Tag: war

More Validation from the Left

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(And more references to old posts, too!) Back in October of last year I wrote a really long piece, The United Federation of Planets. It was another piece on the topic of the “reality” of rights, but in that piece I wrote this:

The “state of nature” is the ultimate objective reality. In it, people will do whatever is necessary to survive, or they don’t survive. In point of fact, throughout history – even today – people have not only defended their lives, liberty and property, they have taken life, liberty, and property from others not of their society. And they have done so secure in the knowledge that their philosophy tells them that it’s the right thing to do. This is true of the The Brow-Ridged Hairy People That Live Among the Distant Mountains, the Egyptians, the Inca, the Maori, the British Empire, and the United States of America. It’s called warfare, and it’s the use of lethal force against people outside ones own society. Rand explained that:

A ‘right’ is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.

That’s a critical definition. If a society truly believes that:

…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

then that society cannot wage war. It cannot even defend itself – because to take human life, to destroy property, even to take prisoners of war is anathema to such a society, for it would be in violation of the fundamental rights of the victims of such action. (See: the Moriori. Or the Amish.)

This creates a cognitive bind, then, unless you rationalize that the rights you believe in are valid for your society, but not necessarily for those outside it. Those members that violate the sanctions on freedom of action within the society are treated differently from those outside the society that do the same. Those within the society are handled by the legal system, and are subject to capture, judicial review, and punishment under law, whether that’s issuance of an “Anti-Social Behavior Order” in London, or a death by stoning in Tehran. Those outside of a society who act against that society may be ignored, or may risk retaliatory sanctions up to and including open warfare, depending on the situation. (See: Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, nuclear weapons.)

In every successful society the majority must share a common philosophy and believe that philosophy is superior to all others. It must, or that society will change. The philosophy of any society can be one of aggressive evangelism, or quiet comfort, or anywhere in between, but successful societies are marked by one key characteristic: confidence.

—

If you examine (the Left) closely, it has wrapped itself in a philosophy that attempts to extend all of the West’s “rights of man” to the entire world – up to and including those who are actively seeking our destruction, and the Left holds itself as morally superior for doing so. Attempting to intercept terrorist communications is “illegal domestic wiretapping” – a violation of the right to privacy. Media outlets showing acknowledged Islamist propaganda is exercise of the right of free speech, but suppression of images from the 9/11 attacks – specifically, the aircraft crashing into the World Trade Center, or its victims jumping to their deaths – is not censorship. The humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib is described as a “human rights violation,” as is the detainment of prisoners at Guantanimo without trial. For the Left, the war between the West and radical Islamists should not be handled as a war – it should be handled as a police matter – as a society would handle internal violators. Our enemies shouldn’t be killed, they should be, at worst, captured and counseled. Our enemies are not at fault, WE are, because we are hypocrites that don’t live up to our professed belief in absolute, positive, unquestionable, fundamental, ultimate rights. If we just lived up to our professed beliefs, the rest of the world would not hate us. Yet to believe this, the Left must ignore objective reality. It acts, as the Moriori acted, to negotiate and appease, because that’s what its philosophy demands – and the results would be identical.

(Bold emphasis added.)

My validation came in an August 8 New York Times (natch) op-ed by General Wesley Clark and Kal Raustiala:

Why Terrorists Aren’t Soldiers

THE line between soldier and civilian has long been central to the law of war. Today that line is being blurred in the struggle against transnational terrorists. Since 9/11 the Bush administration has sought to categorize members of Al Qaeda and other jihadists as “unlawful combatants” rather than treat them as criminals. (My emphasis.)

The federal courts are increasingly wary of this approach, and rightly so. In a stinging rebuke, this summer a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., struck down the government’s indefinite detention of a civilian, Ali al-Marri, by the military. The case illustrates once again the pitfalls of our current approach.

Treating terrorists as combatants is a mistake for two reasons. First, it dignifies criminality by according terrorist killers the status of soldiers. Under the law of war, military service members receive several privileges. They are permitted to kill the enemy and are immune from prosecution for doing so. They must, however, carefully distinguish between combatant and civilian and ensure that harm to civilians is limited.

Critics have rightly pointed out that traditional categories of combatant and civilian are muddled in a struggle against terrorists. In a traditional war, combatants and civilians are relatively easy to distinguish. The 9/11 hijackers, by contrast, dressed in ordinary clothes and hid their weapons. They acted not as citizens of Saudi Arabia, an ally of America, but as members of Al Qaeda, a shadowy transnational network. And their prime targets were innocent civilians.

By treating such terrorists as combatants, however, we accord them a mark of respect and dignify their acts.

Oh HORSESHIT!! By treating them as combatants we allow ourselves to unleash military firepower and dispense with the legal chains that go along with judicial process.

And we undercut our own efforts against them in the process. Al Qaeda represents no state, nor does it carry out any of a state’s responsibilities for the welfare of its citizens. Labeling its members as combatants elevates its cause and gives Al Qaeda an undeserved status.

As targets for JDAMs and Hellfire missiles, Marines and Army Rangers rather than FBI agents and Federal Marshalls?

If we are to defeat terrorists across the globe, we must do everything possible to deny legitimacy to their aims and means, and gain legitimacy for ourselves. As a result, terrorism should be fought first with information exchanges and law enforcement, then with more effective domestic security measures. Only as a last resort should we call on the military and label such activities “war.” The formula for defeating terrorism is well known and time-proven.

Really? It’s worked so well so far.

Labeling terrorists as combatants also leads to this paradox: while the deliberate killing of civilians is never permitted in war, it is legal to target a military installation or asset. Thus the attack by Al Qaeda on the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000 would be allowed, as well as attacks on command and control centers like the Pentagon. For all these reasons, the more appropriate designation for terrorists is not “unlawful combatant” but the one long used by the United States: criminal.

No, the more appropriate designation for terrorists is “targets.”

The second major problem with the approach of the Bush administration is that it endangers our political traditions and our commitment to liberty, and further damages America’s legitimacy in the eyes of others. Almost 50 years ago, at the height of the cold war, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the “deeply rooted and ancient opposition in this country to the extension of military control over civilians.”

Here I can agree – in principle.

A great danger in treating operatives for Al Qaeda as combatants is precisely that its members are not easily distinguished from the population at large. The government wields frightening power when it can designate who is, and who is not, subject to indefinite military detention. The Marri case turned on this issue. Mr. Marri is a legal resident of the United States and a citizen of Qatar; the government contends that he is a sleeper agent of Al Qaeda. For the last four years he has been held as an enemy combatant at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.

The federal court held that while the government can arrest and convict civilians, under current law the military cannot seize and detain Mr. Marri. Nor would it necessarily be constitutional to do so, even if Congress expressly authorized the military detention of civilians. At the core of the court’s reasoning is the belief that civilians and combatants are distinct. Had Ali al-Marri fought for an enemy nation, military detention would clearly be proper. But because he is accused of being a member of Al Qaeda, and is a citizen of a friendly nation, he should not be treated as a warrior.

Here is one of the points I was illustrating in United Federation. When one’s philosophy runs afoul of objective reality, something’s gotta give. Wesley and Kal want to continue to embrace the philosophy and deny objective reality – the reality being that treating terrorists as mere criminals allows them to use our civility as a weapon against us. It’s a tactic they enthusiastically and willingly exploit.

Cases like this illustrate that in the years since 9/11, the Bush administration’s approach to terrorism has created more problems than it has solved. We need to recognize that terrorists, while dangerous, are more like modern-day pirates than warriors. They ought to be pursued, tried and convicted in the courts. At the extreme, yes, military force may be required. But the terrorists themselves are not “combatants.” They are merely criminals, albeit criminals of an especially heinous type, and that label suggests the appropriate venue for dealing with the threats they pose.

“Especially heinous” – another point of agreement. But they are making war on us, and to refuse to acknowledge that seems to me to be wishful thinking at best, suicidal at worst. They’re not out for plunder. Their operatives are not afraid of dying. They want to kill as many of us as they can, as horrifically and often as they can.

They are not pirates, they aren’t even the equivalent of the barbarian hordes that ushered in the Dark Ages. They’re more like a plague than anything else, except this is a plague that hates.

We train our soldiers to respect the line between combatant and civilian. Our political leaders must also respect this distinction, lest we unwittingly endanger the values for which we are fighting, and further compromise our efforts to strengthen our security.

Criminal prosecution is supposed to result in correction – i.e.: imprisonment. When do convicted terrorists get parole? How many will end up on Death Row and go through endless appeals?

We deem them “unlawful combatants” because they are conducting warfare without obeying the rules of war that formal nations have agreed upon. Walter Russell Mead in his essay The Jacksonian Tradition explained it this way:

Jacksonian America has clear ideas about how wars should be fought, how enemies should be treated, and what should happen when the wars are over. It recognizes two kinds of enemies and two kinds of fighting: honorable enemies fight a clean fight and are entitled to be opposed in the same way; dishonorable enemies fight dirty wars and in that case all rules are off.

An honorable enemy is one who declares war before beginning combat; fights according to recognized rules of war, honoring such traditions as the flag of truce; treats civilians in occupied territory with due consideration; and — a crucial point– refrains from the mistreatment of prisoners of war. Those who surrender should be treated with generosity. Adversaries who honor the code will benefit from its protections, while those who want a dirty fight will get one.

So far, our side has done its dead-level best to fight honorably against a dishonorable enemy. The Left wants to rein even that in, and restrict us as much as possible to using law-enforcement techniques against an enemy that will use every advantage it can get.

