March 28, 2003
ATROCITY WATCH:
More Evidence (Jed Babbin, National Review Online, 3/27/2003)There are apparently two versions of the tape shown by Al Jazeera. The second, shown over and over on Egyptian TV, shows both the murder of American POWs and the desecration of their bodies. Though the tape has been shown over and over in the Middle East, congressional requests for access to it have so far been denied. One source told me that some of what he saw reminded him of the murder of Danny Pearl. The public doesn't need to see all these tapes. But more people in government do, and they need to tell the press. The lack of public reaction to these horrors troubles me greatly. Maybe it's because there's so little knowledge of any of the details.
The networks are too busy telling us that the war's going badly to thoroughly report Iraqi atrocities. It's important that we understand our enemy; because terror attacks and more conflicts lie ahead of us, and we have to know there is no alternative to victory.
Marines Out to Avenge Blood of 'Executed' GIs (New York Post, 3/25/2003)
THE Marines at this chopper base near the Iraqi border are seething with rage and talking revenge over the treatment of American POWs - paraded on TV and some possibly executed."OK, they want to play that way. We can play that way," vowed one enraged pilot.
Marine after Marine had the same message - many of them warning that there would be "no second chances for those Iraqis now."...
"We want to help these people and look what they're doing to us," said more than one shocked Marine....
During an air raid yesterday ... one Marine's muffled swearing was heard above the din.
Repeating the sneering nickname used for Saddam Hussein, he kept saying, " 'So damn' insane, 'so damn' insane. I'm going to come up there myself and kill you."
There are times, St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, when righteous anger is good -- otherwise God would not have created us capable of this emotion. This is one of those times. Cold, relentless anger.
One caveat: our guys have to know who their enemy is. They have to know that most Iraqis are terror victims just as we are.
Go get 'em, guys. Keep the pressure on.
Posted by Paul Jaminet at March 28, 2003 9:30 PMIn one of Stephen Ambrose's books, I forget
the title but the one about the ordinary GI, he
has a long, thoughtful section on why soldiers
dislike surrender situations (it exposes them
to danger, as we saw this week); and some
examples from WW2 about "atrocities"
committed by GIs whose trust was abused.
As I have said before here (and many times in
my newspaper), the rules of warfare as
taught in the West have never, ever been
accepted in Asia; no Americans have ever
enjoyed Geneva Convention treatment from
any of our Asian enemies.
Might as well get that through your heads,
everybody. We're fighting on a continent where
mass murderers are popular heroes.
Actually, this is not true. Japan's treatment of Russian prisoners during the Russo-Japanese war was considered proper and just. A generation later, Japan would unleash atrocities from the Rape of Nanking to the Bataan Death March.
It has everything to do with the leadership of a nation or tribe. If the nature of a regime is brutal in its own right, then no less can be expected to its foes. The military junta that ruled Japan from the 1930's onward was a brutal dictatorship and behaved in a manner unthinkable a generation before.
In European eyes, Belgium is a country of sweet chocolates and international justice. Yet, the legacy of King Leopold is one of the cruelest chapters of African colonialism.
No race or people is immune from cruelty and almost all have a sad chapter or two in their histories.
Now we see such cruelty in the Arab world, where cruelty foremost exists amongst their own kind. For us to have expected anything less than what we see now, we would have had to be blind to what has been happening for decades in the Arab world.
For the Left in the West, blindness is a congenital disease.
Japan was looking for western approval in
1905. As I say, the rules of warfare as
enunciated in the West have never, ever
been accepted in Asia.
They were not accepted in the West until
recently, and never in Germany.
I wonder if Marines still carry their Ka-bars. I still have mine. More soberly, feigning surrender makes later surrender difficult, as those to whom surrender is offered become more circumspect in considering the bona fides of the would-be surrenderer. It becomes, "When in doubt, Whack." THe historical record does not supportr the assertion by Harry E. , supra, that the Law of War was "n~~~~" followed by the Germans. Certain German units had bad records, but most engaged against the Western allies did not. Keegan's Six Armies in Normandy adddresses this issue. It has recently been reported that Hitler, at the end, ordered the murder of American and British POW's, and that the the order was countermanded.
Posted by: Lou Gots at March 30, 2003 12:20 PMI have been fortunate enough to serve with Marines. You don't want to make Marines mad.
Posted by: Regards, Jeff Guinn at March 30, 2003 10:14 PM