Thursday, June 22, 2006

Moral Outrage: More Commentary on Al Qaeda's Extremism

In yesterday's post I suggested that more commentary on the murders of Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker would be forthcoming. (California Conservative also cross-posted the essay: See "The New Face of Evil": Al Qaeda Murders American G.I.'s in Iraq.") Today's Arizona Republic, for example, argues there's no equivalent to the barbarism committed against these G.I.'s:

Enough with Abu Ghraib. Enough with the self-loathing hand-wringing over the killers harbored in comfort at Guantanamo Bay. Enough with the still-unproved condemnations of U.S. Marines at Haditha. Two U.S. Army soldiers, Pfc. Kristian Menchaca of Houston and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker of Madras, Ore., have been found dead at the hands of the still-potent terrorist insurgency in Iraq. Not just dead, but tortured, we are told. Their unrecognizable bodies dumped at a roadside that had been wired with bombs. According to an Iraqi military spokesman, the soldiers "were killed in a barbaric way." The two young soldiers - both had been in Iraq but a few months - had been captured at a checkpoint on June 16 in an attack that killed a third comrade, Spc. David J. Babineau of Springfield, Mass. If we are to properly understand - and fairly condemn - the revolting moral equivalencies that have sprung up regarding "violence begetting violence" in Iraq, the shocking deaths of Pfcs. Menchaca and Tucker would seem a proper place to start. It is not the policy of the U.S. military to torture enemy combatants, certainly not to the point that DNA tests become necessary to determine which disfigured corpse is which. It is not the policy of the U.S. military to behead captured enemies. Water-boarding and sleep deprivation strike us as bad and likely unproductive policies. Disfiguring torture and beheading strike us as the acts of barbarians and monsters. There is equivalence in this? Whatever one's judgment about the legal rights of enemy combatants held at Guantanamo, drawing parallels between isolated American excesses in a cruel war and such joyously celebrated "policies" of terrorists is just beyond the pale.
Additional moral outrage can be found at the The Squiggler. Tammy Bruce's comments denouncing the terrorists can be found here. According to Michelle Malkin, if it weren't for the media silence, I'd be posting a lot more press commentary denouncing Al Qaeda's barbarity.

4 comments:

a.k.a. Blandly Urbane said...

It does not matter whatsoever when something as vile as this happens. It changes nothing in the minds of those that have refused from day one to accept the reality of the need to be in Iraq.

All the harping and screaming means nothing when they are not realistic enough to consider what WILL happen if we were to leave. Ignoring reality is no excuse.

AmPowerBlog said...

Urbane One:

I agree. I'm seeing more bloggers posting about the indictments of U.S. service personnel than of these Al Qaeda atrocities. I will continue to make the moral case for our Iraq deployment here at Burkean Reflections. Thanks for the visit. Hope you and your family are doing well.

Is It Just Me? said...

Thanks Donald for stopping by my blog. Both of your posts regarding the slaying of these two soldiers only illustrate how difficult it is for anyone who is sane to deal with the issue of horrific death - especially when it occurs by the hands of another human being. (Notice it took me a few days to even touch on the subject myself). I had to personally sort out my feelings and then try to make out of that bewilderment something tangible that expressed my thoughts with some sense of balance. I could have wrote of shock, sorrow, extreme anger, revenge, and a good dose of doing "unto others". I had to let that pass...

My greatest fear while my son was stationed at Fallujuah was what happened to these boys would happen to him. Yes, boys - they are both younger than my son. I could cry now for their parents loss - I had prepared for something similar for months - you know that will never go away, that thought of what could happen. My son arrived 4 days before the contractors were killed, mutilated, and hung like cattle carcasses from that bridge. He went through both bombings of Fallujuah. My dreams were wrought with robed men swarming the post he was stationed at waving swords throughout the time he was there. I am lucky, my son is home. But, those memories will stay with me to my dying day.

Does anyone want to deal with death like this? To talk about it, to try to understand it, to try to verbalize how they really feel? My guess is that so many bloggers have someone they know there right now, that it is a paralyzing thought process to have to go through to be able to blog about these two boys, when they are stuck on that someone they know and the "what if's".

Keep blogging about it - please. We have a moral obligation to the families who have lost loved ones this way to never forget. As long as there is one animal left who would pick up a sword and use it in this manner we are needed.

AmPowerBlog said...

Hi:

Thank you for visiting the site and leaving your thoughtful comments. And thanks to your son, and your entire family, for the service to our country. Stop by once and again here at Burkean Reflections. I'll continue to post on issues such as this.

The Burkean Professor