The difficulty in separating terrorists from non-combatants is their greatest strength and our greatest weakness. Treating terrorists as unlawful combatants runs terrible risks of abusing truly innocent people. This is where our philosophy runs up against objective reality and is found wanting. So we have a terrible choice – do we, once again, put aside our beliefs for a time and do what is necessary to survive, or do we give every advantage to an enemy bent on destroying us? Or, more likely, do we tear our society asunder under the stress of our collective cognitive dissonance and the inevitable resulting loss of confidence?

My money’s on the latter. So is (or was) bin Laden’s.

(h/t: Jackalope Pursuivant)

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I Found Ted Kennedy’s Safe!.

A while back I fisked Sen. Ted “The Swimmer” Kennedy‘s Senate testimony on “armor piercing” ammunition. During his oration on the evils of such ammunition, he let loose with this unforgettable utterance:

Another rifle caliber, the 30.30 caliber, was responsible for penetrating three officers’ armor and killing them in 1993, 1996, and 2002. This ammunition is also capable of puncturing light-armored vehicles, ballistic or armored glass, armored limousines, even a 600-pound safe with 600 pounds of safe armor plating.

Er, what??

I’ve always wondered where that particular non sequitur came from. Now I think I know. Watch this YouTube video (the sound goes out of time with the image towards the end)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9lMViBr6d8&w=425&h=350]

Pay particular attention starting about 6:45. That’s when they shoot a “600 pound safe.”

Suffice it to say, they weren’t using a .30-30, and the ammunition they were using wasn’t manufactured by Hi-Vel. Nor can your average civilian purchase Mk 211 Mod 0 .50 BMG rounds.

Not that that made any difference to (hic!) Teddy.

Or the VPC for that matter.

(h/t: Sebastian)

It’s Good to Know that Hollywood Has Our Back.

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I just got back from seeing The Bourne Ultimatum – overall, not a bad flick (though being a gun nut the sound effects and continuity errors grated a bit.) But the previews – ah, the previews.

First up, a trailer for The Kingdom, a film about, well:

A team of U.S. government agents is sent to investigate the bombing of an American facility in the Middle East.

While I’m not certain, I’m pretty sure this is about Saudi Arabia. Apparently the FBI is sent in to investigate this act of terrorism, and – for some strange reason – the local government interferes! On top of that, our intrepid G-Men are attacked by terrorists themselves! Looks action-packed. Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, directed by Peter Berg. Good cast as well.

Next up, Rendition. This film stars Reese Witherspoon as the wife of an Arab-American who is grabbed at the airport by the CIA and receives extraordinary rendition – i.e.: he’s whisked off to a foreign country where he can be tortured into confessing interrogated properly. Of course a still-wet-behind-the-ears local agent is sent to “monitor” the “interrogation” and is disturbed by what he witnesses. Meanwhile back at home the distraught wife fights to find out what happened to her husband. Written by Kelly Sane, directed by Gavin Hood.

But wait! We’re not done! Third up on this list is Lions for Lambs, starring no less than Glenn Close Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, and Robert Redford, who also directs! There’s not much online about this that I’ve been able to find, but Redford apparently plays a psychologist who can’t seem to understand why young men might actually want to join the military! Tom Cruise plays an opportunistic Senator who spouts lines like “Do you want to win the War on Terror™ or don’t you?!?!” Streep apparently plays the heroic newspaper reporter who is drawn like a moth to the flame of the Senator, but I’m sure is only interested in reporting the Truth™. Amazingly, this film is also written by Matthew Michael Carnahan. Mr. Carnahan’s had a busy year, since IMDB shows that this and The Kingdom are his first two screen credits ever.

Remember when Hollywood made movies like Sands of Iwo Jima and Strategic Air Command? That was propaganda, too – but at least it was in favor of our side coming out victorious.

Arnold Toynbee wrote, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” He also noted, “Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.” Finally, “I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.”

I’m amazed by the seemingly increasing will towards civil suicide exhibited by so many of my fellow countrymen. I don’t like a lot of what I see happening either, but I don’t outright deny the dangers we actually face for the ones that might be. Perhaps we’ve reached some critical mass past which we cannot stop an inevitable slide into self-destruction. I don’t know. But Hollywood isn’t helping stop that slide, that I do know.

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To the men and women of Regimental Combat Team 6

I’d like to thank you.

I’m a middle-forties, overweight, out-of-condition electrical engineer living in Tucson, Arizona with my wife, step-daughter, and two grandchildren. I want you to know that I believe I understand what it is you are risking your life and limb for: the chance to shut down an ideology of death and enslavement that threatens modern civilization; the chance to do it at its heart, and to avoid having the fight come to our home towns. You are there to help a people learn what it is to be free, and to slam the door on those who wish to enslave everyone.

It is a noble goal. It is a lousy job, in lousier conditions, made even worse by voices from back home who tell you that all is lost, that what you’re doing is wrong, illegal, immoral, and fattening.

Ignore them.

Understand that we, Silent America, stand behind you. Those of us in flyover country respect what you are doing, and only wish we could help you do it better, harder, faster. We want you home, too, but we know what is at stake. Your sacrifice of time, of blood, of life is not wrong, is not in vain, and is very greatly appreciated by the people you don’t hear about in the newscasts or in the papers from home. Apparently we’re not newsworthy. Apparently, what you’re doing there isn’t either, unless the media can manufacture a scandal out of it.

But we’re here, and we know better, because you’re our husbands, wives, sons, and daughters.

To whomever this reaches directly, please send me an email response and let me know anything you and your Team might need. I am a contributor to Soldier’s Angels, but anything I can do directly I will try.

And once again, thank you for being the best America has to offer the world.

Send an email of your own in support of RCT-6 per the request of their commander, Col. Richard L. Simcock in a round-table interview as reported at Blackfive.

Sorry for my tardiness on this. No excuses.

“To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem.”

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“To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized,
merely the domesticated.” – Trefor Thomas (Usenet)

“Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war.” – Wm. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

According to this website:

The military order Havoc! was a signal given to the English military forces in the Middle Ages to direct the soldiery (in Shakespeare’s parlance ‘the dogs of war’) to pillage and chaos.

I’m pretty sure that the words “rape and slaughter” are politely left out of that “pillage and chaos” description only because it’s a family internet.

Settle in and get comfortable, ladies and gentlemen, or click on to other destinations. This promises to be another epic-length post.

I want to talk about the war in Iraq.

I’m one of the people personally convinced that upon election (or “selection,” depending on your personal biases) of George W. Bush to the office of President in November of 2000, America was on the path to war in Iraq. I firmly believe that “regime change” was a cornerstone of the Bush presidency, even though he did not announce it during his campaign.

And honestly, I was fine with that. Let me explain why.

If you have not seen it, or if it’s been a while, I strongly urge you to read Steven Den Beste’s Strategic Overview explaining how he saw the root causes of the conflict between radical Islam and the West, and the solution to it. Bear in mind, Steven wrote his piece in July of 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, but most of the background information was true long before 9/11/2001, and that post was essentially a distillation of many posts he’d written much earlier. If you have any disagreement with his initial root-cause analysis, watch this YouTube clip of a Palestinian children’s television show.

As I detailed in an earlier piece, A Terrible Resolve, we have been at war for quite a while with radical Islam. We’ve just pretended not to notice.

Many opponents to the invasion of Iraq pointed out that Saddam’s government was secular. It was not a country ruled over by robed and turbaned religious zealots, it was ruled over by a run-of-the-mill psychotic dictator, and, the complaint went, we knew how to deal with those. Iran and Saudi Arabia were where the self-immolating neolithic goatherds in Semtex Underoos[*] were being inspired and financed from, why not attack one of them? Others counseled that we should handle the problem like our elder and more sophisticated cousins in Europe did – just live with the intermittent carnage, attempt appeasement, or – if we must be cowboys – lob a few bombs or missiles at suspected terrorist camps in response. After all, it was what we’d been doing for decades. Why change now? It’s not like Saddam was a real threat or anything.

Steven spells out the reason for a military response against Iraq in realpolitik terms, but here’s my summary: “Sitting and taking it” is not, for many Americans, an option. It was obvious prior to 9/11 that terrorist operations were getting larger and more sophisticated. The original truck-bomb attack against the World Trade Center in 1993 was just a taste of domestic things to come. With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the simultaneous collapse of the economies of its member nations, the possibility of military-grade chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons falling into the hands of jihadists was significantly increased. Saddam, we knew, possessed chemical weapons that he had used on Iranians and Kurds. Everyone expected that Coalition troops would be at least gassed by Saddam’s forces in the 1991 Gulf War. That was another argument against not only the 2003 invasion, but the Gulf War as well (how soon we forget.) We believed, as did the rest of the world, that he was pursuing both biological and nuclear weapons. The only topic of debate was “how long?”

Twelve years of UN sanctions against Iraq, twelve years during which he violated the terms of surrender and repeated UN (ir-)resolutions, did nothing – so far as we were able to determine – more than slow him down. In the mean time, Saddam and his sons Uday and Qusay managed to take advantage of that wretched hive of scum and villainy that is the UN and suborned Germany, France, and cash-starved Russia, not to mention a big chunk of Kofi Annan’s staff and family. “Oil for Food” became “Oil for Palaces,” and international aid organizations and other NGOs were getting closer and closer to their goal of having the UN drop the sanctions against Iraq “for the children.” That move would have left Saddam in power with his even less stable sons in line for the chair, and that was not an option that I believe George W. Bush nor Richard Cheney had any intention of allowing to come to pass as far back as November 2000. It was, absolutely, a question of U.S. National Security. And as far as I can determine, the only candidate for Presidential office in 2000 actually willing to be proactive about Saddam was Bush.

