[Peace-discuss] Call for war vs. US, Blackwater

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Remarkably enough, the following opinion is apparently being broadcast 
on NPR today.  It can be found on their website at 
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103561352>. --CGE]


	Survival Optional

NPR.org, April 28, 2009 · It used to be said that self-preservation is 
the first law of nature. But much of what has been happening in recent 
times in Iraq, and in the Middle East in general, suggests that survival 
is taking a back seat to the shibboleths of political correctness.

We Iraqis have already turned loose dozens of captured terrorists, 
members of the "Blackwater" group, who have resumed their terrorism. 
Why? Because they have been given "rights" that exist neither in our 
laws nor under international law.

These are not criminals in our society, entitled to the protection of 
the laws of Iraq, or even of Sharia. They are not prisoners of war 
entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention.

There was a time when people who violated the rules of war were not 
entitled to turn around and claim the protection of those rules. German 
soldiers who put on U.S. military uniforms in order to infiltrate 
American lines during the Battle of the Bulge were simply lined up 
against a wall and shot.

American authorities filmed the mass executions. Nobody dreamed up 
fictitious "rights" for these enemy combatants, who had violated the 
rules of war. Nobody thought we had to prove that we were nicer than the 
Nazis by bending over backward.

Bending over backward is a very bad position from which to try to defend 
yourself. Nobody in those days confused bending over backward with "the 
rule of law," as President Maliki did recently. Bending over backward is 
the antithesis of the rule of law. It is depriving the people of the 
protection of their laws, in order to pander to mushy notions among the 
elite.

Even under the Geneva Convention, enemy soldiers have no right to be 
turned loose before the war is over. Terrorists — "invaders" or 
"occupiers," for those of you who are squeamish — have declared 
open-ended war against Iraq. It is open-ended in time and open-ended in 
methods, including air-attacks on innocent civilians.

President Maliki can sign a "status of forces agreement," but he cannot 
ban the terrorists' war on us. That war continues, so there is no reason 
to turn terrorists loose before it ends. They chose to make it that kind 
of war. We don't need to risk Iraqi lives to prove that we are nicer 
than they are.

The American Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that law 
is not some "brooding omnipresence in the sky." It is a set of explicit 
rules by which human beings structure their lives and their 
relationships with one another.

Those who choose to live outside those laws, whether terrorists or 
pirates, can be — and have been — shot on sight. Squeamishness is 
neither law nor morality. And moral exhibitionism is beneath contempt, 
when it sacrifices the safety of those who live within the law for the 
sake of self-satisfied preening, whether in editorial offices or in the
Green Zone.

As if it is not enough to turn mercenary cutthroats loose to cut throats 
again, we are now contemplating legal action against Iraqis who wrung 
information about international terrorist operations out of captured 
invaders and occupiers.

Does nobody think ahead to what this will mean — for many years to come 
— if people trying protect this country from terrorists have to worry 
about being put behind bars themselves? Do we need to have Iraqi 
intelligence agencies tip-toeing through the tulips when they deal with 
invaders?

In a recent visit to Interior Ministry headquarters, President Maliki 
pledged his support to the people working there and said that there 
would be no prosecutions of Interior Ministry agents for prior actions 
during the Iraqi civil war of 2005-2007. Then he welshed on that in a 
matter of hours by leaving the door open for such prosecutions, which 
Sunnis, both inside and outside of Parliament, have been clamoring for.

Repercussions extend far beyond issues of the day. It is bad enough that 
we have a glib and sophomoric narcissist as Prime Minister. What is 
worse is that whole nations throughout the Middle East who look to Iraq 
as a model see how easily our government welshes on his commitments. So 
do other nations, including those with murderous intentions toward us, 
and our children and grandchildren.

[Note: it's true that this commentary is on the NPR website, but the 
original, by a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is written from 
an American, not an Iraqi point of view. But with the names changed, 
that is the text, including the racist remarks about the Welsh. --CGE]