The Dish

Dr K makes the case. I find it completely persuasive.

A reader writes:

This email is in response to Rush Limbaugh’s remarks posted on your site, about "gleeful" war-critics who are concerned about Haditha. It is of course in Limbaugh’s own interests to stoke the fires, but he needs to know that those who oppose this war are not monolithic.

There has been no glee in my heart since my son-in-law was killed by an IED on Feb. 3, 2004 in Iraq. For those who need a chronological framework, that is after "Misson Accomplished" and "Bring it on" and when the deaths were still in the low 500 range. To this day, we have absolutely no idea who planted that bomb: Saddam dead-enders?; Shiite militants? (it was in a Shia dominated area); Al-Qaeda terrorists? Renegade army or police elements?

From the start, I did not support the Iraq invasion. Poorly conceived, poorly planned and poorly implemented at the highest levels of government, it was a mistake. Still, with my son-in-law in the service, I resolved that I would direct my anger at the policy to where it belonged and not blame the soldiers.

Since my son-in-law’s death, I have also spoken out from my pulpit about the moral failure of an administration which did not give clear, moral guidelines to the troops who were expected to carry out a dangerous counterinsurgency mission.

Which brings us to Haditha. I have had a long standing interest in military history, and no, I am not shocked that some Americans may – may – have committed atrocities. It is in our human nature. There is no glee in my heart. Instead, there is a profound sadness that our soldiers are led by a civilian administration that thinks the moral high ground is forbidding loving couples from pledging their love to one another forever, while the administration itself has abandoned conventions, treaties and policies prohibiting mistreatment and torture.

Fortunately, there are many, many soldiers who send the right messages. During the funeral and for many months beyond, I came to know the leadership of my son-in-law’s unit and found them to be honorable men committed to doing a thankless job in a humane way. My son in law was a 2nd Lt., loved and respected by his men. He led from the front, and would never ask another soldier to do anything he himself wouldn’t do. So it was that he discovered an IED, warned others to get away, and was killed instantly when "the bad guys" exploded it.

Just a few weeks after his death, while the platoon was on patrol, they caught red-handed several men who were planting IEDs. Out on patrol, away from the base, a lot of nasty things might happen to such prisoners, especially when you are grieving your leader’s death. "Sorry, Captain, but Ahmed here fell off the truck (wink, wink)." I can still recall the pride in the voice of our son in law’s Captain as he told me the story. He said, "My boys did the right thing. They captured the prisoners, and had to take them along for the rest of the patrol. They fed them, gave them water, and returned them safely to the base. They did what they were supposed to do."

Wherever we train men (and women) to kill, we risk the possibility that our sinful human nature will lead to atrocities. But if a clear message is given to the troops, with clear expectations, clear boundaries – and clear punishment for violators – we can expect the vast majority of them to do the right thing. I still believe that in my heart.

Even when their civilian leaders have not done the right thing.

"I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel I owe anybody an explanation," – president George W. Bush.

(Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters.)

The latest protestation from those who favor amending the federal constitution to ban civil marriage for gay couples is that they are not bigots. Some have a good point. Sincerely believing that it’s better for society that only heterosexual couples should have the right to marry is not inherently bigoted. There’s an argument there, not just a prejudice or feeling. In Virtually Normal, I take pains to take this argument seriously, as it should be taken. Calling someone a bigot because she disagrees with you is not an argument. It’s just an insult – like calling someone a pervert.

Nevertheless, when opponents of marriage rights for gays never even mention gays in their arguments, never address some of the legitimate concerns that many gay couples have, and refuse even to allow minimal domestic partnerships that allow us to visit one another in hospital without the threat of other family members intervening, then I think we’re onto territory where complete uninterest in the fate of gay people blurs into bigotry. To have no social policy toward gays, except that they should repent or be cured or shut up, is a function of profound disrespect, intelligible only through the prism of prejudice. The same might be said of a blanket ban on all gay seminarians, regardless of their qualifications for the priesthood, the quality of their vocations, or their adherence to celibacy. Sometimes a bigot really is a bigot. Even when he’s the Pope.

The Anchoress, whom I fondly remember from years back when we were just email friends, unloads on Pajama Media’s big current advertizer. So does Rick Moran. Their comments are fair, it seems to me, and a good sign of how lively and internecine conservative debate now is. (Check out the Ramesh-Derb-Jonah cluster-cluck for another leading indicator.) But the problem with Coulter is that she is a form of camp, is she not? The minute you take her seriously, you lose grip on her reality. She’s not a social or political commentator. She’s a drag queen impersonating a fascist. I don’t even begin to believe she actually believes this stuff. It’s post-modern performance-art. I think of Coulter in that sense as more at home on the pomo-left than the Christianist right (which is why the joke, ultimately, is on the Republicans who like her). Devoid of sincerity, detached from any value but performance, juggling rhetoric for its own sake, she is Stanley Fish’s model student. Half the time, I tend to think that a Hannity or O’Reilly or Malkin actually believes their own rhetoric. With Coulter, I don’t believe it for a second. And so her vileness cannot be taken seriously. She is worse than vile. She is just empty.

