Bales if we are to prevail in Afghanistan. The policy of accommodation has failed.
nathan| 3.28.12 @ 1:42PM
Slacker: I hope you're not serious, but if you are it's time to leave Afghanistan now. As absolutely as quickly as we can.
For the moment understand what this man allegedly did. He allegedly murdered 9 children, children in cold blood and set fire to their bodies. Children sir. Let me repeat that. CHILDREN. Tell me what those children did that merited being gunned down and set on fire. CHILDREN sir. CHILDREN. I'm shaking as I write this.
No. We do not ever wage war on innocent children. Find me the article in the Constitution that permits that. Find me a quote from the Founders that supports that. Find me anything in US law that sanctions that.
That is a crime. A war crime. Go back and look at Nuremburg again. At Tokyo again. When people point guns at children like they did at Babi Yar (know the reference?) and pull the trigger, that is a crime. And there's never a justification for it. None. Never. Please no. We can't justifiy this behavior on any level. No. Children. They always get protected. Always. I don't care who they are. I don't care what religion their parents worship. Five year old children get protected. ALWAYS. No exceptions.
Are we all totally clear on this? We never under any circumstances for any reason for any "good intentions" sanction the deliberate killing of CHILDREN. NEVER. The moment we do, we're them. There's no difference between pulling a trigger on an innocent child and pulling the wire on a suicide belt. Don't believe it for a moment. The moment we sanction the killing of innocent children, are we any different than the people who pulled the triggers at Babi Yar and other places like it? Really? No.
We can't be like this and if this is what we becoming we need to get out now and stay out. And be careful about future engagements. And maybe if the perpetrators at My Lai had been punished harder, maybe if we had made a definitive statement that we don't this, maybe if Calley was still in jail where he absolutely belongs, maybe we wouldn't have to have this discussion.
Slacker| 3.28.12 @ 5:26PM
Your opinion is the prevailing viewpoint. The problem is your abstract decency is causing us to lose a protracted war.
The notion that we must be nobler than our enemy is entirely backwards. We need to be even more ruthless than the guy wearing the suicide belt. That is how fights are won –with brutality and a level of violence sufficient to break the enemy. Maybe we don’t have the nerve for it.
I see no morality in pursuing the hopeless objective of civilizing savages who we haven’t yet been fully defeated. Wars are not fights between militaries or combatants. A war is one civilization subduing another. Civilians must suffer and die for a conclusive ending.
The WWII generation understood this and had no qualms about destroying entire cities, children included. Coincidentally they were the last generation of Americans to actually win a war.
Ultimately, there are only two ways the war on terror ends. We can kill everyone, or we can come home. War can't have a happy ending for both sides.
Skippy| 3.28.12 @ 2:37PM
I'm getting all weepy about the children blown up on Israeli busses and in cafes.
I cry for the children butchered by the Taliban and AQ because their parents cooperated with us in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I am awash in sorrow for the children slaughtered by Palestinian freedom fighters.
Eventually I might get upset about the chidren SSG Bales may have shot.
But not quite yet.
nathan| 3.28.12 @ 3:13PM
Sigh. Skippy since when do we compare ourselves to the Taliban? Since when are the standards we look to that of the suicide bombers? Since when do what the other guys do make a difference regarding what WE do?
Sir sorry correct me if I'm wrong but I thought we were BETTER than the people you just mentioned? Paul I thought the Israelis were better than Hamas and all the rest of them. That it's the other guys who make war on innocent civilians, especially children not the so called good guys like us, like the Israelis.
Paul you don't get it so let me explain this to you. A five year old kid is never our enemy. When he becomes 15 maybe he might become our enemy but at age five/six/seven etc he is a child, a CHILD that deserves protection that we don't deliberately attack. The Nazis did that Paul. They considered five year old's to be their enemies too. Go back and look at the picture of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising where the Jews are coming out of a bunker. There's a young boy in shorts and hat with his hands up. It's one of the most memorable pictures of the war.
People like the Nazis make war on kids like that. And trust me they could find all the justifications in the world for doing so, just like you are doing. But in every and all cases IT'S WRONG. To deliberately point a gun at a kid it's wrong. And when you do so, when you justify doing so, you're no better than the bad guys. When soldiers point guns at kids and pull the trigger, then they are not different than those people at Babi Yar. No different at all.
Don't kid yourself. None of you. When you talk like this, when you act like this, when you defend actions like this, when you defend ethnic cleansing like we did with the Indians, when you express this kind of hatred, you're no different than the people you hate.
