Over at Belmont Club, wretchard discusses Mark Steyn's not-sufficiently-sad commentary on the death of Kenneth Bigley and the European inclination to go weak kneed and negotiate with terrorists. His and Mark Steyn's discussion reveal what I think is the proper understanding of the enemy and how to fight it. Commenters to this site have wondered how seemingly intelligent people can support President Bush. I think the understanding of the enemy as revealed by wretchard and Mark Steyn is the understanding that President Bush shares. And you know what Sun Tzu said about defeating an enemy.
When reading such things, I am reminded again of how I felt on September 11, 2001 and for months after as it was fresh in my mind. The personal anger and personal sadness and personal pain. Over on Mark Steyn's page, he remembers Anna Quindlan's contemporaneous column:
Anna Quindlen "fastened on", as she put it, one family on the flight manifest:And that bears repeating. We honour Christine Hanson's memory by righting the great wrong done to her.
Peter Hanson, Massachusetts
Susan Hanson, Massachusetts
Christine Hanson, 2, Massachusetts
As Miss Quindlen described them, "the father, the mother, the two-year old girl off on an adventure, sitting safe between them, taking flight." Christine Hanson will never be three, and I feel sad about that. But I did not know her, love her, cherish her; I do not feel her loss, her absence in my life. I have no reason to hold hands in a "healing circle" for her. All I can do for Christine Hanson is insist that the terrorist movement which killed her is hunted down and prevented from targeting any more two-year olds. We honour Christine Hanson's memory by righting the great wrong done to her, not by ersatz grief-mongering.
And with a full understanding of the enemy, I don't think you are correcting that wrong by ignoring the larger terrorist issue or trying to limit your response to the evil of this theocratic, fascist death cult by insisting that Saddam wasn't directly involved in the attack on September 11, saying we should only fight the perpetrators of X and not the similarly evil perpetrators of Y and Z who share the same goals.
The Europeans don't get it, but I know that George W. Bush does. Like me, George W. Bush thinks that an unstable pseudo-democratic Iraq is much better for the world's security - and its people - than a stable Saddam-led Iraq. And these points were driven home today, as American investigators dug up more mass graves - without the help of the Europeans who are afraid the evidence will be used in a death penalty murder case against Saddam.
US-led investigators have located nine trenches in Hatra containing hundreds of bodies believed to be Kurds killed during the repression of the 1980s.And my thoughts drift to my own 4 year old and 11 month old. And their favorite toys. And a trench. And what would I tell them if we were in Hatra? Just go to sleep, everything will be all right.
The skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys are being unearthed, the investigators said.
Mr Kehoe said that work to uncover graves around Iraq, where about 300,000 people are thought to have been killed during Saddam Hussein's regime, was slow as experienced European investigators were not taking part.It goes without saying that none of these discoveries would have been possible without the American decision to go to war. And there certainly would not be an Iraq human rights ministry, which "has reportedly identified 40 possible mass graves across the country."
The Europeans, he said, were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death.
When I read about these horrors or remember 9/11, I have a hard time drawing lines of legal technicality between the two - separating them into bad enough to go after and not bad enough to go after. I know George W. Bush sees it that way, too.
Surely we can't invade every nation that fails the human rights test as miserably as Baathist Iraq or Taliban Afghanistan or North Korea or Zimbabwe or the myriad other nations who operate with one foot in hell and the other on a dead child. We don't have the resources and the military to do it. But that doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and not help where and when we can.
Freedom will change things. And I know George W. Bush understands that. More importantly, actions speak louder than words. Petitions by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and strongly worded statements from U.N. committees may have some effect on the civilized, by they aren't effective in stopping madmen. George W. Bush understands this. And that's another reason I'm voting for him and urging others to do the same.