Fellow blogger Markadelphia of Notes from the Front left a comment here on another post where he says:

It was very clear long before 9-11 that we were going into Iraq. The people that helped elect Bush were tired of being at the little kids table behind Germany, France, and Russia in regards to Iraqi oil. Cheney spent 1993-2000 at Haliburton planning to go to war with Iraq to a)get their oil and b)use KBR (subsidiary of Haliburton) to fleece taxpayers like you and I with overly generous defense contracts. He reset the table and he used 9-11 as a pretext for going there.

So it was even clear to others that Iraq was on the agenda prior to 9/11. But was it for the Ooooiiiillllll!!!!!? Oh bullshit. If we wanted Iraqi oil, we’d have gone ahead and dropped the sanctions and simply bought it. If we went to war to steal it, then where the hell is it, and why does my gas cost $3.03 a gallon? Are contractors raking in big bucks in Iraq? Yes they are, but they’re doing it in Afghanistan, too – and Afghanistan is the good war, remember? What about Kosovo? KBR is big there and has been from pretty much the beginning. Wasn’t there a Clinton involved in that one?

But yes, it is about oil. If the world’s primary reserves of crude were not under the Middle East, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. The radical Islamists wouldn’t have two dimes to rub together with which to prosecute their war against the West, and we wouldn’t give a dead dog fart about them. Oil is the life blood of the industrial world. Having certifiably insane people sitting in a position that allows them to deny it to the world is manifestly not a good idea.

In order to end the conflict between the West and radical Islam, it is necessary to do one thing: destroy radical Islam. There are two paths to this end. One is, as Steven says, reform the Arab/Muslim world and undermine its support. The second is the unthinkable – destroy it by force of arms.

Therefore I firmly believe that the Bush administration shambled into office with the intent to evict Saddam Hussein and his power structure from Iraq, and to attempt to build a modern democratic nation in the middle of the region. The realpolitik reason for the act was because it would be the opening maneuver in the effort to reform the Arab/Muslim world. The legal and moral justification for the act was that Saddam remained a real if not “imminent” danger, was in violation of the UN resolutions passed against him, and was in violation of the terms of surrender from the 1991 Gulf War. Further, as Iraq was run by a secular government, we could not be credibly accused of attacking for religious reasons. We could not put forth a similar argument for attacking Iran, and the Saudis are supposedly our friends. Attacking them was no option at all. And there was no acceptable diplomatic solution. Twelve years of “diplomacy” conclusively proved that.

Iraq was the target, as Steven says, because in order to begin to reform the Arab/Muslim world:

(W)e had to conquer one of the big antagonistic Arab nations and take control of it.

  1. To directly reduce support for terrorist groups by eliminating one government which had been providing such support.
  2. To place us in a physical and logistical position to be able to apply substantial pressure on the rest of the major governments of the region.
    1. To force them to stop protecting and supporting terrorist groups
    2. To force them to begin implementing political and social reforms
  3. To convince the governments and other leaders of the region that it was no longer fashionable to blame us for their failure, so that they would stop using us as scapegoats.
  4. To make clear to everyone in the world that reform is coming, whether they like it or not, and that the old policy of stability-for-the-sake-of-stability is dead. To make clear to local leaders that they may only choose between reforming voluntarily or having reform forced on them.
  5. To make a significant long term change in the psychology of the “Arab Street”
    1. To prove to the “Arab Street” that we were willing to fight, and that our reputation for cowardice was undeserved.
    2. To prove that we are extraordinarily dangerous when we do fight, and that it is extremely unwise to provoke us.
    3. To defeat the spirit of the “Arab Street”. To force them to face their own failure, so that they would become willing to consider the idea that reform could lead them to success. No one can solve a problem until they acknowledge that they have a problem, and until now the “Arab Street” has been hiding from theirs, in part aided by government propaganda eager to blame others elsewhere (especially the Jews).
  6. To “nation build”. After making the “Arab Street” truly face its own failure, to show the “Arab Street” a better way by creating a secularized, liberated, cosmopolitan society in a core Arab nation. To create a place where Arabs were free, safe, unafraid, happy and successful. To show that this could be done without dictators or monarchs. (I’ve been referring to this as being the pilot project for “Arab Civilization 2.0”.)
  7. Not confirmed: It may have been hoped that the conquered nation would serve as a honey-pot to attract militants from the region, causing them to fight against our troops instead of planning attacks against civilians. (This was described by David Warren as the flypaper strategy.) It seems to have worked out that way, but it’s not known if this was a deliberate part of the plan. Many of the defenders who died in the war were not actually Iraqis.

That last sentence remains true today, nearly four years later, only they’re not “defenders” they’re jihadis, and they’re killing more Iraqi civilians than they are American soldiers by a couple orders of magnitude. Personally, I don’t think the “flypaper strategy” was much considered by the war planners. I think probably their largest oversight was the level of effort Iran and Syria would put in to producing, aiding and arming inbound militants.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 simply moved up the timetable, and made it easier to sell to Congress and the American people. And it is possible, I will admit, that planning for the overthrow of Saddam may possibly have distracted the Bush administration from other threats.

Bear in mind here – I do not concur with the “Bush lied, people died” meme. Everybody thought Saddam had stocks of at least chemical weapons he’d kept hidden from the UN. Don’t make me drag out the YouTube clips of Madeline Albright, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and other Democrat muckety-mucks talking about what a threat Saddam was long before Bush took office.

In a February 26, 2003 speech, President Bush said:

The current Iraqi regime has shown the power of tyranny to spread discord and violence in the Middle East. A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. America’s interests in security, and America’s belief in liberty, both lead in the same direction: to a free and peaceful Iraq.

The first to benefit from a free Iraq would be the Iraqi people, themselves. Today they live in scarcity and fear, under a dictator who has brought them nothing but war, and misery, and torture. Their lives and their freedom matter little to Saddam Hussein — but Iraqi lives and freedom matter greatly to us.

Bringing stability and unity to a free Iraq will not be easy. Yet that is no excuse to leave the Iraqi regime’s torture chambers and poison labs in operation. Any future the Iraqi people choose for themselves will be better than the nightmare world that Saddam Hussein has chosen for them.

—

Rebuilding Iraq will require a sustained commitment from many nations, including our own: we will remain in Iraq as long as necessary, and not a day more. America has made and kept this kind of commitment before — in the peace that followed a world war. After defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments. We established an atmosphere of safety, in which responsible, reform-minded local leaders could build lasting institutions of freedom. In societies that once bred fascism and militarism, liberty found a permanent home.

There was a time when many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong. Some say the same of Iraq today. They are mistaken. The nation of Iraq — with its proud heritage, abundant resources and skilled and educated people — is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom.

The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life. And there are hopeful signs of a desire for freedom in the Middle East. Arab intellectuals have called on Arab governments to address the “freedom gap” so their peoples can fully share in the progress of our times. Leaders in the region speak of a new Arab charter that champions internal reform, greater politics participation, economic openness, and free trade. And from Morocco to Bahrain and beyond, nations are taking genuine steps toward politics reform. A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region.

It is presumptuous and insulting to suggest that a whole region of the world — or the one-fifth of humanity that is Muslim — is somehow untouched by the most basic aspirations of life. Human cultures can be vastly different. Yet the human heart desires the same good things, everywhere on Earth. In our desire to be safe from brutal and bullying oppression, human beings are the same. In our desire to care for our children and give them a better life, we are the same. For these fundamental reasons, freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred and the tactics of terror.

Success in Iraq could also begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace, and set in motion progress towards a truly democratic Palestinian state. The passing of Saddam Hussein’s regime will deprive terrorist networks of a wealthy patron that pays for terrorist training, and offers rewards to families of suicide bombers. And other regimes will be given a clear warning that support for terror will not be tolerated.

Without this outside support for terrorism, Palestinians who are working for reform and long for democracy will be in a better position to choose new leaders. True leaders who strive for peace; true leaders who faithfully serve the people. A Palestinian state must be a reformed and peaceful state that abandons forever the use of terror.

Congress was convinced, the American public was convinced, and we invaded Iraq. Despite the fact that many in the media predicted (even seemed to wish for) “quagmire” and huge losses, the ousting of Saddam was accomplished in an astonishingly short period with surprisingly low losses. Baghdad fell only three weeks after the beginning of the invasion. “Major combat operations” were complete by May 1, Uday and Qusay were killed in July, and Saddam was captured in early December. But there’s an expression in retail sales: “You break it, you bought it.” Iraq was broken before we got there, but we did a pretty good job of making smaller pieces from some of the shards. We had committed ourselves to a path, and most of us believed we could pull it off. After all, we’d done it before. Now what remained was “nation-building.”

And that’s where things have gone pretty badly. Had we still been practicing a Kissingerian pragmatic foreign policy, we’d simply have propped a pro-American “our bastard” dictator on the throne, set up defensive cordons around the oil fields, and let our new ally “pacify” his newly “liberated” nation. We’ve been there and done that, too, and that’s what our Leftist population accused us of attempting.

But President Bush, his cabinet and advisors, even most of the American people, I think, believe in what he said in that speech:

It is presumptuous and insulting to suggest that a whole region of the world — or the one-fifth of humanity that is Muslim — is somehow untouched by the most basic aspirations of life. Human cultures can be vastly different. Yet the human heart desires the same good things, everywhere on Earth. In our desire to be safe from brutal and bullying oppression, human beings are the same. In our desire to care for our children and give them a better life, we are the same. For these fundamental reasons, freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred and the tactics of terror.

He also said in a later speech in England:

We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East. Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold.

As recent history has shown, we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the oppression is not in our own backyard. No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims, and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found.

At least wherever tyranny is found that has a direct effect on American national security. But it has has been pointed out by others that it only takes a few people on one side to force conflict. The slogans of hatred and the tactics of terror appeal to a not-insignificant portion of the one-fifth of humanity that is Muslim, and some of them run countries.

