Get Me Another Marine Murder Story In Iraq And Get It Now!

 

Cross posted @ NewsBusters

"Marines to Face Charges in Iraqi's Death", trumpets The Guardian this morning.

No, this is not related to the Haditha story. This is a new development. It tells the story of an alleged murder on April 26 in Hamandiya, complete with allegations of a frame and cover up plot. And, of course there is talk of 'motive'; or the lack of it.

When the Pentagon announced it was investigating the death it provided no details about the incident other than to say that "several service members'' from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment were suspected of involvement. The servicemen were "removed from operations'' and sent back to the U.S. pending the results of the criminal investigation, it said.

Sullivan said the eight men are being held in solitary confinement.

"There's concern about the publicity of Haditha having a detrimental impact on the case,'' he said. "My concern is the whole politics of this. There's an assumption that these guys are guilty before there's been an opportunity for a thorough, impartial investigation.''   

And then there is "US probes new Iraq massacre claim" video also fresh in this morning. Again, talk is of "rounding up and deliberately shooting 11 people in the house, including five children and four women, before blowing up the building". We also learn, that "the pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces. It has been cross-checked with other images taken at the time of events and is believed to be genuine".

I can just hear the editors the world over screaming their heads off: "GET ME ANOTHER MARINE MURDER STORY IN IRAQ. I DON'T CARE WHERE YOU GET IT, JUST GET IT."

And they are right to ask for it. This is big news and cranks up circulation. This stuff sells papers.

Is it what we want to hear? No, it's not, but hear it we must, you say; if for no other reason than to help train Marines on their way to Iraq; The political angle is clear:

The accelerating media feeding frenzy over the alleged killings of twenty-four Iraqi civilians in Haditha by US Marines last November is about to overwhelm American politics. Propelled by their most irresponsible war critics, the left will try use Haditha as it used My Lai thirty years ago: as a political tool to take apart America's support for the war and to shatter the legitimacy of our cause and the morale of our troops.

The anti-war left will not be satisfied until the President is brought to his knees for dragging us into, what they are now calling, an unnecessary war, admit his purported mistake and issue a time-line for withdrawal. All but one of which he will thankfully never do. Glad to know the Bush derangement syndrome is alive and well.

Does it reflect what's going on in Iraq? Are these stories the tip of the iceberg - you know, 'where-there-is-smoke-there-is-fire' sort of reasoning? No, it does not.

On the contrary. These reports are evidently isolated incidents. If they weren't and our finest were indeed systematically and in large numbers killing innocent civilians, women and children, we would surely hear about it -  satisfying the ferocious and insatiable hunger of our editors.

How else could it be that a society far from being neutral, but a society, which is allegedly consumed with rabid anti-American sentiment, doesn't flood news agencies with similar stories - each of which is worth its weight in gold for the MSM.

The only rational conclusion, given our huge numbers in theater, is that in the absence of literally hundreds and hundreds of similar stories, notwithstanding the bogus ones, the U.S. troops in Iraq must be highly disciplined, brave and loyal service-men, trying their level best to help rid Iraq of ruthless killers and murdering thugs in the thousands, in a heroic effort to help fulfill America's pledge to the Iraqi people that they will have a real chance to create a lasting democracy and a life for themselves, free from oppression in whatever form

Of the some 150,000 U.S.-led troops there, Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the U.S. combat commander in Iraq, said "99.9% of them perform their jobs magnificently." Yes, and 99.9% of them, after all they've been through, will deeply resent the clear inference they lack "core values." Is that different than standard "Corps values"? [...]

The missions in Iraq and Afghanistan grew from the moral outrage of September 11. U.S. troops, the best this country has yet produced, went overseas to defend us against repeating that day. Now it isn't just that the war on terror has proven hard; the men and women fighting for us, the magnificent 99.9%, are being soiled in a repetitive, public way that is unbearable.

The greatest danger at this moment is that the American public will decide it wants to pull back because it has concluded that when the U.S. goes in, it always gets hung out to dry.

Two major military reports will come out soon on the Haditha incident, and no one will gainsay justice if that is required. But the atmosphere around this event is going to get uncontrollably manic, and that will feed the dark, inward-turning sentiments already poisoning the country's mood over issues like the immigration debate.

Good for Democrats? Don't count on it. After this, the public appetite for a Democratic president's "humanitarian" military intervention in a Darfur or East Timor will be close to zero.

