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CONSCIENCE AND TERRORISM
April 8, 2004
by Joe Sobran
"I call upon the American people to stand beside
their brothers, the Iraqi people, who are suffering an
injustice by your rulers and the occupying army, to help
them in the transfer of power to honest Iraqis.
Otherwise, Iraq will be another Vietnam for America and
the occupiers."
This plea, from the popular Shi'ite leader Sheik
Muqtada al-Sadr, is notable on several counts. First, he
appeals to our conscience -- our sense of justice as well
as our prudence. Second, he addresses us as "brothers,"
not "infidels." (Dale Carnegie would admire his Islamic
tact.) Third, he doesn't threaten us with retaliation in
our homeland; he merely asks us to get our government out
of his homeland. Otherwise, he warns, Iraq will become
another big problem for us -- like Vietnam.
Muqtada has been ordered arrested by the occupiers,
alias "us," the Americans. He can't be called a "Saddam
loyalist"; Saddam Hussein killed his father and brothers.
Is he a terrorist? He has "issued [a] call for
terrorism against allied troops," as the hawkish
WASHINGTON TIMES puts it. That phrase shows how badly
Americans now abuse the English language: Attacking
invading soldiers in your own country is "terrorism"!
What Muqtada warns of is worlds away from murdering
innocent people in New York. He's talking about fighting
in his own country. From his point of view, Iraq has a
massive problem with illegal aliens.
It used to be called "guerrilla warfare." It's often
the only military option available against a powerful
invader. The French Resistance is still praised for using
guerrilla tactics against the German occupation during
World War II.
Guerrilla warfare can be pretty ugly, as the
Fallujah killings and corpse mutilations show. But
"conventional" warfare, especially with modern high-tech
weapons, isn't pretty either. American television has
been criticized for declining to show what was done to
four American bodies; but neither has it shown the Iraqi
carnage caused by American weapons. We've been spared
tens of thousands of gruesome pictures showing the
victims of "liberation." That includes civilians as well
as brave Iraqi soldiers fighting the invaders against
hopeless odds.
In the American media, only American soldiers in
Iraq count as fully human; their deaths and injuries are
tragic. Iraqis who don't welcome their "presence" are all
lumped together as terrorists. Their deaths are like
those of insects and only make us safer. We stand for
freedom. Those who resist us hate freedom.
The Bush administration prepared us for war with
lies that have been exposed. It said things it knew were
false and things it had "no doubt" were true when they
were only wild guesses. The monster Saddam has been
overthrown, but the people he oppressed and persecuted
-- the people we were supposedly saving from him -- are
now treated as enemies too. Do they too have "weapons of
mass destruction" that threaten us?
The U.S. Government keeps justifying its huge and
expanding power with dizzyingly rotating rationales.
Consistency, as they say, is "not a problem." With all
this propaganda, just keeping your head is a full-time
job.
Muqtada's simple plea is being ignored. Bush's
"opponent" John Kerry could exploit it if he wanted to,
having, after all, made his first fame speaking out
against the Vietnam war. But he won't.
The closer you get to power, it seems, the less you
are inclined to pipe up against it. Politicians who
inveigh against abuses of power never mean they want to
abolish the power itself; they merely mean that they want
it for themselves.
President Kerry would continue the war on
"terrorism," a useful excuse for U.S. power, even if he
somewhat changed its guise with a multilateral approach.
He might be compared to a politician who -- this may
sound far-fetched -- marries an immensely rich woman and
makes crude, demagogic attacks on "the rich" while living
off her money.
What would Bush do if he reviewed the situation and
realized that the Iraq war was wrong? Would he repent,
apologize, and withdraw the troops, even at risk of
losing this year's election? Or would he admit nothing
and persist in his course for the sake of keeping power?
We may never know. It's even possible that it has
already happened: that he realizes even now that he has
created another Vietnam but chooses to keep it going, at
whatever cost to others, rather than pay any price
himself. After all, when a politician wrestles with his
conscience, he usually wins in straight falls.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Read this column on-line at
"http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040408.shtml".
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