Steven Den Beste postulated that “we had to conquer one of the big antagonistic Arab nations and take control of it” in part:

  1. To place us in a physical and logistical position to be able to apply substantial pressure on the rest of the major governments of the region.

    1. To force them to stop protecting and supporting terrorist groups

    2. To force them to begin implementing political and social reforms

Well, if you’ll look at a map we occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, effectively straddling Iran. Iraq abuts Syria and Saudi Arabia as well. We’re in that “physical and logistical position,” but the “substantial pressure”? Not so much. And without that, the following bullet points are moot.

Steven also wrote that another purpose behind conquering and controlling Iraq was:

  1. To prove to the “Arab Street” that we were willing to fight, and that our reputation for cowardice was undeserved.
  2. To prove that we are extraordinarily dangerous when we do fight, and that it is extremely unwise to provoke us.
  3. To defeat the spirit of the “Arab Street”. To force them to face their own failure, so that they would become willing to consider the idea that reform could lead them to success.

As to part a), we’ve proven that we’re willing to fight – for a while. Our military is, certainly. Our politicians and populace are another story. As to our reputation for cowardice, well, that remains to be seen. On point b) I don’t think there’s been any doubt about that, but our will to fight? See point a). On point c) to date we have been a complete failure as a nation.

Why aren’t we able to apply that substantial pressure? Why have we so far been a complete failure at defeating the “spirit of the ‘Arab Street'”?

I believe it’s a two-part problem, one creating its own positive-feedback loop: 1) Because we “misunderestimated” our enemy, and 2) the United States quite simply isn’t united – and our disunity is illustrated worldwide every day in neon and fireworks via every media outlet going.

Beginning prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, and continuing on ever since there has been a constant drumbeat of defeatism by the Left, and here’s where I’m going to get labeled as a right-wing nutcase (as if I weren’t already): The media has been and continues to be fully complicit in encouraging that defeatism. I’m not going to go into why this is, this essay will be more than long enough already, but suffice it to say that the media’s constant spinning of the war effort (now the nation-building effort) and its overwhelming concentration on the negative, on opponents to the war, on our errors, and on the actions of our enemies has made it a fifth column force on the side of the jihadis. Iraq is not Vietnam, but the media wants everyone to go back to those halcyon days when Walter Cronkite effectively ended that war with one well-placed broadcast, not the bad old days of Ernie Pyle and Edward R. Murrow.

And to hell with the consequences.

The media may be losing its audience, but still the majority of our population gets its information from major news services. And media sells. or advertisers wouldn’t be spending billions on television, print, and radio.

We “misunderestimated” our enemy by not understanding that for their “true believers,” death is their reward. We’d seen that before in the Kamikazes of World War II, but I don’t really think anyone in the Western world really grasps that kind of mindset. We of the cult of material well-being, after all, have things to live for. Six years after 9/11, our enemy seems to have no problem recruiting sufficient numbers of suicide bombers. After all, they think they’re winning. Our media, our Congress tells them so every day.

The idea that people are willing to deliberately blow themselves up for a cause is something the West in general and the Left in particular greatly fears. That is its strongest psychological effect as a weapon: “How can we beat an enemy that is willing to die in order to kill us?” (As an aside, many Leftists (not “liberals”) don’t even understand why people volunteer for the military and put themselves at risk of dying. For them the only justification could be the promise of an education or to get out of bad economic conditions.) For the Left the answer is “make you enemy your friend.” For the Right the answer is “kill him first.” The Left is terrified of “offending” the enemy – thus almost no one was willing to print the Muhammed Cartoons out of fear of reprisal, but no one has a qualm about insulting fundamentalist Christians. President Bush’s admittedly macho posturing of “Bring ’em on!” brought howls of protest by the Left, but you can’t kill them if you can’t find them.

Unless you’re willing to kill a lot of innocents in the process.

Our enemy is willing. We, so far, have not been.

A recent editorial, however, illustrates that the mindset may be changing on that. Morton Kondracke published Plan B for Iraq: Winning Dirty on Friday. In it, he suggests the slightly less unthinkable:

(A)s Bush’s critics point out, bloody civil war is the reality in Iraq right now. U.S. troops are standing in the middle of it and so far cannot stop either Shiites from killing Sunnis or Sunnis from killing Shiites.

Or “insurgents” from killing Americans.

Winning dirty would involve taking sides in the civil war – backing the Shiite-dominated elected government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and ensuring that he and his allies prevail over both the Sunni insurgency and his Shiite adversary Muqtada al-Sadr, who’s now Iran’s candidate to rule Iraq.

In effect, the “our bastard” policy, which he makes explicit from the beginning:

Winning will be dirty because it will allow the Shiite-dominated Iraqi military and some Shiite militias to decimate the Sunni insurgency. There likely will be ethnic cleansing, atrocities against civilians and massive refugee flows.

(My emphasis.) But he continues with the pragmatism argument:

Ever since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Sunnis – representing 20 percent of the population – have been the core of armed resistance to the U.S. and the Iraqi government. The insurgency consists mainly of ex-Saddam supporters and Sunni nationalists, both eager to return to power, and of jihadists anxious to sow chaos, humiliate the United States and create a safe zone for al-Qaida operations throughout the Middle East.

Bush wants to establish Iraq as a model representative democracy for the Middle East, but that’s proved impossible so far – partly because of the Sunni insurgencies, partly because of Shiites’ reluctance to compromise with their former oppressors and partly because al-Qaida succeeded in triggering a civil war.

Bush’s troop surge – along with Gen. David Petraeus’ shift of military strategy – is designed to suppress the civil war long enough for Iraqi military forces to be able to maintain even handed order on their own and for Sunni, Kurdish and Shiite politicians to agree to share power and resources. The new strategy deserves a chance, but so far civilian casualties are not down, progress on political reconciliation is glacial, and U.S. casualties have increased significantly.

As a result, political patience in the United States is running down. If Petraeus cannot show dramatic progress by September, Republicans worried about re-election are likely to demand a U.S. withdrawal, joining Democrats who have demanded it for years.

So much for our reputation for cowardice…

Prudence calls for preparation of a Plan B. The withdrawal policy advocated by most Democrats virtually guarantees catastrophic ethnic cleansing – but without any guarantee that a government friendly to the United States would emerge. Almost certainly, Shiites will dominate Iraq because they outnumber Sunnis three to one. But the United States would get no credit for helping the Shiites win. In fact, America’s credibility would suffer because it abandoned its mission.

(My emphasis.) So, for Morton Kondracke, it is better to betray one set of principles and get a partially positive result, than betray another set of principles and get a completely negative one.

Personally, I don’t think “Plan B” has a snowball’s chance of getting any support. No one is going to say openly that they support “ethnic” (in this case religious sectarian) “cleansing.” If the media would only point out that abandoning Iraq means just that at least as often as they do the American body count, the Democrat support for withdrawal would vanish overnight.

I don’t think the “surge” is going to solve all of Iraq’s problems, or even “produce dramatic results by September,” so one of two things is going to happen – either our politicians are eventually going to demand withdrawal (and get it), or they’re going to grow spines and accept politically that Iraq is a long-haul project that will take literally decades.

Politicians growing spines? Did I mention a snowball’s chance?

So what next?

Winning our battle against radical Islam requires national unity, which we don’t have. Kondracke concludes his op-ed with this observation:

Civil wars do end. The losers lose and have to knuckle under.

Actually, that’s true for all wars, not just “civil” ones. The difference in this war is how we’re prosecuting it. Traditionally, in war military forces kill people and break things until one side has lost enough. As the saying goes, “Winning a war is expensive. Losing one takes everything you’ve got.” As I detailed in A Terrible Resolve, the concept of “ethnic cleansing” didn’t seem to bother us much in the Pacific Theater. Arthur Koestler once wrote “Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.” But times changed. We’re again approaching one of those critical turning points. Now there’s at least a hint that the idea isn’t as repulsive as it used to be.

George Tenet, whatever you think of him, believes that another major attack against the United States is imminent. If some self-immolating neolithic goatherds are handed a nukular weapon and detonate it in an American city while shouting “Allahu akbar!” it might very well become downright attractive.

Attractive to the point where the American populace unifies and demands that we cry “Havoc!” and let slip our dogs of war. We don’t do rape and pillage, but chaos and slaughter? Oh my yes. Ask the Japanese soldiers of Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Saipan and Okinawa. Ask the citizens of Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Now I ask you: Would you rather see our military stay in Iraq for the next decade or two trying to make that country stable and acting as flypaper for jihadis, or the probable alternative?

[*]Hat tip to master wordsmith Tamara K of View from the Porch for that mental visual.
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“This is very unprofessional…”*

No, Ms. Hess, it’s the kind of professionalism your counterparts in the media are sorely lacking. You should not feel embarrassed for having these emotions, you should be outraged that we’re not seeing it from any other news outlets.

They’re too busy “getting distracted by the shiny political knife-fight.”

Via Pass the Ammo, UPI correspondent Pamela Hess on C-Span. Nine minutes of impassioned, important speech:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4ghwZjyxMI&w=425&h=350]

This, too:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvJSitI598c&w=425&h=350]

*(Alternate title: “This is not about the original case for war.”)

Still Trying to Make Hay.with the “Shipping Fallen Soldiers as Freight” Meme

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Last December I got into a urination contest with Jack Cluth, proprietor of The People’s Republic of Seabrook over his apparent outrage that, well as the original story put it:

Family Upset Over Soldier’s Body Arriving As Freight

Bodies Sent To Families On Commercial Airliners

SAN DIEGO — There’s controversy over how the military is transporting the bodies of service members killed overseas, 10News reported.

