B. Thomas Cooper - Editor
When we are asked to support our troops in Iraq, I can’t help but wonder precisely which troops, and under what circumstance? Obviously not every US soldier serving in Iraq deserves my unwavering support.
As with any conflict of this nature, bad things can happen to good people, and sometimes good people do bad things. I don’t lack compassion for our young men and women who have been unjustly thrust into chaos, but I have equal compassion for the residents of Iraq who are suffering as a result of the occupation, which may I remind you, remains an international war crime.
We Americans love to believe we are the world’s police, welcome or not. Our arrogance has long overshadowed our sense of reason. Indeed, if the US is the world’s police, we entered Iraq without a search warrant, killing innocent people in the process.
Obviously, when German soldiers were slaughtering the Jews they were following orders.
They indubitably believed what they were doing was necessary, no matter how blatantly evil. I can’t imagine they thought much about the heinous nature of their crimes; after all, such would have amounted to treason.
Right about now, I predict many of my readers are understandably aghast at my comparisons. I don’t blame you. Here’s a suggestion: wake up and smell the coffee!
You see, I have o reason to believe every Nazi who participated in the holocaust was born to kill Jews. It was a deplorable idea, thrust upon them by desperate, deranged superiors. I don’t condone their actions by any means. What happened was wrong and that is precisely why I feel compelled to compare the holocaust to the invasion of Iraq. The Iraqi’s are not better off now than before the invasion. Quite to the contrary, Iraq is smack dab in the middle of it’s very own holocaust, one of our making.
Whatever.
Call it a civil war if you must. In fact, call it whatever you damn well please; a rose is a rose by any other name. I doubt very seriously Iraqi mothers who must bury their dead children every day, really feel inclined to debate semantics.
I am and will remain a patriotic American, but I’m not blinded by the misdirected rhetoric. I know better than to pretend every US soldier in Iraq is behaving heroically.
So where then should I draw the line? Should I support those who participated in the Haditha massacre? Should I support the soldiers who gunned down innocent lives, destroyed schools and hospitals, looted museums, tortured captives, raped and murdered children in front of their families?
If right now you are attempting to justify such conduct with some platitude, think again.
War is hell? Collateral damage? The spoils of war?
How about crimes against humanity?
Face it folks, good people are dying in Iraq. Some of them are Americans. Likewise, some very bad things have been done in Iraq and like it or not, some of it, by Americans.
B. Thomas Cooper - Editor
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