One suspects that U.S. troops were party to some awful events in the Pacific and European theaters of World War II, all gone in the mists of history and the enemy's defeat. Not now. Gen. Chiarelli's magnificent "99.9%" notwithstanding, it's the phenomenon of the so-very-public 0.01%--at Abu Ghraib, on an Afghan street, at Haditha--that is breaking America's will this time.

It is the absence of these hundreds of stories, which stands as an overwhelming testament for the irreproachable ethical and moral code of conduct by which our finest live and die. And that's that. No apologies offered and none expected for the thousands of our finest who have been murdered, killed and butchered in their honorable line of duty. As for the isolated cases, the system is in place and will deal with them in the appropriate manner, fair and square, I have no doubt about that.

More @ Michelle Malkin, Allah @ Hot Air, Opinion Journal, The Ninth Syndrome, The Moderate Voice  The Political Pit Bull, The Sundries Shack, The Huffington Post, America Blog, The Heretik, Outside The Beltway, Point Five, The Next Hurrah, Informed Comment, Texas Rainmaker, West Coast Cap Peelers, ABC News, US Politics, Riehl World View, The Washington Monthly,and The American Street 

Linked to Wizbang, Stop The ACLU, Third World County, Blue Star Chronicles, Basil, Adam

Comments

[Kenny Pierce]

Gringo,

Thanks, I think we're largely on the same page. Or, maybe not the same page, but a similar one.

My biggest gripe with George is the same one I've had with pretty much every American President since Woodrow Wilson: the overvaluing of "democracy" compared to individual rights. The most unrealistic thing the President said, it seems to me, was that the people of Iraq were "ready" for democracy. Really? With a cultural heritage of tribalism and corruption? with a "shame/honor" culture? with a population overwhelmingly composed of people following a religion with no real tradition of religious freedom? Everytime Bush talks about how every human being naturally wants freedom, I think, "Fallacy of equivocation -- every human being naturally wants freedom for himself, but he wants everybody else to have to live by his rules. What matters is to have a nation full of people who value other people's freedom as much as their own -- and what evidence do we have that the Iraqi people meet that all-important criterion?"

It (the war) was still, I believe, something we had to try, and true democracy (where love of other's freedom becomes part of the culture) is something we have to continue to try to foster in the Middle East. I just haven't ever felt that Bush was ever willing to face up to how monumental that challenge was, and that he has therefore always undersold to the American people the price he was asking us to pay. I'm willing to pay the real price -- but any good consultant knows you always "manage expectations" so that your clients' surprises are mostly good ones, things going better than they expected rather than worse. And Bush screwed that up pretty badly, I think -- though to be fair the media has been determined to create an illusion of failure at whatever cost; so I don't know whether he really could have done that much better than he has.

I don't know how much that matches your perception but it seems pretty similar to me.

[gringoman]

Okay, Let's try this again, after my last response got completely disappeared just before I clicked the 'Post' button. Will try a new path this time.

From KE: Our servicemembers are paying a hidden price for this conflict. It is those with irreproachable ethical and morals who are suffering most grievously.

Posted by: KnightErrant | Friday, June 02, 2006 at 06:57 PM

Knight Errant,

you seem to be saying that the best suffer most. I hear you, even while the White House and the brass, going on the defense re Haditha, trot out their "sensitivity training" for the troops. Years in Vietnam made clear to me the disconnect between soldiers and the home-bound. Thanks to New Media, it might be a little less today, but only a little........

===========================================================

Kenny Pierce to Gingoman (see gringo response below)

I apologize for lacking the time to respond in detail. A point of mild disagreement and a point of clarification.

First:

<
Unfortunately, as any planner could have or should have known...
<

Hindsight is 20/20. I though Bush was insanely optimistic when he talked about elections in less than five years (I was right pissed off with him for his duplicity, in fact). He underestimated the difficulty; I overestimated it. But the two things you always know going into any war are that (a) there will be unforeseen problems for which you didn't plan and (b) armchair generals will, after the problems arise, run around talking about how obvious the problem was in fore-spect (by which they mean in retrospect). So I don't pay much attention to people who say, "Oh, everybody knew this would happen," unless they happen to have a nice complete record of all the things they predicted before the war started so that I can see that (a) they did in fact predict what they say should have been obvious and (b) they didn't also predict a hundred other things that did not in fact come true.

