Some Things Bear Repeating

I just want to reiterate the fact that Andrew Sullivan actually used a photo of a guy with a Nazi/Commie combo flag as his symbol of beleaguered Russian liberalism. Don’t get me wrong: Nazis and Commies have a right to free speech, too, but doesn’t this reek of Putin Derangement Syndrome? Isn’t the photo a clear indicator that however bad Putin is, there are worse alternatives imaginable? If you were criticizing George Bush’s assaults on civil liberties, would you run a photo of a Klansman getting roughed up by local cops?

Uncomfortable Questions

The biggest taboo in America, even among those who oppose the war, is criticizing the military. Point to Abu Ghraib or Haditha, and they cry “Exception to the rule!” And I’ll grant them that (though I’d dispute the degree of exceptionality). I’ll also grant that there are right ways and wrong ways to make such criticisms: when confronting people with arguments they’re conditioned to reject, it’s best not to be too shrill.

Nevertheless…

Joshua Key spent eight months as a U.S. soldier in Iraq. After reading this excerpt from his newly published book The Deserter’s Tale, I’m moved to ask an uncomfortable question. But first, a snippet (bolding is mine):

Busting into and ransacking homes remained one of my most common duties in Iraq. Before my time was up, I took part in about 200 raids. We never found weapons or indications of terrorism. I never found a thing that seemed to justify the terror we inflicted every time we blasted through the door of a civilian home, broke everything in sight, punched and zipcuffed the men, and sent them away. One raid was far worse.

It was a handsome two-storey house and quite isolated. As usual, I put the charge of C-4 explosives on the door and we blew it in. As we rushed into the house, women were staggering out of their rooms. Three teenage girls screamed when they saw us. Some of my squad mates grabbed them and held them at gunpoint, and the rest of us ran through the house. We found no men at all, just six more women in their 20s and 30s. The guys in my squad couldn’t find a thing, not even any guns — and it seemed that the more incapable they were of locating contraband, the more destructive they became. They smashed dressers, ripped mattresses, broke cabinets, and threw shelves to the floor.

Outside I found Pte. 1st Class Hayes with a woman under an empty carport. He pointed his M-16 at her head but she would not stop screaming.

“What are you doing this for?” she said.

Hayes told her to shut up.

“We have done nothing to you,” she went on.

Hayes was starting to lose it. I told her that we were there on orders and that we couldn’t speak to her, but on and on and on she bawled at Hayes and me.

“You Americans are disgusting! Who do you think you are, to do this to us?”

Hayes slammed her in the face with the stock of his M-16. She fell face down into the dirt, bleeding and silent. The woman lay still on the ground. I pushed Hayes away.

“What are you doing, man?” I said to him. “You have a wife and two kids! Don’t be hitting her like that.”

He looked at me with eyes full of hatred, as if he was ready to kill me for saying those words, but he did not touch the woman again. I found this incident with Hayes particularly disturbing because during other times I had seen him in action in Iraq, he had showed himself to be one of the most level-headed and calm soldiers in my company. I had the sense that if he could lose it and hit a woman the way he had, any of us could lose it too.

Then something happened that haunts my dreams to this day. All the women were led back inside the house and our entire platoon was ordered to stand guard outside it. Four U.S. military men entered the house with the women. They closed the doors. We couldn’t see anything through the windows. I don’t know who the military men were, or what unit they were from, but I can only conclude that they outranked us and were at least at the level of first lieutenant or above. That’s because our own second lieutenant Joyce was there, and his presence did not deter them.

Normally, when we conducted a raid, we were in and out in 30 minutes or less. You never wanted to stay in one place for too long for fear of exposing yourself to mortar attacks. But our platoon was made to stand guard outside that house for about an hour. The women started shouting and screaming. The men stayed in there with them, behind closed doors. It went on and on and on.

Finally, the men came out and told us to get the hell out of there.

Now let’s take the most grunt-sympathetic reading of this passage and allow for the following: People, especially young men, behave terribly under terrible stress. Soldiers don’t get to pick their assignments (not really true of those who volunteer in the middle of a war, but I’ll be generous). In fact, let’s go ahead and throw the alleged mass rape into the exception pile.

Fine.

Though torture, rape, and murder are presumably not routine procedures for occupying forces in Iraq, these blind, tornadic raids on civilian homes are. Two hundred raids in eight months: you do the math. These are literally everyday, humdrum activities for the occupiers. What is the least that we should expect from a decent person who has seen what Joshua Key has seen? Don’t tell me about the consequences, professional, legal, social, or otherwise: it’s always easiest to simply persist in wrongdoing. Just tell me: what is the minimum moral obligation for a person in Key’s position? Is it not what he chose to do?

Phony “Dissidents”

Not content with having done much to gin up a disastrous war in the Middle East, Andrew Sullivan joins the ranks of the New Cold Warriors in targeting Vladimir Putin as the neo-Stalin, implying that a Washington-based critic of Putin was attacked by the KGB even while local police ascribe his mugging to street thugs. Check out the picture Sullivan uses, which is of a member of Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party being carried away by Russian cops. The National Bolshies have an … interesting political orientation that is reflected in the party flag: a hammer-and-sickle on a red-white-and-black color scheme that deliberately evokes Nazi symbolism. Here is a super-nationalist grouplet that mixes Hitler’s National Socialism with Stalin’s brand of Bolshevism to come up with an ideology that combines racism and anti-Semitism with nostalgia for the Gulag. These are the “dissidents” that we are supposed to lionize. Sullivan tries to prettify things with a quote from Russian chess champion Gary Kasparov, but that flag tells the real story.

Oh, and how come we haven’t heart anything about the alleged poisoning of Senor Litvinenko, another phony “dissident”? Perhaps the evidence is not producing the desired result ….

Get used to it. Every time a critic of Russia stubs his toe, Putin is going to be blamed. Logic is not a strong point with our New Cold Warriors….

All the Endorsement He Needs

Rep. Ron Paul receives the ultimate recommendation: David Horowitz’s condemnation.

Some of my best friends are libertarians and the greatest intellectual influence on me was Hayek. However, in practical political matters, libertarians tend to live in alternate universe, without regard for the real world consequences of their actions. Ron Paul – the only Libertarian in Congress – is a disgrace. He has waged a war against America’s war on terror, in lockstep with the left, and against the state of Israel, the frontline democracy in this war.

Actually, Ron Paul is not a capital-L Libertarian, he’s a Republican, but whatever. The real laugher in here is Horowitz’s assertion that Friedrich Hayek is his “greatest intellectual influence.” That’s rather like Al Sharpton citing Thomas Aquinas as his lodestar.

J.D. Cash

They Don’t Even Deny it Anymore: Undercover feds did the Oklahoma City Bombing.

J.D. Cash, an investigative reporter for the McCurtain Gazette, discusses his investigation and recent developments into the story of the “Aryan Republican Army” neo-Nazi bank robbery ring (many of whom were undercover cops and informants) and their collaboration with Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, resulting in the deaths of 168 people and one of the largest cover-ups in American history. My previous interviews of Cash here.

MP3 here. (28:45)

Edward Peck

Diplomacy is Preferable to War: A former ambassador discusses the “Axis of Evil.”

Edward Peck discusses America’s newfound “diplomacy” with Iran and Syria, the situation in Iraq, the Bush regime’s lies about North Korea’s “uranium enrichment program,” and the possibility of war with Iran.

MP3 here. (19:06)

Peck, a former U.S. chief of mission in Iraq and former ambassador to Mauritania, was deputy director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan administration.