A local family said fallen soldiers and Marines deserve better and that one would think our war heroes are being transported with dignity, care and respect. It said one would think upon arrival in their hometowns they are greeted with honor. But unfortunately, the family said that is just not the case.

Dead heroes are supposed to come home with their coffins draped with the American flag — greeted by a color guard.

But in reality, many are arriving as freight on commercial airliners — stuffed in the belly of a plane with suitcases and other cargo.

John Holley and his wife, Stacey, were stunned when they found out the body of their only child, Matthew John Holley, who died in Iraq last month, would be arriving at Lindbergh Field as freight.

You can read the rest of the piece for yourself. There’s even a video link of the story apparently showing a body being unloaded from a commercial aircraft.

Jack was outraged. OUTRAGED!

OK, let’s imagine something for just a second. Let’s say that Bill Clinton was still in office. And let’s say that the bodies of dead American soldiers were being shipped to their families as freight, stuffed in the cargo hold of a plane along with the luggage?

If Republicans were to get wind of this sort of Democratic perfidy, CAN YOU IMAGINE THE WEEPING AND GNASHING OF TEETH, AND THE PEALS OF RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION that would be raining down upon a Democratic Administration? And guess what? They’d have a damn good point. So why then is it acceptable for Our Glorious Leader’s Administration to be shipping the bodies of fallen soldiers as they would Aunt Ethel’s luggage? It’s simple, really; because Democrats simply lack the cojones to to raise Hell and demand that this disrespect stop IMMEDIATELY.

Yes, Jack was outraged that the Democrats hadn’t raised hell over this disrespect, thus getting themselves some much-needed positive press. After all, Clinton (blessed be his name) would NEVER have done anything so disrespectful!

But he did. The government always has. Bodies are shipped as air cargo via commercial carrier – just like they did your great-aunt Melba when it was time to send her body home. Was that disrepectful of her?

John Holley, father of Matthew Holly, protested:

What do you mean civilian aircraft? Why isn’t he flying into Miramar or North Island and having the military handle, you know, the military can handle the military. I mean he’s a war hero for crying out loud. If it was the President or some general or somebody like that, this wouldn’t be occurring.

No, probably not. But your son isn’t a general or the president. He’s a soldier. As I explained in the earlier post, bodies are shipped home via air cargo – with military escort. This is done for several reasons. First, I imagine, is economy. Should the military send all remains to the nearest military air base, as Mr. Holley asked? Should they be on a dedicated cargo aircraft? Wouldn’t it be just as “disrespectful” to ship the body on a military plane otherwise full of spare parts, mail, or other cargo? What if the parents of the fallen soldier don’t live anywhere near a military air base? Or should the military dedicate a C-37 (the military version of the Grumman Gulfstream V) for the deceased and his entourage? Wouldn’t somebody then complain about the astronomical expense?

The fact is, soldiers are shipped home honorably. Your grandmother may go back to old Virginnie as air cargo to be met by the local undertaker, but our honored military dead get an escort to ensure that they are treated properly. Noplace is this better described than by The Rocky Mountain News in their absolutely outstanding and emotional piece “Final Salute,” which I strongly recommend you read if you haven’t already. Be prepared to spend some time, and bring a hanky.

Well, once again, the “disrespectful treatment” meme has raised its ugly head. On Wednesday the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle published a “guest essay” decrying this same practice. Cynthia Hoag penned the essay after reporting that she saw a flag-draped coffin come down the baggage conveyor out of the cargo hold, under the observation of the escorting soldier, and then she watched it

disappear into the cart with the rest of the luggage. The waiting soldier stayed with the casket and rode in the cart as they pulled away.

She was shocked! Shocked, I say!

Well, her essay stirred up some controversy. In today’s edition there was a story saying that the Army was probing the report, but Northwest Airlines was saying they did everything according to procedure. The most interesting thing about the story, though, wasn’t the story. It was the comments. Like this one by “Reader11722”:

This administration doesn’t care how the soldiers are treated when they are alive (i.e., improper vests and inadequate protection on Humvees), why would they care in death? This lady is probably 100% correct and the misdeeds of this administration are about to worsen. However, Iraq is a bloody diversion. As the army attacks Iraq, the US gov’t erodes rights at home by suspending habeas corpus, stealing private lands, banning books like “America Deceived” from Amazon, rigging elections, conducting warrantless wiretaps and starting 2 illegal wars based on lies. Soon, another US false-flag operation will occur (sinking of an Aircraft Carrier by Mossad) and the US will invade Iran (on behalf of Israel) costing more American lives.

Yes, the moonbats were attracted to the light! (And make sure you take a gander at the book he’s hawking.) Another, “rwb100”:

Boy. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill!! The lady was appalled at seeing a flag draped coffin on a baggage cart? What I want to know is why she wasn’t appalled at the fact that the soldier was even in the coffin in the first place. If you want to be appalled at something, be appalled at that!! Be appalled that our fearless leader, King George The Pea Brained, had the audacity, tumerity, and unmitigated gall to get us into this senseless war in the first place. And as for one comment I read about treating our “fallen military heroes” this way, well, as far as I am concerned, anyone who voluntarily signs up for the military, knowing full well that it just might mean having to go to war, is an idiot, not a hero. Especially those who volunteered after this war was started, with the express intent of going to Iraq. War is never the right answer to any problem, anywhere, anytime. Never!!! Now I know all of you red state republican flag waving lemmings out there probably have steam spewing out of your ears right about now, but if you would all just pull your heads out of your collective anal orifices and take a good look around, you will no doubt see as clearly as I do that you have all been sold a bill of goods by the current administration. George Bush is by far the stupidest president that this country has ever had, not to mention the most dangerous. By comparison, he makes Nixon look great! Maybe you remember immediately after 9/11 how America had the sympathies of pretty much the entire world. Everyone was in our corner then, but Bush has, in just a few short years, completely reversed world opinion about us. We are hated and reviled the world over, thanks to the backwards, mean-spirited, and paranoid policies of the Bush administration, and the sooner we all wake up and tell them NO MORE!!!!! , the better off we all will be. So again , I say WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!! End this bloody war now, and then we won’t have to see any more flag draped coffins on conveyor belts, baggage carts, or anywhere else for that matter. Now, what a wonderful world that would be!

Had to archive that one for posterity.

On a more sober note, MJL posted:

Last December I was waiting to board a flight from Atlanta to San Antonio. I looked out the window at my plane and noticed a large box being loaded into the cargo hold. I wondered what it was and then noticed a soldier standing at attention, watching the box move up the conveyor. I looked around…it was cold, freezing rain outside, and typically hectic inside the airport terminal. I couldn’t see anyone who had noticed or was watching besides the soldier, the baggage handlers, and myself. After we were in the air the first announcement the pilot made was regarding the fallen soldier’s remains and the accompanying soldier. In this case I saw nothing but quiet, subdued respect.

“Mudflap” posted:

I worked for 20 years as a customer service agent. I have worked on the ramp, inside, the warehouse and baggage service. The coffin is too big to put in a regular baggage cart. It is brought to the warehouse where freight is prepared for shipping. It is put on a open cart and does not carry extra baggage, unless it was the military’s member luggage that was accompanying the coffin. It is taken over to the freight house where the vehicle can pick it up. It has to come off the plane on the conveyor belt. It is heavy and long, and the plane sits off the ground quite a bit. There also has to be enough people to be able to lift it on and off the cart. I find the story hard to believe. In all my years at the airport, nothing but respect is paid to a coffin weather it be civilian or military.

“USAF2T2” chimed in:

As an Air Force Transportation Specialist, we handle the human remains of fallen soldiers within specific guidelines ordered by Air Force Regulations. They do return in “transfer cases” but are carefully placed level, with the heads stowed towards the nose of the aircraft – the head ALWAYS higher than the feet. NO OTHER CARGO is loaded on top of remains’ transfer cases. When they arrive at a terminal such as Dover AFB, human remains are stored in a secure area and separated from other cargo. At that point the shipment is made available to the receiving individual or agency.

So from the military’s point of view, as a RULE, we handle all with care and respect.
Do they also travel in commercial baggage area? Of course they would with they(sic) same rules applied. BTW, the baggage area is not a bad place to travel in (many pets travel that way) and when you consider how annoying some passengers are, it’s probably more preferable.

At any rate, the receiving agency is responsible for the remains once released. Since the reporter of this “story” did a poor job of doing his journalistic duty of investigating and getting the facts, all we have is a “story” which, as we know, can be as fictional as “The 3 Little Pigs”. But then had he dug into the story and found the truth, we wouldn’t be here on this site reading about it. Such is modern news, entertainment (to sell more papers/ad space) at the expense of a few.

May God Bless the family of Army Sgt. 1st Class Tony Knier especially at this time of the year when the rest of us sit around the tree and enjoy our families. Sgt. Knier truly sacrificed his life (as others) so that our children and we can continue OUR traditions and way of life; not one forced upon us by radical Islamics.

Now there’s a voice of reason. Finally, I’ll select the post by “gvenema” though there are pages more:

I don’t understand the outrage, Beenthere is correct.

I worked the Ramp 10 years ago in Minneapolis. There are no special carts for Human Remains. There is no special unloading crane painted red white and blue just for military personnel. The ramp agents have to use the equipment they have. How else are the remains supposed to be removed from the aircraft?

The outrage is over the remains being unloaded and placed into a cart.

From the article:
Northwest Airlines, on which the casket was flown, said in a statement tonight that a military escort stood at attention as three airline agents transferred the casket from the aircraft to an empty cart, then closed the privacy curtains. Northwest said it complied with all military and airline procedures.