...........[from gringoman to KP: Maybe I should have taken the time to make clearer what I meant, since I did not mean the stereotype Monday morning quarterbacking. I backed Bush invasion, even while critics were bleating about the doom and thousands of casualties and chembio victims (from the WMD they later spun around and said Bush was lying about.) I expected Baghdad to fall. I also expected "problems" after the initial "victory." Exactly what and how many? Who knew? And how could you know without knowing what WH, CIA and Pentagon are paid to know and have access to? I was always willing to give these "pros" the benefit of a doubt. Fog of war? Of course, but they'd find their way through the fog, would they not? This was not Vietnam and it was not going to become a Vietnam, right? I went along, sharply disagreeing with Sidney Schanberg the NY Times guy who was in Cambodia when I was there(he now writes for Village Voice) Well, I'm now beginning to wonder whether SS and his Libstream views are right, for all the wrong--repeat--wrong reasons. Here's what I mean. These people condemn U.S. and Bush for not being politically correct enough, i.e. for not laying down with the UN enough, and the corrupt Russians, Chinese and Euros enough, for invading Iraq without permission of the thieves and thugs in UN Oil-For-Food etc etc. My problem with Bush is au contraire, that he's too politically correct, showing his liberal "sensitive" side with "the religion of peace' and turning the world's best military over to the functions of police, social workers, Peace Corps workers and, OMG, nation builders. I don't single him out for blame on this, by the way. He's really just being a contemporary Homo Americanus. What post-WW II American Man would do any better and have the stomach to fight an actual war, destroy the enemy, pacify the country and secure the cities so that the decent people can get on with building a new society? Name one of today's crop who would do this? I don't see any. Do you? You know there's not a single one of them who will stand up to U.S. and world haters and let the U.S. military get the job done which it can get done. These leaders do not have the fiber, or the guts, to accept the civilian casualties it would take to destroy the criminal gangs. And that's why we will see more and more casualties, both civilian and military. That's what happens when you do not let the military do its very unpleasant job of rooting out and destroying until the beheaders and mockers stop beheading and mocking. And that's why the only politically correct U.S. fall-back, now, is to hope and pray that the local trainees are not too corrupt and infiltrated and demoralized to do what the world's most powerful military can't do or is not permitted to do---bring security to all by destroying some. )

.

(KP) Second:

>
Would you want to win the war in Iraq if you could not defeat the enemy without killing women and children?
>

Your question is ambiguous. Do you mean "without deliberately targeting women and children whom you had no reasonable grounds to think were trying to kill you"?

Gringoman to KP: No,I don't mean that. The U.S. military would not countenance that anyway, nor should they. The trouble is, civilians rarely can understand the realities on the ground, yet they don't mind telling the military how to do its job. Liberal or anti-Bush lawyers can have a field day instructing the military, although they might not want non-lawyers telling them how to operate. Sure, there needs to be oversight. Aberrant behavior is possible anywhere. Thanks to today's huge gap between civilian and military, the ignorant must either trust or distrust the military. You mention a "third" possibility, the inadvertent killing of innocent civilians. That's an absolute reality of war, which every soldier knows, and which every leftist or anti-American demogogue will use as ammunition for his agenda. My larger point is that the insurgents in Iraq today,consisting mainly of Saddamites, barbaric Shiites, barbaric Sunnis and just plain criminal gangs are demonstrating a stronger will than Americans of the politically correct stripe are permitted. Bush has become the quintessential American Politically Correct Warrior, bending over to show the world how "good" we are. The more the world spits in his face, the kinder and gentler he tries to become for them, or at least he tries to swallow hard and go on with his "good" work, now making sure that young American soldiers, often traumatized, are prosecuted for doing, allegedly, what we know the vicious insurgents do all the time. The terrorists have won? You tell me. I tried to make it nice and simple by raising the dilemna of having to kill women and children. This puts it in the nutshell, I think, which the U.S. will not deal with openly and frankly, partly because its politically correct warriors are afraid to deal with it that way. And so the headless corpses continue to turn up in Baghdad, the kidnappings continue, the bought IED's go off, the Iraqi doctors and intelligentsia flee the country for their own family's safety, and even the journos put on body armor when going out on the street. The U.S. must pray that the native trainees can manage what the world's most powerful military has been unable to do---destroy a bunch of rag-tag barbarians........OK, now to North by Northwest.......

gringoman,

I am a trained special forces officer and I can tell you that the answer to your question is an unequivocal "yes". Needless to say (I hope you take my word for it), my training, but most of all my conscious, would direct my every action in any given situation to spare innocent live whenever humanly possible. And yes, there is a "but"; there is no question that in guerrillar warfare, as our troops encounter every day in Iraq, I would expect and accept civilian casualties. That does not mean, that I condone or take lightly such loss of innocent human life, but it is clear to me, that such loss is inevitable.