We signed international agreements that we helped write that specifically prohibit this behavior folks. We established codes of behavior at Nuremburg and Tokyo that made it clear what is and isn't acceptable on a battlefied. We have an absolute obligation to abide by all this.
But again, where kids are concerned, we don't make war on kids. What's wrong with you people? This just utterly amazes me. I've studied the Holocaust all my life. Why am I seeing parts of it unfold in front of me?
The writer of the piece never understood did he what he was going to unleash here today did he?
Slacker| 3.28.12 @ 7:54PM
If you must bring up Nuremburg, Tokyo, and the holocaust then acknowledge that we indiscriminately firebombed Japanese and German cities killing men women and children. Nobody much cared because we wanted to win.
Herein rests the problem with optional wars. Survival isn’t seen as at stake so there is pressure to exercise restraint. All this does in guarantee you never win.
When I survey the scene, it is hard not to conclude that the Islamists are at least fighting us to a draw, if not winning outright. We will almost certainly lose this war. These killings wouldn’t shake us if we wanted to win.
Rich Rostrom| 3.28.12 @ 11:56PM
The US (and Britain) bombed locations that were military targets: factories producing war materiel, Army HQs, railyards and ports. These facilities were heavily defended.
They were located in urban areas, so attacks on them resulted in civilian casualties as collateral damage. But the civilian casualties were never the intent of the attacks.
Axis air attacks on Allied cities were similar - except in the case of Belgrade, which was bombed after it had been evacuated by the Yugoslav army and declared an "open city". The Luftwaffe commander who carried out that attack (at Hitler's specific order) was executed as a war criminal. No others were. But that action - a deliberate attack on defenseless civilians - was criminal.
Just like the massacres carried out by the SS Totenkopf Verband and the Einsatzgruppen.
Just like what (AIUI) Sgt Bales did.
The idea that one can conquer by terror has been a popular one in some quarters. The Imperial German Army of WW I had a doctrine of "Schrecklichkeit" (frightfulness), which justified brutality against conquered civilians and mass retaliation for acts of resistance. The result was the mass murder of thousands of Belgian civilians in 1914, which disgraced Germany, alienated the US (our diplomats were witnesses), and made the Allies determined to win at all costs.
The Germans adopted a similar policy in the USSR in WW II. The result was that millions of people who wished for liberation from Stalin's tyranny became die-hard enemies of Germany.
Worked real well for them, eh?
Skippy| 3.28.12 @ 3:32PM
F*ckin' A, man. Take a breath.
Let SSG Bales be tried by his peers please before you get an ulcer.
When killing kids is SOP for our military, call me.
Frankly, it sounds like you have all kinds of pent-up hatred for our troops, and this incident broke your emotional dam.
Damn!
Tiddly| 3.28.12 @ 3:37PM
The Indians were not "ethnically cleansed." If they were, there would be no Bureau of Indian Affairs. (Turkey has no "Bureau of Armenian Affairs.") You seem to be a product of historical revisionism as practiced in our leftist government schools.
Skippy| 3.28.12 @ 3:46PM
If any nation has bent over backwards to attone for their sins against the indiginous population, it is America.
Indians get checks, casinos, special rights, their own nations within ours, etc.
As an Indian, I am sick to death of the "some Americans have more rights than others" guilt-trip.
Assimilate or perish.
nathan| 3.29.12 @ 9:09AM
The quality of history instruction in this country really really sucks folks. By the numbers:
Around the time of Columbus the best estimate for the number of Indians in our part of North America was between say 5-8 million maybe a little higher. Maybe. By around the 1870's it was around 800,000 or so. To be sure the Europeans brought diseases that the Indians had no immunity to which initially brought a sharp decline in their population. But after one/two generations that ceased to be a factor. From then on they would have increased like any other population and fairly rapid indeed.
However with the Europeans seeing them as animals/savages all the words we now associate with the muslims (deja vu all over again) they set out to virtually eliminate them. Look at what happened in Georgia. Congressman David Crockett to his credit voted against removing the Cherokees from their ancestral lands. He was one of the rare ones. Go down to the Smokey Mountains sometimes and watch the presentation Unto These Hills. Moving indeed.
So the Cherokees were forcibly uprooted and enthnically cleansed on what has popularly come be called the trail of tears. Compare it to the Bataan Death March if you want. The death toll on the move westward was horrendous. The interesting thing is they sued and won in court, all the way up to the Supreme Court. What did Andrew Jackson say? Y0u've made your ruling now enforce it. For that he should have been impeached. But hey they're savages, animals who cares. The same language used to describe Arabs/Palestinians call them what you will on the West Bank. They too have won in court and the Israeli government good democracy that they are have ignored those court rulings too.
