Friday, October 22, 2004

 
It's Never Too Late To Say, "You're Fired"

Or better yet, "Don't look now, but you *are* on fire, and your ash is mine."
That the U.S. has put on the wrong public face to Iraqis is suggested by the snarls from the "Association of Muslim Scholars" quoted in a *New York Times* piece by Dexter Filkins headlined "Election boycott threatened if U.S. troops subdue Fallujah."
Right.
Now if one has employed say, an accountant,(let's given him a name that might have come from a bad novel: "Dexter Filkins")and have discovered that the weasel has been embezzling, one would not simply slink away if he hissed, "I quit" before you could say, "Your're fired," or "I'm pressing charges, fuzznuts."
Filkins quotes "the cleric, Sheik Qasim al-Hanafi": "The use of the elections as a pretext to launch incursions into cities is unacceptable and disgraceful....the clerics will call upon all the Iraqi people to boycott the elections and consider them bogus*if Fallujah continues to be subject to the incursions and bombardments."
Sigh...how many times should I write this?--The Allies did not overrun Nazi Germany so that its people could elect another Hitler.(or at least not for a "decent interval"-about a thousand years sounds about right to me)We should stress that it is not our sensitivity which should be on trial in Iraq, but the people of Iraq. They are guilty of having been led by a monster, even if they did not do so through free or fair elections. We should not judge ourselves by what Iraqi Muslims think of us, but rather, the Iraqis by how they behave towards, and speak and think about *us.* The penalty for failure, if failure, indeed "happens" should be paid, not by our troops, or "neoconservatives" or diplomats or department of state people or contractors or those who said we initially used too heavy a hand or too light a hand in our occupation, but, of course, by the Muslims of Iraq. And the penalty should not be that they would live in some stone-age failed Somali-like state, in spite of suggestions along those lines by Mark Helprin(wonder if he gets email intended for Mark Halperin?)John Derbyshire, and YT, but rather that any hostile Iraqi Muslims that survive will live somewhere other than Iraq. And that Iraq will be inhabited only by those friendly to us.(or, perhaps just us) We should announce that the citizens of Fallujah will not be *allowed* to vote until they turn over the murderers of our contractors and turn over foreign fighters and active Baathists. And that votes for candidates hostile to us will be no more counted than a write-in ballot for "A. Hitler" in Germany(or "Mr. Hilter of the National Bocialist Party" in England).
A clue to the view of Dexter Filkins is found in his line, "Yawer's remarks recalled the events of April, when the U.S. Marine assault on Fallujah enraged Sunnis and Shiites across the country." No doubt some were "enraged." And some(we don't know how many)were, no doubt, enraged and/or dismayed that we did not take Fallujah, however much they might have regretted casualities that would have been suffered by their countrymen. It is wishful thinking to suppose that those "outraged" by an assault on Fallujah are not also outraged by our very existence and can be expected to wage war(or at least aid and shelter those who do so)against us wherever possible.(Decisions by Islamofascists regarding what forces to commit to Iraq and which to send to Afghanistan or to Europe or to the United States or wherever and our own decisions in distribution of resources over the globe are those of tactics or strategy, *not* morality.)
-I missed most of a history channel program on Nazi guerrillas fighting after the end of major hostilities in Germany. It was asserted that the natives were hostile to the occupiers and blamed them for shortages of food, fuel, and employment. Maybe so. It was also claimed that guerillas were not given much support because the German people were exhausted after many years of war. This all may have been true, and the consequences of the relatively rapid and relatively rapid victory in Iraq have been noted by others. I think that the German people also understood that they might have essentially wiped out of existence by the Allies had they mounted a serious challenge to their occupation. The Germans were said to have not elected a fully independent government for 10 years after the end of WWII. Perhaps if the Iraqis understood that we are "ernste menschen"(copped phrase from Chambers), we wouldn't have to wait 10 years to hear something like, "We Iraqis are peaceful now. We want vote very much. We all friends now. Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Turkomen...we all friends now. Look, look, we hug each other...kiss on cheek....you see? No? We kiss again. You can go home now. But no misunderstand...no need to hurry...here you take some flowers, dinars, artifacts, and here..take some of these women...they have too much education...What? No, of course, the women can stay and yes, yes, vote. We only make joke. We *good* Iraqis. And can we please take down al-Sadr's head? It make bad smell....."
Unfortunately it is not unlikely that we will elect Kerry whose groveling before our enemies and back-stabbing "allies" is more disgusting that the fantasy above.

*"bogus"?!? pirated DVDs of Bill & Ted's excellent or bogus adventures or journeys?