I hope you do not think me cavalier; I am not. But given the situation on the ground, any other response would be holy disengenious and factually wrong.

Gringoman to NBN:

(Thank you for your service.) Yes, I will take your word for it, and I don't think you're cavalier. I didn't spend those years in Vietnam for nothing. (In fact I once did a story and fotos on my visit to Special Forces Camp Bu Prang in the Central Highlands, on Christmas Day 1969, around the time of its month-long siege by NVA artillery hidden out there by the Cambodian border. The Montagnard kids were pets and could get almost anything they wanted from the Americans (and usually did) especially from the grunts in Charley Battery by the perimeter.)

Anyone from Vietnam would know how civilians were used and put in harm's way and that the ensuing casualties would be used dutifully by world media and U.S. liberals as examples of "U.S. imperialism." Now here we go again in Iraq, and the Bush White House barely has a clue on what to do about it. This is another reason why it's getting kind of stale to try to flub it all off on "enemies" and relieve U.S. "leaders" of accountability. Here's another little (personal) example.

This past winter I was ready to embed in Iraq with our forces as an independent blogger, but was refused by the 'Chairborne Rangers', whether in CENTCOM, the Pentagon or even, uh, elsewhere. The stated reason: They would not accredit me because no MSM news agency "vouched" for me (something I did not have and was perfectly content not to have.) This was confirmed by a PAO General in today's Pentagon. She put it in writing to my Congressisonal Rep. And I think she had enough of a file to realize that I stayed behind and covered the fall of Saigon after the entire CBS staff fled in that infamous panic.

And so it goes in the Clash of Monotheists, anno domini, 2006.

You did however touch, inadvertently or not, the Achilles heel. Your question represents the awkward and quite paradoxical sensibilities of our society and its ability to 'digest' the War on Terror. All lynch mob and all passionate pacifist at the same time, hopelessly intermingled, unable to fathom the cruel, ugly and gory realities of close-quarters urban combat.

Alexandra has got it right when she says, "It is the absence of these hundreds of stories, which stands as an overwhelming testament for the irreproachable ethical and moral code of conduct by which our finest live and die. And that's that."

This kind of warfare is prone to cause extreme actions and reactions. It is the lack of many more of such incidents that tells the most convincing and persuasive story.

Posted by: North by Northwest | Friday, June 02, 2006 at 08:40 PM

www.gringoman.com

[North by Northwest]

Gringoman,

O.K. now this is like a 20 on a scale of 1-10 for throwing a major temper tantrum. It has happened to me too many times before, and now I have just lost my nerve for writing in anything else but Entourage which saves it automatically.

Knowing how long your comments can be, this is particularly distressing, and you have my full sympathy.

[gringoman]

Kenny Pierce & North By Northwest:

I just now finished a detailed reply to you both. I hit 'Preview' to check it out. Suddenly found I was off-line, so I had to get back on-line. In the meantime, apparently the message was not saved. Lost! Everything! Every last blanking syllable! I slapped the desk, but not quite hard enough to break my hand or damage the desk.

I will have to try again. But that won't be for a while. Sorry.

[Darrell]

Since killing innocent civilians(some 15,000 so far) is the MO of the insurgents, and that has gone on daily without nary a peep on the part of the Mainstream Socialist Media(MSM), can't we all just wait for the official reports to come out over the matter? WE DON"T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED...AND NEITHER DOES ANYONE ELSE! And interviews with insurgents won't clear it up, either!

[Semanticleo]

Yes, when you consign troops to 7-day weeks of rotating shifts
and cast them, in insufficent numbers, into the Crucible, bad stuff happens.

Let's stop shooting the messengers and the critics by blaming the media, and insisting that the criticism paints all the troops as
bad seeds further hampering the safety of those troops still in
country. It is the haphazard and careless civilian command as well as the boot smooching military leaders who set up this
disaster known as Iraq. Let's focus less on the troops that
cracked under intense daily pressure and point to the real
screw-ups.