So the Indians were put on reservations out west that lacked enough resources to support them. Looks to us students of the Holocaust like those ghettos. One particularly horrifying action was the tribe that headed north to Canada where the Indians were treated vastly better. The army knowing they were leaving the country and not coming back hunted them down anyway and inflicted horrible casualties. Now please justify that sir. And so much more.
And we forget something don't we? Whose land was it to start with? Certainly not those good white southerns who had absolutely NO claim to it. What was the moral, legal ethical basis for removing the Cherokees from Georgia and abusing them like that? We can't defend any of this. No more than the Israelis can defend going to a Palestinian farmer, charged with NO CRIME and saying we're taking your house, your ancestral home that your family has lived on for say four/five hundred years, and giving it to a bunch of people who just got off the airplane. You all really want to defend that blatant violation of their "unalienable" rights? Feel free, but then it raises serious questions about YOUR conservative credentials because Madison wrote what, "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or PROPERTY without due process of law" and we as conservatives hold these principles to be universal.
Why should the Cherokees have to assimilate? I'm sorry but they were here first by how many centuries? It was their land right? Since the Europeans were the interlopers the uninvited guests by rights the Europeans should be the ones to assimilate? I mean when you choose to live abroad as many Americans are doing these days, YOU do the assimilating right? Not they to you? Why should back then have been any different? Yes might makes right in a practical but not MORAL sense.
BTW None of us have ANY obligation to support anyone and I mean anyone who breaks the law and harms someone else in violation of the Constitution, US Code, and international agreements that we helped write. Josef Mengele, the angel of death, had a son who we believe knew where he was in South America. Now, does his "filial" devotion require him to support Mengele against the authorities, or turn him in? Turn him in of course. For those troops who fight honorably, obey legal orders, hey our hearts go out to them. Come home safely folks.
But sir, make a convincing case that I'm supposed to support Calley as he orchestrates the murder of 500 civilians. Or the the interrogator at Abu Ghraib who tied a helpless detainee to a shower head and beat him to death. Or another interrogator who threatened to bring a detainee's children in and torture them in front of him.
None of us have an obligation to support the actions of anyone, civilians, armed forces, the police whose actions violate their oaths of office, the Constitution, the laws of the United States, or international agreements when those laws and international agreements are clearly constitutional. In that regard no, I don't support what West or what he did in that room because he did violate his oath of office. No I don't support torture in any form including waterboarding or the people who do it. No I don't support Bush and Cheney for eight years treating the Constitution like toilet paper which they absolutely did. No I don't support what Sharon allowed to happen at Sabra and Chatila. No I don't support the King David Hotel bombing either and I could on and on.
I do support strict adherence to the principles in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitition. I'm an individual rights fanatic. Guilty. Yes I support the Innocence Project because I may some day be the victim of prosecutorial misconduct and so may you. I believe that you can't talk about being noble and good, you have to BE good. That actions without words are meaningless. That good intentions do not justify bad actions. EVER That tyranny from the right is no more acceptable than tyrrany from the left. That the Constitution applies to conservatives too folks. Sorry about that.
I will hold the Israelis to the same standards we hold everyone else so no, they don't get to do Kelo VS New London on people not accused of any criminal behavior. That as the occupying power no they don't get to abuse people. No they don't get to torture people either which their own courts have sanctioned them for. They have to walk the talk too.
At the end of the day we can't talk about "American exceptionalism" when we torture people. We can't tell people how great we are when we did that ghastly embargo on Iraq which may have resulted in the deaths of as many as 500,000 civilians many of them children and then have Albright casually dismiss those deaths by saying we were "remaking the middle east". Sheesh. No we can't act like like that.
We can't compare our actions to the bad guys because we are better than they are. Our standards are higher than theirs are. So it's besid the point to say they behead people etc. So what. We don't do that because our principles don't allow it. We're should never sink that low for any reason.
I've been a conservative all my life, since I supported Goldwater at age 11. What were you all doing at that age? How many of you were politically aware at that age?
But what we again have seen too much in the post war period is what we think of as conservative more really neoconservative and in truth WFB was far more neocon than he was conservative. And I would argue the movement suffered for it.
POST American| 3.29.12 @ 3:51AM
---KEEP ON prescribing ---KEEP taking
that Prozak kiddies!
And also, again, as far as many of these
incidents go, note the 'uncanny' note of
agenda promotion that ALWAYS seems
to attend.
---They do call them 'MASS--achers' afterall.
'NEVER waste a crisis' ---and, better yet,
generate and implement the crises yourself.
-----------They call it 'SM--art Planning'.