Freedom's Fidelity

Thursday, June 03, 2004

Of Reality, Ruthlesness, and Unintended Consequences

There are those that wishfully believe we are not at war, but despite this cognitive dissonance that plagues the far left, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, et al see no difference between a war protester and President Bush or between Karl Rove and Noam Chomsky. Osama bin-Laden would just as quickly send someone (besides himself) to detonate a crude explosives vest packed with nails at the headquarters of Moveon.org as he would at the office of John Ashcroft. It is a cold, disturbing reality, but reality is never dependant on one's acceptance of it. You are either for 12th century theocracy or you are an infidel to be slaughtered, for this is the enemy, do not look away:

Nick Berg, an American from Philadelphia, was kidnapped and tortuously beheaded by Arabs in Iraq sometime in May. The murderers filmed the deed and proudly displayed the victim's severed head.

After killing six Israeli soldiers in an attack on an armored vehicle in Gaza on May 11, the Arabs near the scene of the carnage gleefully held aloft human body parts in front of rolling cameras. One of the Arab terrorists was later interviewed on film with what appeared to be a human head in front of him.

The week before, after shooting at Tali Hatuel's car, causing it to skid and stop, Arab terrorists walked over to the vehicle to finish the occupants off. They looked at the heavily pregnant mother and her four no-doubt frightened girls; the youngest was two years old. And then shot them all. At point-blank range. With sadistic satisfaction, they systematically murdered Tali Hatuel and her unborn son, as well as all of Tali's daughters - Hila, age 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, and two-year-old Meirav.

In Fallujah in March, crowds of townspeople dragged four American civilians out of their vehicles, shot or beat them to death, mutilated their bodies, dragged them through the streets, suspended them from a bridge and burned them.

And they danced and cheered.

With their children.

In Ramallah in 2000, two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, beaten, stabbed countless times, had their eyes gouged out, and were literally disemboweled and dismembered by an Arab lynch mob.

The people - and I use the term loosely - who carried out the initial beatings threw one of the victims down to the waiting mob, where his face was further crushed with stones, feet, fists and even a heavy metal window frame. One Jew was set on fire and dragged along the street as Arab onlookers danced and cheered. Some of the butchers celebrated their crimes with the victims' internal organs. One of the killers, famously captured on film, proudly displayed his blood-soaked hands to the cheering Ramallah crowd.

And it gets worse. In 2003, nearly two years later, Arab parents in Gaza cheered again when their little children dressed up as members of the Ramallah lynch mob complete with hands painted blood red, for a kindergarten graduation ceremony.

A kindergarten graduation ceremony.

That is the reality that caused me not to blink at the following reality. John Ross is the author of a fiction book called unintended consequences, in a very interesting piece, he discusses the unintended consequences of Abu Ghraib prison photos:

Let's get something straight here: For all the talk about the "religion of peace," or "respecting different cultures," or whatever other platitudes you want to spout, a cornerstone of Islamic faith as practiced in the Arab world is the absolute subjugation of women and the total repression of women's sexual pleasure. Understand this: There is no living creature in this country that Americans treat on an ongoing basis the way Arabs treat women.

...Arab culture is all about male power. Our Intelligence people in Iraq obviously understand that. That's why they took pictures of Lynndie England (probably the smallest female soldier at Abu Ghraib prison) making fun of naked prisoners, cheerfully climbing on top of them after putting them in a naked dogpile, and nonchalantly keeping one of them naked at her feet on a leash. A few days later it comes out that the Americans did an even more heinous thing: They had sex with each other and made the prisoners watch. The horror!

....Those pictures said volumes. They said "We're your worst fucking nightmare: We're Americans. Our women are stronger than your men. Our littlest women will strip naked the strongest men you can muster, and make fun of their puny cocks while enjoying a cigarette. Our women love to get naked, love sex, and revel in the sexual prowess of their American male partners. They'll put impotent "men" like you naked on leashes whenever they want. America is the most powerful country in the world, and guess what? Women control 70% of its money and 100% of its pussy. What are you going to do about it? Behead some Jewish "contractor"? Fat lot of good that's going to do. We'll put on some hearings for show, but you know the truth: we'll do whatever we want whenever we want, and we'll have our women do it. Just for fun. Think we're kidding? Wait 'til you see our beer ads."

Boy, when I first read that it sounded harsh, but against the background of the above column, the pyramid of butt crack and underpants on the head seems suddenly benign. Of course, as a society we do not have the chutzpah to admit this, but the lack of political correctness in Ross's acknowledgement renders it no less true. As bin Laden himself has asserted, it is a weak America, always retreating, that provides for better recruiting fodder. Trying to understand why they hate us is a strategy of suicide, this, as described above, is a new kind of enemy. During the cold war MAD (mutually assured destruction) was our policy of deterrence, and indeed it was the credible threat that we would use nuclear weapons against the Soviets that kept the cold war cold.

But how do you deter a suicide bomber who has already assured his own destruction? Several months ago I remember reading about an Israeli idea to load buses with slaughtered pig carcasses (sorry no link). Islamic belief holds that a body contaminated with any sort of pork is denied entry to heaven and its 72 virgin glory, even if they died as martyrs. Ross floats a similar idea in his column.

I suggested that we show on the news all our ammunition factories such as Lake City Arsenal cranking out tens of millions of rounds of ammunition for M16s, with all the bullets lubricated with... pig fat. Show Claymore mines, grenades, bayonets, and every other weapon where some piece of metal pierces the enemy's flesh, being covered with lard before assembly.

Terrorists use our freedoms and tolerance to attack us, they use our love for living in this world to inspire fear. Why not use their hocus pocus beliefs against them? Surely the idea has already been discussed and dismissed, but why? My hunch is that because this war is still being fought on a relatively small scale with relatively few casualties there is no urgency to resort to such tactics. History tells us though that the longer a conflict drags on the more ruthless each side becomes. How long before the cost of dying Americans starts to chip away at the benefit of holding on to our morality? If and when a nuclear or biological attack happens on U.S. soil we'll wonder why ideas such as those expressed by Ross bothered us at all. The only questions that will remain then, is not who will win, but which parts of the earth will be scorched and how many human beings will be incinerated in the process. As the Belmont Club notes "the only effective way to stop the corrupting influences of war is to achieve victory."

Let us hope we find victory before ruthlessness finds us.

posted by Paul  permalink | |