[North by Northwest]

Kenny, you took the words right our of my mouth; only much more prolific of course ;-)

gringoman,

I am a trained special forces officer and I can tell you that the answer to your question is an unequivocal "yes". Needless to say (I hope you take my word for it), my training, but most of all my conscious, would direct my every action in any given situation to spare innocent live whenever humanly possible. And yes, there is a "but"; there is no question that in guerrillar warfare, as our troops encounter every day in Iraq, I would expect and accept civilian casualties. That does not mean, that I condone or take lightly such loss of innocent human life, but it is clear to me, that such loss is inevitable.

I hope you do not think me cavalier; I am not. But given the situation on the ground, any other response would be holy disengenious and factually wrong.

You did however touch, inadvertently or not, the Achilles heel. Your question represents the awkward and quite paradoxical sensibilities of our society and its ability to 'digest' the War on Terror. All lynch mob and all passionate pacifist at the same time, hopelessly intermingled, unable to fathom the cruel, ugly and gory realities of close-quarters urban combat.

Alexandra has got it right when she says, "It is the absence of these hundreds of stories, which stands as an overwhelming testament for the irreproachable ethical and moral code of conduct by which our finest live and die. And that's that."

This kind of warfare is prone to cause extreme actions and reactions. It is the lack of many more of such incidents that tells the most convincing and persuasive story.

[Kenny Pierce]

Gingoman,

I apologize for lacking the time to respond in detail. A point of mild disagreement and a point of clarification.

First:

<
Unfortunately, as any planner could have or should have known...
<

Hindsight is 20/20. I though Bush was insanely optimistic when he talked about elections in less than five years (I was right pissed off with him for his duplicity, in fact). He underestimated the difficulty; I overestimated it. But the two things you always know going into any war are that (a) there will be unforeseen problems for which you didn't plan and (b) armchair generals will, after the problems arise, run around talking about how obvious the problem was in fore-spect (by which they mean in retrospect). So I don't pay much attention to people who say, "Oh, everybody knew this would happen," unless they happen to have a nice complete record of all the things they predicted before the war started so that I can see that (a) they did in fact predict what they say should have been obvious and (b) they didn't also predict a hundred other things that did not in fact come true.

In fact one of the reasons I like having a blog is that it keeps me informed as to what my own predictions were (I was not only wrong about the pace at which elections could be held, but I was madly wrong, to take a different controversy, about the advisability of the Gang of 14 compromise from the Republicans' point of view -- I called the Republicans complete fools but it turns out they outright mopped the floor with the Democrats on that one). Helps avoid the natural illusion of wisdom by which one remembers all of those predictions in which one was proved correct and conveniently forgets all of those in which one was proved moronic.

Second:

>
Would you want to win the war in Iraq if you could not defeat the enemy without killing women and children?
>

Your question is ambiguous. Do you mean "without deliberately targeting women and children whom you had no reasonable grounds to think were trying to kill you"? Or do you mean, "without killing, as collateral damage in the course of military operations aimed at combatants, women and children who were not engaged in hostile activity themselves, though you may well find yourself deliberately killing six-year-olds who are shooting a bazooka at you or women who unfortunately are standing next to the terrorist at whose feet you just tossed a hand grenade"?

Both the question of whether the woman and children in question are active combatants, and the question of whether they die as targets or as collateral damage, are ethically critical.

(My answer to the first is, "No." My answer to the second is, "Damn straight.")

There's also a third possible phrasing of the question: "Would you want to win the war in Iraq if you could not defeat the enemy without every so often having rogue soldiers kill women and children or otherwise behave indefensibly, in defiance of the ROE?" To which, again, I would answer, "Yep." (Though I also want the rest of any such rogue soldiers' lives to be hellish.) Otherwise you can't fight a war at all because even if you get a fighting force that is 99.99% pure -- a quite unreasonable number for any profession including the priesthood -- that 0.01% still gives you at least one rogue soldier in any expeditionary force with more than 10,000 soldiers.

[KnightErrant]

For me, this story out of Alabama is more telling than anything coming out of Iraq. Specialist Douglas Barber, a 35 year-old Alabama National Guardsman, wrote the following on January 12, 2006. Four days later Spc. Barber embraced the muzzle of his shotgun and pulled the trigger.