There isn’t even a real disagreement on what happened. I guess people expect a band playing stars and stripes to follow around every casket until the funeral.

That’s how it appears to me.

It also appears that this is just another opportunity for the Left and Right to scream at each other. Reading the six pages of commentary, that’s much the impression I got. This comment by “aki009” said it well:

I have to say that we live in a day and age where I find myself having to question all the data that is being presented to me from essentially any source. I had to add photography to the list of things to question thanks to Reuters, UPI and others with their contributors who took a free hand to “enhance” images. Unfortunately such doubt can cause something genuine to fall into the questionable category.

Perhaps some day various forms of media will regain my trust.

In the meantime, ill-educated swipes from the left _and_ the right simply undermine any remaining trust I have in any form of communication from either side. Though from my perspective it seems that the left fabricates a significantly larger volume of “information” than the right.

Doesn’t it, though?

9/11

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And then there was Spain:


Then London:

But in between those came Beslan:


Does anyone doubt that the enemy wants to do that here? I recommend that you read Steven Den Beste’s latest peice, The Disunited States of America, but remember this: Disagree all you want, but when you start working for their side, don’t be surprised when the rest of us roll right over the top of you, leaving nothing but a smear.

A Terrible Resolve

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A brief (and incomplete) overview of America’s involvement in WWIV (WWIII was the Cold War. We won that one, too.)

Nov. 4, 1979: The U.S. embassy in Tehran is taken over by Iranian “students.” The hostage situation goes on for 444 days.

April 18, 1983: A suicide truck bomb destroys the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, killing 17 Americans and 46 others.

Oct. 23, 1983: A suicide truck bomb destroys the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241. A few minutes later, another explodes near the French barracks in West Beirut, killing 58 French paratroops.

Dec. 12, 1983: Multiple suicide vehicle-born bombs target multiple locations in Kuwait City, Kuwait, including the U.S. Embassy. Five die.

Sept. 20, 1984: Beruit again. A truck bomb is detonated outside the U.S. embassy annex. The death toll is 24.

Dec. 3, 1984: Beirut one more time. A Kuwait Airways flight is hijacked to Pakistan. Two Americans working for USAID are killed.

June 14, 1985: A TWA flight en route from Athens to Rome is hijacked. Navy Seabee diver Robert Dean Stethem was extensively tortured and then shot to death.

April 5, 1986: A Berlin disco popular with off-duty American service members was bombed by Libyan-backed terrorists. One Turkish woman died, about 200 people were wounded.

Dec. 21, 1988: Islamist terrorists with Libyan backing put a bomb on board a Pan Am flight. It detonated over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 on board, and 11 on the ground.

Aug. 2, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait. January 17, 1991 the Coalition air campaign against Iraq begins. The ground campaign commenced on Feb. 24, and was over in 100 hours. U.S. losses are reported 147 combat and 325 non-combat deaths, the non-combat deaths mostly traffic and aircraft accidents. Iraqi military casualties are estimated at 20-22,000 dead.

Feb. 26, 1993: The first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center towers with a truck bomb, killing 6 and injuring over 1,000.

Oct. 3 & 4, 1993: Task Force Ranger attempts to capture Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid and get caught up in a running firefight that lasts two days. One hundred and sixty U.S. combatants are involved in the initial assault. A joint task force enters the city on the following day to rescue the trapped members of the assault force. The U.S. forces suffer 18 dead, 73 wounded. Somali losses are estimated at as much as 1,500 dead, 4,000 wounded.

June 25, 1996: A massive truck bomb explodes outside the Khobar Tower apartments in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia where U.S. military personnel are billeted. Nineteen service members die, hundreds are wounded. Osama Bin Laden is suspected as one of the planners of this attack.

Aug. 7, 1998: Simultaneous truck-bombings at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania kill 224 and injure about 4,500.

Oct. 12, 2000: A suicide boat-bomb explodes next to the U.S.S. Cole in port in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors and heavily damaging the ship.

Sept. 11, 2001: Everybody knows about that.

Oct. 7, 2001: Air strikes against Afghanistan begin. Small Special Forces groups are already on the ground in Northern Afghanistan. By Dec. 6 the Taliban was no longer in control of any major area. As of June 22, 2006 there have been 306 American fatalities and 84 other Coalition dead in Operation Enduring Freedom. About 775 American service members have been wounded. I can’t find reliable stats on Taliban casualties. They’re in the thousands.

March 20, 2003: The U.S. begins its assault on Iraq. So far, 2500 or so American service members are dead, tens of thousands of Iraqi and foreign jihadists.

What’s stands out in this?

That we didn’t get serious until a lot of American civilians got killed, and got killed here on our own soil. We seem to expect that our service members and government employees face violent death on a regular basis, but not our civilians. We seem to accept that being in a foreign land is risky, but we’re supposed to be safe here. Nick Berg was kidnapped in Iraq and beheaded. We were outraged, but restrained. Four Blackwater contractors were murdered and mutilated – again, we were outraged, but restrained. Just this week two soldiers were kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and mutilated, and still we are restrained.

Restrained? Hell, the Senate is discussing surrender.

But restrained or not, when our military kicks ass it does it far out of proportion to its size.

A while back I found a tremendously thought-provoking essay, The Jacksonian Tradition by Walter Russell Mead, which discusses the primary philosophies extant in the American polity; Jacksonian, Jeffersonian, Hamiltonian and Wilsonian – named, of course for their respective politicians. The Wilsonians are described by Mead as crusading moralist transcendentalists, Hamiltonians as commercial realists, Jeffersonians as supple but principled pacifists. Jacksonians, however, are described as follows:

Suspicious of untrammeled federal power (Waco), skeptical about the prospects for domestic and foreign do-gooding (welfare at home, foreign aid abroad), opposed to federal taxes but obstinately fond of federal programs seen as primarily helping the middle class (Social Security and Medicare, mortgage interest subsidies), Jacksonians constitute a large political interest.

In some ways Jacksonians resemble the Jeffersonians, with whom their political fortunes were linked for so many decades. Like Jeffersonians, Jacksonians are profoundly suspicious of elites. They generally prefer a loose federal structure with as much power as possible retained by states and local governments. But the differences between the two movements run very deep — so deep that during the Cold War they were on dead opposite sides of most important foreign policy questions. To use the language of the Vietnam era, a time when Jeffersonians and Jacksonians were fighting in the streets over foreign policy, the former were the most dovish current in mainstream political thought during the Cold War, while the latter were the most consistently hawkish.

One way to grasp the difference between the two schools is to see that both Jeffersonians and Jacksonians are civil libertarians, passionately attached to the Constitution and especially to the Bill of Rights, and deeply concerned to preserve the liberties of ordinary Americans. But while the Jeffersonians are most profoundly devoted to the First Amendment, protecting the freedom of speech and prohibiting a federal establishment of religion, Jacksonians see the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, as the citadel of liberty. Jeffersonians join the American Civil Liberties Union; Jacksonians join the National Rifle Association. In so doing, both are convinced that they are standing at the barricades of freedom.

I’ve recently read James Webb’s Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, and I’m nearly finished reading David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, which does a deft job of detailing the cultures that spawned these four very different men and their philosophies. I’m also reading Victor Davis Hanson’s Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the past Still Determine how We Fight, how We Live, and how We Think (I tend to read more than one book at a time, especially when I’m reading non-fiction.)

One interesting common thread throughout all four of these works is America’s military, and its unique combination of lethality and compassion, of general decency in action, but ruthlessness when unrestrained. The first chapter in Ripples of Battle is concerned with the battle for Okinawa in WWII. Hanson points out the absolutely horrendous casualties suffered by both sides, and the military tactics employed to produce them, such as Japan’s massive kamikaze attacks and the U.S. tactic of firing flamethrowers into enemy-occupied caves before sealing them up with satchel charges.

…American ground and naval forces suffered 12,520 killed and another 33,631 wounded or missing in the three months between the invasion on April 1 and the official end of the Okinawan campaign on July 2.

—

The defenders… suffered far worse — at least 110,000 killed or nearly ten soldiers lost for every American slain, at a sickening clip of fifty men dead every hour of the battle, nearly one per minute, nonstop for three months on end. Perhaps 100,000 civilians may have been killed — how many of them were active combatants is not known. Nor do we have any accurate idea of the number of wounded and missing Okinawans; some estimates put the number of soldiers and civilians who were sealed in caves at over 20,000. Fewer than 7,500 Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner. All in all, nearly a quarter of a million people were killed or wounded in the fighting on Okinawa…

Mead notes in the opening of his essay:

In the last five months of World War II, American bombing raids claimed the lives of more than 900,000 Japanese civilians — not counting the casualties from the atomic strikes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is more than twice the total number of combat deaths that the United States has suffered in all its foreign wars combined.

On one night, that of March 9-10, 1945, 234 Superfortresses dropped 1,167 tons of incendiary bombs over downtown Tokyo; 83,793 Japanese bodies were found in the charred remains–a number greater than the 80,942 combat fatalities that the United States sustained in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined.

Both James Webb and David Hackett Fischer note that America’s military muscle is made up mostly of the descendants of Scots-Irish immigrants – a people with a long history of military service and martial pride, and no politician better exemplifies the Scots-Irish temperament better than Andrew Jackson. Mead explains:

Many students of American foreign policy, both here and abroad, dismiss Jacksonians as ignorant isolationists and vulgar patriots, but, again, the reality is more complex, and their approach to the world and to war is more closely grounded in classical realism than many recognize. Jacksonians do not believe that the United States must have an unambiguously moral reason for fighting. In fact, they tend to separate the issues of morality and war more clearly than many members of the foreign policy establishment.

