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Bring 'em on!
Kenneth
Lamb
11/03/2003
I knew George W.'s "Bring 'em on!" taunt would be inspiring as soon as I heard it. Inspiring that is, to the people who want to kill us.
Saddam and bin Laden are acting just like football players who post their rival's smart remarks on the locker room door. The remarks fire them up. It makes them want to show the world who's talking smack.
In the present stage of the conflict, officially labeled as "Iraq War III" by William Safire in this morning's edition of the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/03/opinion/03SAFI.html), Saddam and bin Laden are going to see who is talking smack. "W." wants to bring 'em on; OK, they will.
It began with a missile assault directed at the symbol of American power in Baghdad, the al-Rashid Hotel. While a US general in charge of security derided the Katyusha-like rocket battery as a "garage science project," it succeeded in killing an American colonel just as effectively as a million-dollar Tomahawk. And it did a good job of starting Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's day off wrong, hitting just one floor beneath his own room.
The next morning, they brought on the destruction of three police headquarters buildings and the headquarters building of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Just for good measure, they assassinated the city's deputy mayor too.
The week ended with the destruction of a Chinook helicopter ferrying G.I.s off for a little R & R. A shoulder-fired SA-7 missile brought on the deaths of 16 brave Americans, the biggest loss of life in one day since the war began.
"Bring 'em on!" he said. What kind of foolishness is that smack talk anyway? Did he think our mortal enemies are playing games?
The mood in the Sunni Triangle is giddy, and that's probably an understatement.
According to the Associated Press report on the downing (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20031103/D7UISJ6O1.html), "In the fields south of Fallujah, some villagers proudly showed off blackened pieces of the Chinook's wreckage to arriving reporters.
"Though a few villagers tried to help, many celebrated word of the helicopter downing, as well as a fresh attack on U.S. soldiers in Fallujah itself. Two American civilians working under contract for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were killed and one was injured in the explosion of a roadside bomb, the military said."
What we face in Iraq is The Alliance from Hell: Saddam's Baathists and Fedayeen, bin Laden's nihilist al-Qaeda, and Sunni-Shiite wacko religionists. Ruthless killers all, praying five times a day.
And the problem we face in defeating them is that we are too civilized to get the job done. It's not a sad coincidence of fate that iron-fisted dictators run every Arab country, except two tiny kingdoms.
When the Muslim Brotherhood even thought of organizing in Syria, Hafez al-Assad, father of the current Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, liquidated more than 10,000 Syrians. Just to make sure the tribes involved didn't get a chance to mull a new strategy over their water pipes at home, he also wiped out their entire tribal city from the face of the Earth.
That's how you control the in-bred Arabs inhabiting that part of the world, where first cousins regularly marry each other as accepted tribal custom. Tell me, are we prepared to copy the al-Assad "path to peace?"
There was a time when the answer would be "Yes." It was World War II, and we ignited one firestorm after another in Tokyo. In Germany, no one thought it a war crime to launch a firestorm on Dresden, although no military analyst of any credibility has ever found a military reason for turning the city's inhabitants into ashes.
The ultimate stroke of our resolve was dropping two atomic bombs on the Japanese. Do you hear anyone talking about nuking Fallujah?
There is another reason why our culture won't win out in Iraq: When we won WWII and the leaders surrendered, the military surrendered, and the populace surrendered with them too.
Nobody has surrendered in Iraq. Saddam is still alive and kicking, as is bin Laden. And even if we kill them, their followers, generation after generation, will keep up the fight. If you disagree, tell me how many times the Israelis "won the war" and still find themselves in a state of war with the third generation of Palestinians since independence in 1948.
That is why these conflicts are "Culture Wars" and the "Clash of Civilizations;" they go beyond Westerners fighting Westerners within the European Christian moral framework. Westerners are instead fighting Arab Islamists who abhor our cultural values and moral standards.
Deal with this reality: There has never been, and without a sweeping theological change there will never be, any long-term reconciliation with Saudi-inspired Wahabbists. If they can kill fellow Muslims at the drop of a hat, what makes us think they have any inhibition about killing us "infidels and Crusaders?"
Now you understand why Hafez al-Assad vaporized 10,000 people and took out the tribal city. In that area of the world, you only defeat your enemy when you kill him - and all his family as well.
So you can expect things to get much worse as the Iraqis who oppose us continue to reconstitute their military network. In true guerilla fashion, they will pick their targets and attack on their timetable. We will be too civilized to respond with the "kill or be killed" mindset it takes to win. No, we'll want to believe you can reason with these people.
Ultimately, if Western democracy wins out, it will be because Iraqis favoring democracy fought a civil war against Iraqis who didn't. Instead of sacrificing our soldiers in a battle plan that won't work, we should instead be arming the anti-Baathists and secular democracy-oriented Arabs to the teeth, then turn them loose.
It will be ruthlessly bloody. There will be massacres. There will be atrocities. There will be war crimes. You will see everything we are too civilized to do.
But the lessons of history teach that is the only way it works with Middle East Arabs. And if that is what it takes to defeat The Alliance from Hell and keep Western civilization alive, I say, "Bring 'em on!"
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Letter of the Week:
Jim Brown of San Diego, CA writes:
Mr. Lamb,
First, let me say I whole-heartedly agree with your comments in "The Real Crime Won't Get Any Time."
My question has to do with your statement, "But your friends and neighbors in the legal profession took that prerogative away from jurors. They destroyed jury nullification."
What mechanism did lawyers and judges use to destroy jury nullification?
Thank you.
My Reply:
Thanks for the question. Here is the short answer:
"Jury nullification" is the ability of the jury to render a not guilty verdict, not because the defendant didn't break the law at issue by actually doing what the prosecution says the defendant did, but rather because the jury feels the law should not be enforced - ignoring whatever actual actions the defendant did. The ability of the jury to override the legislative and prosecutorial process through "jury nullification" of the legislature and prosecutor has a history that predates the Constitution.
Today, judges instruct jurors they cannot vote to acquit on the basis of their personal disagreement with the righteousness of the law at issue. In short, they cannot "nullify" a law through the jury process. The reason is simple: Judges, legislators and prosecutors are all state "employees." They want to be sure they have the final word on a legal issue, not what has become of the so-called "sovereign" people. And since they run the system, they run the game. One of these days it's going to dawn on people those people are all on the same team, and we aren't necessarily on it with them.
Should a jury vote to acquit anyway, and the judge can make the argument the facts of the case fail to support the not guilty verdict, the judge can overturn the verdict and enter a directed verdict of guilty. In that case, if the appeals court agrees the facts support the guilty verdict, the judge's verdict will be upheld.
So, Mr. Heatwole will not be able to argue what he did was right, or necessary, or even not a crime; the only thing the system will allow is Mr. Heatwole to argue he did not, as a matter of "fact," take the actions alleged against him. Obviously, that isn't going to happen.
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