perfidy

The record setting rapid progress of American forces in Iraq is disconcerting to two groups of people. One, those who feel that they might be next on the list; and two, the American and European left. The fear of the first group is natural, their regimes are on our list. But the supporters of the oppressed and downtrodden workers of the world have no excuse to attack the United States for acting to liberate the oppressed of a fascist regime like Saddam's. All of the Left's favorite victims are especial targets of Saddam's dictatorship. Yet America is attacked as an imperialist. Is it worse that America should exercise her might, or that Iraqis continue to die, be tortured, raped, and brutalized?

One thing is obvious about the anti-war protestors, aside from lack of a keen fashion sense. It is that they are far more anti-American than they are anti-war (let alone pro-peace.) Many freely admit that Saddam is a butchering fascist - but that doesn't stop them from opposing our own Hitler, George W. Bush. This is a complete divorce from any kind of moral reasoning. No sane person can claim that Bush is worse than Hussein, or that the American government is as repressive as Saddam's. The left in Europe and America petulantly insist that America keep jumping through an infinite series of hoops, in the vain hope that this policy will prevent the exercise of American military power, than which nothing could be more evil. The exercise of American military force has been so terrible over the years that millions once enslaved by communism are now free. And South Korea is not in (literal) darkness like North Korea. And Germany isn't killing Jews by the millions. And Japan isn't enslaving all of East Asia. So terrible, in fact, that the one time in the last century that we failed to exercise our military power in full, a million South Vietnamese civilians were slaughtered by our opponents, the peaceful agrarian reformers of the north.

It seems that the only nation that isn't allowed to deal with the problem of Iraq is the one nation that can deal with the problem. The one nation that has proved that it uses force on the whole wisely - to oppose, for lack of a better word, evil. We should be proud that our nation is a natural wrecking ball for totalitarian regimes.

The tragic part of this is that innocents die in the process. Hundreds of thousands of innocent German civilians died in our bombing campaigns over Germany, and likewise in Japan. Very few people argue that this price was not worth paying. When we analyse the moral pros and cons, civilian deaths are most certainly a factor. Miraculously, our technology has advanced to the point where we can utterly destroy a building and leave its neighbors unharmed. This precision allows us to greatly limit the harm to innocents. Our military has, for the last couple weeks been operating under the most extreme rules of engagement ever conceived for an army at war. We may not fire at the enemy if he is behind civilians. We may not destroy buildings if we are not sure that civilians have been evacuated. And so on. Nevertheless, we have conducted a war of unparalleled lethality. My back of the envelope calculations (and supported by the wink and nod from my Marine Major next door neighbor, who works for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) indicate that we are incurring kill ratios against the Iraqi army of 1000:1. (It seems that the Special Republican Guard is "special" in the short bus sense.)

This amazing care that the military shows for the people of Iraq is absolutely not mirrored by the left. The callous disregard for the fates of the people of a nation with an honest to god fascist dictatorship is remarkable - or rather not remarkable, as the press never reports on this. The United States must be the evil party, because, well, the United States is evil. Therefore, we will gloss over any minor shortcomings of people like Saddam, Castro, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, etc. (The Baathist party grew from the influence of the Nazi party, from when Germany ruled Syria and Iraq during the Second World War, after the fall of France.) The ability of the left to fawn over any murderous (socialist) thug simply blows my mind.

As America works to liberate Iraq, a very small number of Iraqi citizens will die. That the war might make us safer is worth that cost. But the benefit to the Iraqis is far greater - they will be free.