The Gulf War was a popular war in Jacksonian circles because the defense of the nation’s oil supply struck a chord with Jacksonian opinion. That opinion — which has not forgotten the oil shortages and price hikes of the 1970s — clearly considers stability of the oil supply a vital national interest and is prepared to fight to defend it. The atrocity propaganda about alleged Iraqi barbarisms in Kuwait did not inspire Jacksonians to war, and neither did legalistic arguments about U.S. obligations under the UN Charter to defend a member state from aggression. Those are useful arguments to screw Wilsonian courage to the sticking place, but they mean little for Jacksonians. Had there been no UN Charter and had Kuwait been even more corrupt and repressive that it is, Jacksonian opinion would still have supported the Gulf War. It would have supported a full-scale war with Iran over the 1980 hostage crisis, and it will take an equally hawkish stance toward any future threat to perceived U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf region.

In the absence of a clearly defined threat to the national interest, Jacksonian opinion is much less aggressive. It has not, for example, been enthusiastic about the U.S. intervention in the case of Bosnia. There the evidence of unspeakable atrocities was much greater than in Kuwait, and the legal case for intervention was as strong. Yet Jacksonian opinion saw no threat to the interests, as it understood them, of the United States, and Wilsonians were the only segment of the population that was actively eager for war.

In World War I it took the Zimmermann Telegram and the repeated sinking of American ships to convince Jacksonian opinion that war was necessary. In World War II, neither the Rape of Nanking nor the atrocities of Nazi rule in Europe drew the United States into the war. The attack on Pearl Harbor did.

To engage Jacksonians in support of the Cold War it was necessary to convince them that Moscow was engaged in a far-reaching and systematic campaign for world domination, and that this campaign would succeed unless the United States engaged in a long-term defensive effort with the help of allies around the world. That involved a certain overstatement of both Soviet intentions and capabilities, but that is beside the present point. Once Jacksonian opinion was convinced that the Soviet threat was real and that the Cold War was necessary, it stayed convinced. Populist American opinion accepted the burdens it imposed and worried only that the government would fail to prosecute the Cold War with the necessary vigor. No one should mistake the importance of this strong and constant support. Despite the frequent complaints by commentators and policymakers that the American people are “isolationist” and “uninterested in foreign affairs”, they have made and will make enormous financial and personal sacrifices if convinced that these are in the nation’s vital interests.

This mass popular patriotism, and the martial spirit behind it, gives the United States immense advantages in international affairs. After two world wars, no European nation has shown the same willingness to pay the price in blood and treasure for a global presence. Most of the “developed” nations find it difficult to maintain large, high-quality fighting forces. Not all of the martial patriotism in the United States comes out of the world of Jacksonian populism, but without that tradition, the United States would be hard pressed to maintain the kind of international military presence it now has.

It is the Jacksonians who fight our wars, and the Jacksonians who are willing to pay for them, and – to date – it has been the Jacksonians who make up a majority of the public, or at least the part that votes.

But there is one other important component of the Jacksonian philosophy. Mead again:

Jacksonian America has clear ideas about how wars should be fought, how enemies should be treated, and what should happen when the wars are over. It recognizes two kinds of enemies and two kinds of fighting: honorable enemies fight a clean fight and are entitled to be opposed in the same way; dishonorable enemies fight dirty wars and in that case all rules are off.

An honorable enemy is one who declares war before beginning combat; fights according to recognized rules of war, honoring such traditions as the flag of truce; treats civilians in occupied territory with due consideration; and — a crucial point– refrains from the mistreatment of prisoners of war. Those who surrender should be treated with generosity. Adversaries who honor the code will benefit from its protections, while those who want a dirty fight will get one.

—

Although American Indians often won respect for their extraordinary personal courage, Jacksonian opinion generally considered Indians to be dishonorable opponents. American-Indian warrior codes (also honor based) permitted surprise attacks on civilians and the torture of prisoners of war. This was all part of a complex system of limited warfare among the tribal nations, but Jacksonian frontier dwellers were not students of multicultural diversity. In their view, Indian war tactics were the sign of a dishonorable, unscrupulous and cowardly form of war. Anger at such tactics led Jacksonians to abandon the restraints imposed by their own war codes, and the ugly skirmishes along the frontier spiraled into a series of genocidal conflicts in which each side felt the other was violating every standard of humane conduct.

The Japanese, another people with a highly developed war code based on personal honor, had the misfortune to create the same kind of impression on American Jacksonians. The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the gross mistreatment of American POWs (the Bataan Death March), and Japanese fighting tactics all served to enrage American Jacksonians and led them to see the Pacific enemy as ruthless, dishonorable and inhuman. All contributed to the vitriolic intensity of combat in the Pacific theater. By the summer of 1945, American popular opinion was fully prepared to countenance invasion of the Japanese home islands, even if they were defended with the tenacity (and indifference to civilian lives) that marked the fighting on Okinawa.

Given this background, the Americans who decided to use the atomic bomb may have been correct that the use of the weapon saved lives, and not only of American soldiers. In any case, Jacksonians had no compunction about using the bomb. General Curtis LeMay (subsequently the 1968 running mate of Jacksonian populist third-party candidate George Wallace) succinctly summed up this attitude toward fighting a dishonorable opponent: “I’ll tell you what war is about”, said Lemay in an interview, “You’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting.”

Hanson makes a similar point:

The American military and public also came away from Okinawa with a number of perceptions about land warfare in Asia, some of them accurate, some racist, a few entirely erroneous — but all fundamental in forming the American way of war in Korea and Vietnam in the next thirty years. After the startling array of suicides on Okinawa, Americans were convinced that Asians in general did not value life — theirs or anyone else’s — in the same manner as Westerners, and when faced with overwhelming military power and sure defeat would nevertheless continue to fight hard in their efforts to kill Americans. Because territory was not really as important on Okinawa as body counts — the fight would end not with the capture per se of strategic ground but rather only with the complete annihilation of the enemy who was trapped on the island — Americans developed a particular mentality that would come to haunt them in both the Korean peninsula and Southeast Asia.

—

Because Okinawa was the major engagement in the Pacific where civilians sometimes fought on the side of the enemy, Americans experienced the dilemma of determining which woman, child, or old man was harmless, friendly, or a killer. And because Okinawa was out of view, little reported on, and fought against a supposedly repugnant and fascist enemy, Americans left the island with the assurance that when stranded in such a hell, they should blast indiscriminantly any civilian in their proximity on suspicion of aiding the enemy — also with disastrous consequences to come in the suddenly televised fighting of the 1960s and 1970s when victory hinged not on enemy body counts alone, but also in winning the hearts and minds of supposedly noncombatant civilian populations in an arena broadcast live around the world. Japanese veterans of the rape of Nanking might murder thousands of Okinawan civilians — 40,000 adult males alone were shanghaied into the imperial army. But in such a messy battle, jaded American GIs — as purportedly more liberal Westerners — who either mistakenly or by intent shot a few hundred would incur far greater moral condemnation both at home and far abroad.

And here we are again. This time we’re engaged in combat with enemies that wear no uniform, that blend with the civilian population, that use that population as a shield as well as a target, and who embrace their own deaths. Our soldiers, once again, are in the unenviable position of having to determine which woman, child, or old man is harmless, friendly, or a killer. Sometimes we make mistakes. And, as before, sometimes they might not be mistakes.

But still, we’re restrained. No carpet-bombing. No nukes. In fact, we’ve gone so far as to drop precision-guided bombs filled with concrete in order to minimize the risk of killing innocents or destroying important infrastructure. However, we’re willing to unapologetically kill women and children when the target requires it.

The question is, “How much longer will this restraint last?”

The Wilsonians want us out for diplomatic reasons. The Hamiltonians don’t want to keep paying the financial bill. The Jeffersonians don’t want to keep paying the bill in blood.

The Jacksonians want us to take the gloves off.

I noted a while back that Eric S. Raymond made this comment:

One of the reasons I support the present war is that killing 50K of the jihadis now may keep them from mounting the city-killing attack that will really enrage the U.S.. Because if that happens, millions on millions of Arabs will die and my country will be transformed by its rage into something I won’t like.

In that same comment, he also said:

These are not civilized people…. They’re barbarians — howling fanatics with a world view so close to psychopathology that I still find it difficult to comprehend even after having studied Islamic history for 31 years. Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, OBL’s mentor, once wrote of infidels: “There can no dialogue with them, save by the sword and the rifle.” Mainstream Salafists and Wahhabis and Deobandis really believe this! It’s not just posturing.

Being “reasonable” with barbarians like these doesn’t work; you have to make them fear you, and if you can’t make them fear enough you have to kill them as you would put down a rabid animal. I wish it wasn’t that way, but it is.

Sounds remarkably close to Hanson’s “Americans were convinced that Asians in general did not value life — theirs or anyone else’s — in the same manner as Westerners, and when faced with overwhelming military power and sure defeat would nevertheless continue to fight hard in their efforts to kill Americans”, doesn’t it? Just yesterday Ace at Ace of Spades HQ posted this:

If the majority of Muslims do in fact believe that an apocalyptic conflict with the west is inevitable, then 1, it is indeed inevitable, and 2, let the apocalypse begin.

If genocide is unavoidable, I choose genocide against my enemies rather than myself.

There will be one more massive outrage from the Religion of Peace, and then things are going to go rather badly for them.

Okay, let me not be so coy and cute. I am just about ready to give my blessing to a genocidal nuclear strike on the majority of the Muslim world, and I suspect many of my countrymen are similarly itchy-fingered.

One more. One more fucking mass-murder. Go for it, boys. Give us the excuse. Some of us suspect it’s inevitable and the only way to finally get it through your primative heads that we will no longer put up with being murdered by savage animals, but we need the moral pretext. We need the hot anger of fresh provocation.