From the Times of London, reflecting on Haditha:

The more vulnerable that Europeans feel, the more liable they are to shift blame across the Atlantic. The strength of disdain is a measure of Europe’s weakness. Smugness is one of Europe’s great contemporary exports. We may all think that we know America, its music, its culture, its self-confident exceptionalism. We tend to forget that Americans fight only with extreme reluctance. We overlook their penchant for agonised self-criticism; everything bad we know about the US, we know because Americans inexhaustibly rehearse their society’s shortcomings. There has never been greater transparency, whether on the battlefield or the boondocks, and there has never been more open debate about the country‚Äôs virtues and vices ‚Äî the internet has transformed the quantity and, at times, the quality of the conversation.

This is worth repeating. There is no moral equivalence between the occasional snap of soldiers stretched beyond most human limits and the evil that hides terrorists among civilians, foments sectarian hatred, and bombs and murders for the sake of a religious or sectarian fanaticism. Haditha must be investigated and its culprits punished. America must return to the standards of the Geneva Conventions. But even an America that has abandoned Geneva is preferable to the Jihadists and sectarian murderers who now terrorize Iraq. We feel shame; they know no such thing. Which is why it is so desperately depressing to watch us so badly bungle a war against them.

The good professor urges sobriety:

There is no evidence of operational links between [Zarqawi’s] Salafi Jihadis in Iraq and the real al-Qaeda; it was just a sort of branding that suited everyone, including the US. Official US spokesmen have all along over-estimated his importance. Leaders are significant and not always easily replaced. But Zarqawi has in my view has been less important than local Iraqi leaders and groups. I don’t expect the guerrilla war to subside any time soon.

Bummer – but predictable, I guess. Cole’s informative Zarqawi files are here.

Omar reports that one reason Zarqawi was killed is that locals turned him in. The beheadings and brutality backfired, finally persuading the locals to give real intelligence – the best kind:

It was quite visible lately that Hibhib became a place for intense terror activity, especially after the phenomenon of severed heads appeared. Severed heads of civilian Iraqis were found twice in fruit boxes in and around Hibhib; a terrible crime that shocked Iraqis.
Also a few days ago 19 passengers, mostly students were murdered in cold blood just north of Hibhib which indicated that a seriously bloody terror cell was in this area.
There had been several reports about Zarqawi fleeing Anbar to Diyala after the tribes in Ramadi turned against al-Qaeda but obviously, Diyala and its suburbs and Iraqi tribes were not willing to endorse the head chopping criminal.

Excellent. Jordan may also have helped kill their former resident:

In the first official confirmation, PM al-Maliki said that Jordan has provided intelligence that was used in the raid on Zaraqwi’s hiding place but he also stressed that tips from locals were the primary lead to Zarqawi’s exact location and these were the information according to which the missiles were guided.

As Margaret Thatcher once said: "Rejoice!"

A friend serving his country in Iraq just got this rapidly-generated email JPG, and forwarded it to me. If you’re looking for a sign of higher morale post-Zarqawi among coalition forces, look no further:

It remains to be seen, of course, what effect the killing of Zarqawi will mean for the future of Iraq. The insurgency, alas, is more than him; but he was a critical, central part of the Jihadist element that has wrought some of the most appalling violence. This then cannot be a bad thing on the ground. And it is a simply transformative moment in terms of morale. This man has murdered and tortured and ravaged his way through the Middle East, most devastatingly in Iraq where his campaign of savagery and mayhem has helped undermine the extremely fragile underpinnings of a future normal society. In a culture where strength is respected, his resilience helped sustain the morale of the nihilist, Jihadist and Sunni insurgencies. If Maliki can use the momentum of this victory against evil to fill the last key security posts in his cabinet, then perhaps we can begin to reverse the hideous slide toward anarchy we have been witnessing.

These are still hopes. But sometimes wars are won by hope, even in the darkest of times. As I wrote a few months back, "the certainty of some today that we have failed is as dubious as the callow triumphalism of yesterday. War is always, in the end, a matter of flexibility and will. And sometimes the darkest days are inevitable – even necessary – before the sky ultimately clears."

The temptation to despair, especially given the ineptness of the administration’s policies, has been great lately. Now it lifts a little, as one source of enormous evil is finally removed. It will be a particular boost to the coalition troops, whose endurance in an unimaginably tense and brutalizing mission is humbling to watch. The only response to this, as it was when Saddam was captured, is joy. As the Israelis say: Know hope.