"All is not OK or right for those of us who return home alive and supposedly well. What looks like normalcy and readjustment is only an illusion to be revealed by time and torment. Some soldiers come home missing limbs and other parts of their bodies. Still others will live with permanent scars from horrific events that no one other than those who served will ever understand. We come home from war trying to put our lives back together but some cannot stand the memories and decide that death is better. We kill ourselves because we are so haunted by seeing children killed and whole families wiped out."

Our servicemembers are paying a hidden price for this conflict. It is those with irreproachable ethical and morals who are suffering most grievously.

[gringoman]

North by Northwest,

Maybe I'm wrong. (It could happen.) Maybe I'm even wrong about George Bush. And let's be perfectly clear. There's no free pass here for other Republicans or any Democrat in sight. GB is simply one of the greatest living examples ( maybe second only to Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson) of post-WW II American Man: The Politically Correct Warrior.(LBJ, you'll recall, feared the intervention of China or nuclear USSR during the vietnam war, whereas GB today fears muslim wrath and World Anti-American Media, including our own Libstream) Bush got this way by at least daring to do what no Democrat would do---take the war to the part of the world that brought the war to New York and Washington, and let the Libstream parse away about the need for more diplomacy, more "proof," more Kerrying, more wimp-out.

The great drive into Baghdad was fabulous. That, you'll notice, was conducted as a war, even if logistically it was horrendlously over-extended, thanks in part to "ally" Turkey's refusal to permit a drive from there.) Bush let the world's greatest military do what the world's greatest military can do.

Unfortunately, as any planner could have or should have known, the Saddamites and others faded back into the woodwork and that most brutal and dangerous of scenarios began---urban guerilla combat, in which U.S. soldiers were ordered to become policemen and Peace Corps workers (while doing what they were trained to do if attacked, but not if you might get court-martialed for saving the life of yourself and comrades.)

Yes, we know that 14 of the 18 provinces are "pacified" etc. And that's fine. Thank our military. The bad stuff happens in Anbar, in Baghdad, and now increasingly in Basra. But that's enough to neutralize everything else, and they are smart enough to know it. Look, this is four years now. We who lived in Saigon could go anywhere. I went anywhere, alone, unescorted, unarmed. Does this sound remotely like Baghdad today to you? Do you really think that Iraq is even close to stabilized--despite 14 "peaceful" provinces---if you cannot pacify Baghdad and make it as safe as the Saigon I knew? (By the way, if you really think the politically correct nature of the U.S. military is due more to the military--who would have taken out the pestiferous Mooky al-Sadr long ago, to cite one outrageous example---rather than the White House which hesitated even to scratch a mosque used as a jihadi bunker (remember back then?), you probably think that every active-duty officer is shutting up and falling in line with the new "sensitivity training" that will get more Americans either killed, wounded, or ineffective because he (the active duty officer) really believes it and is not worried about what frankness would do to his record and future promotions.)

And again, this can get as complex as anyone wants to make it. That's why, again, I'm going to bring it back to the American Dilemna. NBW, now I will put it to you. Let's see how you face the dilemna. Call it, for now, hypothetical. We can't go into the reality that would show how relevant this dilemna is. It would take too long, and only the soldiers on the ground can make it totally clear anyway, so that Amnericans who are utterly alienated from military reality could understand the meaning of a brutal enemy who in effect turns civilians, including women and children, into combattants, which allows this enemy to neutralize an infinitely superior military force. We'll call it a hypothetical. That way you can say it's not a true dilemna. So here goes.

Would you want to win the war in Iraq if you could not defeat the enemy without killing women and children?

You may answer yes or no. Or no lo contendere.

[RJBJ]

igout,

you're living in both the wrong century and the wrong country.

[North by Northwest]

gringoman,

Everyone knows that George Bush does not have the stomach to fight a real war, or the guts to deal with the resulting media storm. He can only conduct a politically correct "confrontation" that makes use of the world's finest military. That's what he is, and what all or certainly most other U.S. politicians, Dem or Pub, are.

I don't agree with that and I don't think you can really believe that either. If ever there was a President or an Administration who did not flinch or succumb to public pressure, it's this one. Naturally it isn't the President's job to conduct the military operation on the ground, so he and his Administration are necessarily dependent on the decisions the leadership thinks best to achieve the stated goals in theater. Correct me if I'm wrong to say that Colin Powell was pushed out because he fitted much more your description. In truth, I believe this Administration is much more concerned with balancing the 'public opinion' in Iraq and surrounding Arab states than with domestic sentiment. And IMO they ought to be commended for that.