So do it. If you are incapable of sharing the earth peacefully, then we will have to absent you from it. And when the nuclear fire rains down on you, you can cry out to your God and ask him “What have we possibly done to deserve this?”

In 50 years Americans will look back in horror at what we’ve done, just as they did 50 years after Hiroshima; but then, we’ll have peace for 50 years. I’ll exchange some guilt for safety.

Ace is obviously Jacksonian in philosophical outlook – and he’s quite right, many of his countrymen are similarly itchy-fingered. Francis Porretto offers a slightly less dark analysis:

Another strike with a hijacked aircraft would be terrible, but it would be a scale of destruction with which we’re already tragically familiar. It would probably precipitate a new expedition by our conventional military forces. But a terrorist act involving a biological agent, poison gas, or a nuclear weapon would reap many more lives, perhaps in the hundreds of thousands. It would evoke demands that the Islamic world be punished with supreme brutality — demands that could not be denied.

—

Americans aren’t enthusiasts for the shedding of innocent blood, and either of the above scenarios would guarantee the destruction of an unthinkable number of lives, among which some innocents would surely be numbered. Yet one or the other would be unavoidable should Islamic lunatics perpetrate an atrocity with WMD. Were Washington to balk at such a response, the American people would scrape Washington hollow — and we wouldn’t wait for the next election to do it.

No, indeed. And the Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians will join us. The Wilsonians never do.

All it will take is a little bit more convincing. September 11, 2001 was enough to get the Jacksonians on board to fight the war against our attackers – correctly identified as Islamic extremists, not just Al-Qaeda, and not just Osama Bin Laden. It was, to us, another Pearl Harbor. As usual, the Jacksonians are worried only that the government is failing to prosecute the war with the necessary vigor.

As Admiral Yamamoto is credited to have said after the Japanese naval air strikes on Pearl Harbor, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Okinawa, if nothing else, fulfilled that fear. If the Islamists manage to pull off a truly major strike involving thousands or even tens of thousands of American civilian casualties, the world will once again see what we moral, liberal, civilized Americans are willing to do when the gloves finally come off.

The difference between us and them is, once we’re finished we’ll pick up the pieces and wearily go home to our lives again, because we’re really not interested in running the world. As Eric Raymond so eloquently stated in American Empire Redux:

I was traveling in Europe a few years back, and some Euroleftie began blathering in my presence about America’s desire to rule the world. “Nonsense,” I told him. “You’ve misunderstood the American character. We’re instinctive isolationists at bottom. We don’t want to rule the world — we want to be able to ignore it.”

That, too, is a Jacksonian characteristic.

It Takes a Lot to Piss Me Off.

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Getting blatantly lied to generally does it. People displaying ignorance, on the other hand, just piques me a bit. But when someone takes ignorance, ingests just enough fact, and then regurgitates – let’s not pussyfoot – vomits their asshole opinion, sometimes that’s enough.

Today, I had just such an experience.

The lefty blog The People’s Republic of Seabrook, run by one Jack Cluth, has as its address “intellectualize.org” – just so we know that Jack’s an intellectual, I suppose. Jack is an unabashed Leftist, victim of Bush Derangement Syndrome, and all-around opponent of the war in Iraq, given the postings I’ve reviewed there. But one really took the cake. Not the post, so much. That’s just a combination of his personal political bias combined with his ignorance of matters military and his knee-jerk reaction to a three-hundred word “news” story.

No, what pissed me off was the picture he chose to illustrate his post. I don’t know if he created it, or if he plucked it off the web somewhere because it appealed to him – and in either case I don’t really give a damn – because it illustrates his derangement perfectly.

Let’s discuss the story – hell, let’s reproduce it in its entirety:

Family Upset Over Soldier’s Body Arriving As Freight

Bodies Sent To Families On Commercial Airliners

There’s controversy over how the military is transporting the bodies of service members killed overseas, 10News reported.

A local family said fallen soldiers and Marines deserve better and that one would think our war heroes are being transported with dignity, care and respect. It said one would think upon arrival in their hometowns they are greeted with honor. But unfortunately, the family said that is just not the case.

Dead heroes are supposed to come home with their coffins draped with the American flag — greeted by a color guard.

But in reality, many are arriving as freight on commercial airliners — stuffed in the belly of a plane with suitcases and other cargo.

John Holley and his wife, Stacey, were stunned when they found out the body of their only child, Matthew John Holley, who died in Iraq last month, would be arriving at Lindbergh Field as freight.

Matthew was a medic with the 101st Airborne unit and died on Nov. 15.

“When someone dies in combat, they need to give them due respect they deserve for (the) sacrifice they made,” said John Holley.

John and Stacey Holley, who were both in the Army, made some calls, and with the help of U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, Matthew was greeted with honor and respect.

“Our familiarity with military protocol and things of that sort allowed us to kind of put our foot down — we’re not sure other parents have that same knowledge,” said Stacey Holley.

The Holleys now want to make sure every fallen hero gets the proper welcome.

The bodies of dead service members arrive at Dover Air Force Base.

From that point, they are sent to their families on commercial airliners.

Reporters from 10News called the Defense Department for an explanation. A representative said she did not know why this is happening.

Now, I’d like some follow-up on this piece. “With the help of Sen. Barbara Boxer” Matthew Holley was “greeted with honor and respect.” Even though, I suppose, he was shipped as (gasp!) AIR CARGO!

This isn’t, however, what pissed Jack Cluth off. Let me quote from his post:

OK, let’s imagine something for just a second. Let’s say that Bill Clinton was still in office. And let’s say that the bodies of dead American soldiers were being shipped to their families as freight, stuffed in the cargo hold of a plane along with the luggage?

If Republicans were to get wind of this sort of Democratic perfidy, CAN YOU IMAGINE THE WEEPING AND GNASHING OF TEETH, AND THE PEALS OF RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION that would be raining down upon a Democratic Administration? And guess what? They’d have a damn good point. So why then is it acceptable for Our Glorious Leader’s Administration to be shipping the bodies of fallen soldiers as they would Aunt Ethel’s luggage? It’s simple, really; because Democrats simply lack the cojones to to raise Hell and demand that this disrespect stop IMMEDIATELY.

Old Jack is angry because the Democrats haven’t made a talking point out of it.

Here’s a clue, Jack: The military has always shipped deceased service members home by air cargo – with escort. Why the Defense Department representative didn’t know that is beyond me. Perhaps the reporter didn’t call the right department? Regardless, what would you prefer – private jet? Wouldn’t you then complain about the expense? Ship them in a first-class seat with a martini to hand? Detail an Air Force cargo jet for each individual soldier?

If you knew anything about the military, you would know that usually – not always, but usually – they treat their dead with the utmost honor. And if you read any of the right-wing or milblogs, you would have read this Rocky Mountain News in-depth report on just how the Marines honor their fallen, Final Salute. However, it runs a wee bit longer than 305 words and it requires an attention span. And some shred of honor.

Let me quote some of it:

The American Airlines 757 couldn’t have landed much farther from the war.

The plane arrived in Reno on a Friday evening, the beginning of the 2005 “Hot August Nights” festival – one of the city’s biggest – filled with flashing lights, fireworks, carefree music and plenty of gambling.

When a young Marine in dress uniform had boarded the plane to Reno, the passengers smiled and nodded politely. None knew he had just come from the plane’s cargo hold, after watching his best friend’s casket loaded onboard.

At 24 years old, Sgt. Gavin Conley was only seven days younger than the man in the coffin. The two had met as 17-year-olds on another plane – the one to boot camp in California. They had slept in adjoining top bunks, the two youngest recruits in the barracks.

All Marines call each other brother. Conley and Jim Cathey could have been. They finished each other’s sentences, had matching infantry tattoos etched on their shoulders, and cracked on each other as if they had grown up together – which, in some ways, they had.

When the airline crew found out about Conley’s mission, they bumped him to first-class. He had never flown there before. Neither had Jim Cathey.

On the flight, the woman sitting next to him nodded toward his uniform and asked if he was coming or going. To the war, she meant.

He fell back on the words the military had told him to say: “I’m escorting a fallen Marine home to his family from the situation in Iraq.”

The woman quietly said she was sorry, Conley said.

Then she began to cry.

When the plane landed in Nevada, the pilot asked the passengers to remain seated while Conley disembarked alone. Then the pilot told them why.

The passengers pressed their faces against the windows. Outside, a procession walked toward the plane. Passengers in window seats leaned back to give others a better view. One held a child up to watch.

From their seats in the plane, they saw a hearse and a Marine extending a white-gloved hand into a limousine, helping a pregnant woman out of the car.

The piece runs twelve pages. I guarantee you that if you have a soul, you’ll be in tears by the end of it. Barbara Boxer need not apply.

Now I ask you: Which party do you think would be more willing to ship our honored dead home like this:

That’s the picture Mr. Cluth used to illustrate his outrage. Which party is shouting “We can’t win! Cut and run! Cut and run!”

Marines not honoring their dead? Not on this planet. But I’ve about concluded that the Democrats in power and their vocal supporters have lost any hint of that virtue.

UPDATE: In true compassionate, inclusive, diversity-embracing Leftist style, Jack’s most recent post suggests that he’s in favor of the homosexual rape of prisoners by prison guards. So long as the rape victim is a Republican.

But his side deserves to be in charge.

Update II: Jack’s discovered this post, and has a reply up. Read the comments.

Update III: Jack seems to think that posting a Ted “I’m a piece of human excrement” Rall “cartoon” is a rebuttal. Or he never bothered to read the Rocky Mountain News piece. Wouldn’t want to confuse himself with anything like facts.