NOT WITH HATE, BUT WITH LOVE:

Thousands Across Mideast Protest, Urging Holy War Against Allies (NEIL MacFARQUHAR, March 29, 2003, NY Times)

Protesters took to the streets by the thousands across the Middle East today after Friday Prayers, with calls for a holy war against the American and British forces in Iraq ringing out from minarets throughout the region.

One of the most remarkable demonstrations was in the Iranian capital, Tehran, where tens of thousands of marchers turned out in a government-organized rally to denounce the war against Iraq even though President Saddam Hussein is still reviled in Iran for starting the 1980-88 war between the two countries.

Demonstrators in Tehran chanted both "Death to Saddam" and "Death to America." They also shattered windows in the British Embassy, pelting the building with stones while shouting for its closing.

"Will bombs and the use of force bring democracy and freedom?" asked Ayatollah Muhammad Yazdi, delivering the Friday sermon broadcast on Iranian television. "It will definitely not." [...]

Even Kuwait, which Iraq invaded in 1990 and which the allies have used as a jumping-off point for the war, heard harsh criticism of the Americans in some mosques.

"America does not want freedom for the Iraqi people," said Saleh Jawhar, a Shiite cleric who also called Americans evil. "It wants to install its puppets and subdue Muslims until we become a voice for America." He conceded, though, that Iraq would obliterate Kuwait if American forces withdrew.

"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him." Sometimes, these folks make you want to imminentize the Eschaton. Then you read something like the following and are brought back to yourself, Haunting Thoughts After a Battle (STEVEN LEE MYERS, March 29, 2003, NY Times):

WITH THE THIRD INFANTRY DIVISION, in central Iraq, March 28 - It troubles him, now that the battle is over. Sgt. Mark N. Redmond remembers shouting "qiff," Arabic for halt, but they did not halt. The Iraqi fighters just kept coming.

Sergeant Redmond's unit spent three days and nights fighting for the bridge at Kifl, a village on the Euphrates River about 75 miles south of Baghdad. By any military definition - the territory seized, the number of enemy killed, the mission accomplished - the unit's fight ended in victory. After victory, though, comes rest. And with rest comes reflection.

"I mean, I have my wife and kids to go back home to," he said, sitting atop a box of rations back at his base camp, whiling away a lull as unexpected as it was appreciated. "I don't want them to think I'm a killer."

The fighting around Kifl subsided today, officers here said, as it did around much of Najaf, the holy city on the Euphrates that the Third Infantry Division struggled to encircle in an unexpectedly fierce battle that began late Monday night when Sergeant Redmond's unit - Troop C, attached to the First Brigade of the Third Infantry - first crossed the river.

The division's commanders said today that the withering effects of an expanding armored ring around the city, coupled with airstrikes and artillery barrages, had at last halted Iraq's efforts to reinforce Najaf, though the situation in the city itself remains unclear.

By tonight, there was still no complete count of the enemy who died there, though soldiers and officers said there were scores, at least. And for some, like Sergeant Redmond, the memory remained haunting.

"They just came up to us," he said, describing irregular Iraqi militiamen who began fighting as soon as Troop C crossed the two-lane bridge over the Euphrates. "It seemed to me they were trying to test us, but it was suicide." [...]

The brigade's Graves Registration Team began to fan out across the village and its surroundings to collect the remains of Iraqi fighters, which they packed in black bags along with any personal items that might help identify them.

"Basically we did the same thing with the Iraqi dead that we would have done with American dead," said Capt. Andrew J. Valles, the brigade's civil affairs officer.

From the manner in which the Ba'athists are pursuing this war it would be easy for our troops to descend into a fury of hatred and murder. That they do not is a testimony to them and to the superiority of the culture they are fighting for, as witness this:

Shoeless enemy: Marine Lance Cpl. Marcco Ware carries an Iraqi soldier who was shot three times while trying to ambush a convoy of the 3rd Battalion, Fifth Regiment, in central Iraq. The attack left one Marine and about 40 Iraqis dead.

It is a great privilege to be a fellow citizen of men like Lance Cpl. Ware, Sgt. Redmond, Capt. Valles, and all the rest who continue to demonstrate the very best of which our civilization is capable. Who can doubt they will leave Iraq a better place than they found it? Posted by Orrin Judd at March 29, 2003 2:26 PM