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The Persistent Barbarism of our Enemies

Ogami

Ogami

New member
Hue Again (and Again)
Our infrequent excesses vs. the persistent barbarism of our enemies.
By James S. Robbins
June 21, 2006, 6:13 a.m.

Three American soldiers in Iraq have been charged with murder for the deaths of three prisoners of war. Meanwhile two captive American soldiers were slain by insurgents. Privates Kristian Menchaca and Thomas L. Tucker were tortured, killed barbarically, and their bodies left to be found wired with booby traps. For the insurgents it was cause for celebration. “We have executed the Exalted Almighty God's verdict on the two Crusader infidels we captured, by slaughtering them,†the Mujahedin Shura Council stated. “God is great. Glory be to God.â€

Any bets on which of these stories has more staying power? My guess is we won’t be hearing much more about Menchaca and Tucker. But the Iraqi prisoner deaths, along with two investigations into alleged illegal killings by Marines at Haditha and Hamdania, are stories that will be with us for a long time to come.

For some reason the infrequent excesses of our own troops make more news and are treated as more significant than the persistent barbarism of our enemies. To a previous generation the emblem of American shame was My Lai. On March 16, 1968, U.S. troops in Vietnam gunned down hundreds of civilians in this small hamlet, until stopped by other American soldiers who happened on the scene and threatened to open fire if the men did not cease what they were doing.

The My Lai story broke in November, 1969. Around the same time papers were reporting the details of another massacre. In early February 1968, during the Tet Offensive, Viet Cong guerillas rounded up and summarily executed thousands of civilians in the ancient capital of Hue, which was temporarily under their control. Government officials, businessmen, Catholics, intellectuals, and others deemed socially undesirable were shot down in trenches dug in the city parks, clubbed to death in makeshift prisons, or led away in the countryside to be murdered and thrown into a ravine.

My Lai was a Pulitzer Prize-winning story. The incident at Hue was overshadowed, and soon forgotten. But note the significant differences. My Lai was an indiscriminate, illegal act on the part of a small group of Americans, and was halted by Americans. When the events came to light, the officers involved were brought up on charges. By contrast, Hue was not an act of excess but the cold-blooded implementation of North Vietnamese policy. Those who committed the act were doing the bidding of their superiors, and had they not been wiped out by U.S. and ARVN forces they would have been hailed as heroes.

So why is it that My Lai has become a byword for brutality while Hue is a footnote? Why will Menchaca and Tucker be forgotten while incidents like those under investigation — or the grotesque theater of Abu Ghraib — will persist, fester, be written about, analyzed, become vehicles for critiques of U.S. policy, the military, or the whole of American culture?

By rights these incidents should demonstrate that we are better than our enemies. We are civilized, they are barbarians. What we are fighting for is objectively superior to what they are fighting for. Our struggle is legitimate, theirs is not. There is no room for moral relativism in this war. Certainly those who view torture and beheading as acts of piety have no problem seeing it as a black and white conflict. And when faced with extremism of this sort, we should take it at face value.

Those who say that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter should be asked how they define freedom. Those who compare terrorist or guerrilla leaders to George Washington or other Founding Fathers should explain when it was exactly that they ordered the killing of innocents as a method, or even as a matter of expediency. And especially when they ever sought to invoke God’s approval for inflicting agonizing deaths on helpless captives.

I doubt any two other incidents could better illustrate what we are fighting for. In our system, killing prisoners is wrong, and those who do it are punished. In their system, killing prisoners is a blessed act, God’s will made manifest. If nothing else, this latest terrorist atrocity supplies some badly needed perspective. That is, if anyone is paying attention.

— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, a trustee for the Leaders for Liberty Foundation, and author of Last in Their Class: Custer, Picket and the Goats of West Point. Robbins is also an NRO contributor.
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http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NWUxOTNhY2Q3OWJlZDgxYmIwMjkyMDJlNWRlMmNhMTQ=
 
Of course it's a shame when Americans murder innocent people, but it's a rare matter and it's always attributable to some kind of mental breakdown. It's hardly the norm and doesn't deserve the attention it gets on the worldwide stage.

On the other hand our enemies seek out such opportunities to murder the defenseless and the weak.

Theirs is a public relations war, they know they're outgunned and their only hope lies with left in this country. Their weapons are fear, the media, and time. Given enough of each they think they will prevail and given the example of Vietnam, I'm afraid that they're right.

The left is sure as hell playing their role just as they did back then, our only saving grace is that some of those hippies have grown up and actually oppose the dipshits that have not.

Who was it that said.. "If you're not liberal when you're young, then you have no heart. If you're not conservative as an adult then you have no brains."
 
HeroicFool said:
Of course it's a shame when Americans murder innocent people, but it's a rare matter and it's always attributable to some kind of mental breakdown. It's hardly the norm and doesn't deserve the attention it gets on the worldwide stage.
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Of course it's the norm. Some of the military tactics used completely ignore civilian casualties. Citing a few massacres carried out by American soldiers and claiming it's responsible for the bad (And well deserved) coverage the military administration is getting is responsible for them completely ignores the years of indiscriminate bombing.
 
In Gulf War II, "Shock and Awe" was far more accurate than the crude carpet-bombing that Clinton unleashed on Serbia for two months straight.

HeroicFool is right that this is a P.R. war, I applaud the President for refusing to wage it on those terms that the depraved press corps would pose. He does what is right, and he is not governed by polls like his crass predecessor.

-Ogami
 
Bombing is rarely indiscriminate these days...

There has never been a war that has not had some collateral damage of innocents associated with it. That's part of the price of war, and it is unfortunate, but mostly necessary.

Cold blooded murder is quite a different thing than bombing, both on the personal level and in terms of the big picture.
 