Victor David Hanson provides a good overview of the overall dynamics:

In short, America knows a ground war in the Middle East is not our theater of choice in the postmodern age — and yet necessary to undermine both Middle East autocracy and fundamentalism that hand-in-glove lead to the conditions that caused September 11. If we succeed, the Middle East stabilizes and enters modernity, leaving its pariahs on the margins. If we fail, we resort back to punitive bombing as a method of deterring enemies and will reenter the pre-9/11 paradigm of states sending out terrorists and either hoping we won’t hold them accountable or send in only a few cruise missiles.

The outcome of the insurgents’ war will hinge on whether we assess our own strengths and weaknesses in this sort of fighting far better than does our canny enemy. And that answer in turn will determine whether Iraq and Afghanistan shatter the aspirations of our enemies — or turn out to be colossal Mogadishus.

I believe the President and his team understand what is at stake only too well. If domestic political calculus was driving their decisions, things would look dramatically different.

[igout]

This is going to keep happening until some concerned person vividly demonstrates to the MSM scum that treason in time of war can be bad for their health. Hard to savour your Pullitzer when you're 6' under.

[gringoman]

(Very neat illustration, Alexandra)

The current Libstream/WorldMedia/Islamo psywar blitzkrieg on today's exceptionally professional and disciplined U.S. military raises a question that few want to face: The American giant can still go to war, but can it really fight a war anymore?

True, the willingness to fight when necessary isn't totally atrophied here. The U.S. has not yet(evolved or devolved, choose one) into a "sophisticated" Europe of the New World. Not yet. (This explains part of the resentment toward Bush.He's clearly the product of old genteel liberal New England, and upset expectations by trying on those fancy cowboy boots.)

Vast, complex question? Oh, sure. You could write a book, blah-blah. For a 'Comment' let's try to keep it nice and simple. Let's try to boil it down to a bare bone of truth.

Is anyone on the public stage willing to get real about Iraq in particular and war in general? Will politicians? Will the media monkeys and monkettes? Will they get real about the plain facts on how criminals think nothing of using men, women and children, turning them, in effect, into combattants? And even if they did get real about it, could mom and pop and Mr. and Mrs. America deal with it? You know they can't. Why not at least admit what every ruthless enemy already knows? Who are you kidding?

Forget Haditha for now. That's an on-going case and proceeding. Or if you want to think the worse, that U.S. Marines deliberately committed atrocities, go ahead. That's just a particular case.

The point: Human monsters use children in war. As scouts. As look-outs. Even as killers. You must know about the child "soldiers" in Africa. Maybe you know about the child "werewolves" in Germany who the Americans had to kill mercilessly, as these "children" were even deadlier killers than many adults. Maybe you know about the palestinian children who are indoctrinated from birth, turned into automatons of hate and violence. You mean you haven't seen the posters of the kiddies with their AK-47's?

But how many Americans can deal with the facts? How many even have a clue to the reality on the ground? And if they get the clue, and all the proof in the world that the Islamos use women and children as human shields, as combattants, as enablers etc etc, and have the cameras ready so that al-Jazeera and CNN can show you the dead women and children, what then?

How will Americans deal with the facts? Forget the media monkeys. How will real Americans deal with it? And their "leaders," both the military and civilian leaders who are willing to send young Americans to war but will not allow them to fight a real war? Everyone knows that George Bush does not have the stomach to fight a real war, or the guts to deal with the resulting media storm. He can only conduct a politically correct "confrontation" that makes use of the world's finest military. That's what he is, and what all or certainly most other U.S. politicians, Dem or Pub, are.

You mean you don't know the answer? But you know that our 'Texan," i.e. New England's scion George Bush, will never countenance the killing of women and children. And you wouldn't want him to. Fess up. You know how compassionate he is about national security and the millions pouring over the border from Mexico.

Better, then, to leave it be. Get on with prosecuting the American warriors from Haditha and the other cases which the current feeding frenzy will produce.

This is your war, where thousands of Americans give all, and most everyone else gives nothing but pieties or legalisms, (and where even the CENTCOM bureaucrats would not embed me because I insisted on being an independent blogger unaffiliated with MSM)

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Americans have come out of their Vietnam Syndrome? Maybe they do have the sense to stay out of a war they do not have the stomach to fight, or else to fight a war they choose to get into---with or without the media menagerie---and get it over with. Maybe they really can face a hell---a smaller one now, in order to forestall the big one later.

You think so, do you?