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Uncomfortable Realities

Noting recent efforts to account for lives lost among Iraqi civilians, Eli reminds us that Iraqi soldiers are human, too:

Iraqi soldiers are just as "innocent" as the "innocent civilians" people talk about, and no more deserving of death. To begin with, most of them were draftees. But whether they were, or whether they joined the army just to get a job, or whether they were simply the kind of people who find a military career a desirable option, all of them were killed in the process of defending their country against an illegal invasion by a foreign power. Not only is this not a crime punishable by death, in every country in the world it is considered an honorable action; indeed, soldiers who don't fight when their country is invaded are almost certainly committing treason or some similar crime.

But, Eli, baby, sweetie, Saddam looked at us funny. He had to pay! Or, really, his luckless minions had to pay in his stead—but for historians and pundits, that amounts to the same thing. Saddam is in jail! He's humiliated! That makes up for all the innocent lives lost and the lies about threats from nonexistent WMD and nonexistent connections to al-Qaeda (who are there now, thank you very much) and the distraction from the fight with al-Qaeda (and what do the Madrid bombings say about the ole "flypaper theory"?) and Pakistan handing out nukes like candy.... Seeing it your way would mean that our government was the bigger threat to regional stability in the middle east. Seeing it your way threatens the whole basis of the Bush Doctrine (soon to be the Kerry Doctrine) of American military dominance in the new world order. Once you start calling the enemy human beings, you stop calling human beings the enemy. That just won't do.

Posted by kevinmoore at March 22, 2004 04:56 PM | TrackBack