Right. Those who yearn for a perfect war won't find one. (Which is why so much of the Iraq criticism is so silly. The critics only want easy wars that are cakewalks. Real life isn't like that.
 
HeroicFool said:
Who was it that said.. "If you're not liberal when you're young, then you have no heart. If you're not conservative as an adult then you have no brains."
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I don't know exactly but Rob Lowe said it on Jay Leno a few years back. ;)
 
HeroicFool said:
Who was it that said.. "If you're not liberal when you're young, then you have no heart. If you're not conservative as an adult then you have no brains."
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Yet another oversimplified quote for the ages. They both suck.

War is stupid, bloody, horrible, disasterous, and it's going to happen anyway. Gotta love the human condition. Oh, and the day they invent a perfect war, Messenger, you can bitch about civilian casualties. Or the day you have to break down some door somewhere in buttfuck nowhere with no support other than the two guys beside you not knowing a fucking thing about what's on the other side. Until then, shut the fuck up.

Soldiers aren't perfect, and some do horrible things. Some also make horrible mistakes. But until you get in the shit with them and execute a perfectly flawless military career, I could care about () that much what you think of them and the job they do.
 
Well said, Sniper, very well.

No one hates war as much as a soldier, but no one knows the necessity of it quite as well either.
 
Laker_Girl said:
I don't know exactly but Rob Lowe said it on Jay Leno a few years back. ;)
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It was Winston Churchill my dear, but he was also in favor of using poision gas on civilian populations.
 
Ogami said:
Right. Those who yearn for a perfect war won't find one. (Which is why so much of the Iraq criticism is so silly. The critics only want easy wars that are cakewalks. Real life isn't like that.
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This isn't a war you fucking idiot, it's an occupation of a sovreign nation who didn't attack our country.

I've read enough of your posts too see that you are either a totally clueless teenager or a complete fucking idiot.

Try enlisting if you think it's so fucking romantic.
 
Rafterman said:
This isn't a war you fucking idiot, it's an occupation of a sovreign nation who didn't attack our country.

I've read enough of your posts too see that you are either a totally clueless teenager or a complete fucking idiot.

Try enlisting if you think it's so fucking romantic.
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Been there. Done that. Still got the T-shirts (Army PT Tees rock btw) and blah blah blah. To be fair, this was years ago, and I haven't been over there. I have had to kick a door in with a guy at my left shoulder and no other help in sight. Thankfully, the situation was resolved without further violence. But having done it in a domestic situation, I can imagine what it's like knowing it could be a room full of AK's on the other side.
 
Been there done that and I was over there in the sand the first time around.

Ogami talks more sense than you've ever had rafterman. Most people that have been in any of the armed services would agree with him. I know I do.

BTW anytime an army is exchanging bullets and bombs with another armed force... It's a war. The rest is semantics.
 
HeroicFool said:
Been there done that and I was over there in the sand the first time around.

Ogami talks more sense than you've ever had rafterman. Most people that have been in any of the armed services would agree with him. I know I do.

BTW anytime an army is exchanging bullets and bombs with another armed force... It's a war. The rest is semantics.
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Semantics my ass!

The "war" ended when Saddam's regime bit the dust. This hasn't been a war for three years it's been an occupation.

And yes, Ogami is a fucking moron. The jury remains out on yourself.

He's a fucking chickenhawk who would piss and shit himself the minute the crap hit the fan.
 
For it to be an occupation the native people would have to NOT want us to be there.

That is not the case. The Iraqi people want us there and they want us to help us requild that country into a better place than it has ever been. All things that will come to pass unless the lefties win in their bid to see us cut and run yet again... Perhaps this time the death toll will be even higher than that of the South Vietnamese after we pulled out of there. Then will the liberal bloodlust finally be sated?

Doubtful.

BTW, Vietnam was called a police action at the time. It too was a war. Semantics.
 
Rafterman wrote:

This isn't a war you fucking idiot, it's an occupation of a sovreign nation who didn't attack our country.

But Saddam Hussein did invade two of his neighbors, Iran and Kuwait. Odds are, he would have invaded a few others if someone didn't stop him. We don't live there, true, but I wonder whom you would suggest stop Saddam Hussein instead. Maybe Oman? Perhaps Bangledesh would have stepped up and taken him out. Sad thing is, nobody else would have done a damn thing to him, he and his evil sons would still be raping and murdering today if we left them alone.

I've read enough of your posts too see that you are either a totally clueless teenager or a complete fucking idiot.

By the way, since you say I'm a "fucking idiot", I await your brilliant alternative to Gulf War I and Gulf War II. Since you're so smart, what was your alternative plan that would have worked a whole lot better? Unless, you got nothin'.

Try enlisting if you think it's so fucking romantic.

I'm in the United States Army. That's two separate threads you went out of your way to show the limits of your intellect. You know, just because someone has a different opinion than you doesn't mean they are an idiot. And judging by the quality of your posts, your arguments don't strike me as particularly brilliant by contrast.
_____________________

HeroicFool wrote:

Ogami talks more sense than you've ever had rafterman. Most people that have been in any of the armed services would agree with him. I know I do.


Thank you very much, HeroicFool. But unless Rafterman can start posting a single fact, I'm just going to ignore him until he does a better job of convincing me he has points to make. (Other than the ones on the top of his head signature.)

Can you picture Rafterman in Basic Training? How long would he last?

-Ogami
 
LOL, not long I'd wager.

The first time he said any of this shit to a D.I. his ass would be done.

I also find it funny that he named himself after a soldier in the movie Full Metal Jacket, one of my favorite Vietnam war movies.
 
Mickey Mouse... Micky Mouse... With the buildings all on fire. What a great close to that movie.
 
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