Who’s Worth More?
At least FRWC (Frequent Right-Wing Correspondent) Keith writes:
The fact that you believe the statements made by the Italian Journalist without even that the American
Soldiers might in fact be telling the truth shows your own bias.
Actually, I’m inclined to believe her account because it jives so nicely with other accounts as well as my personal experience of how American forces in Afghanistan man road blocks. The Third World is riddled with checkpoints, which range from the impromptu barrels with a stick across them to a full-fledged toll house. Checkpoints have troops or policemen on the side of the road, one to flag down motorists with a baton or stop sign, another to check documents and search vehicles. Motorists slow down as they approach to indicate their willingness to stop. Often a small bribe is paid to be allowed to proceed.
U.S. checkpoints, on the other hand, are often difficult to discern from the vantagepoint of a car until you’re right on top of them. There’s no soldier there to flag you down, nothing to indicate the checkpoint until bullets start hitting your car. This is particularly true in the dark; checkpoints should be brightly lit but survivors of U.S. checkpoints report getting shot at without warning, without lights. Most people, when shot at, assume that they’re being jacked up by bandits and hit the accelerator–fulfilling U.S. troops’ right to shoot them under their absurd Rules of Engagement. I don’t have to believe the Italian. What she says is obviously true. If her driver had seen the U.S. checkpoint, after all, would he have sped up towards it? Obviously not.
Sgrena is a noted anti-war critic who writes for a communist newspaper. Forgive me if I don’t just
believe anything she says out of hand.
I don’t know about that. If the last few years have proven anything, it’s that those who opposed the invasion of Iraq have been far more truthful than those who favored it.
What proof does she have or is she merely exploiting this as a further opportunity to try and embarrass America and enhance her own position?
The proof is the bullet wound in her shoulder.
My own bias forces me to believe the soldiers. In a combat situation the benefit of the doubt must rest
with the soldier. And your description of a road block is just a joke. You make it sound like the Americans were hiding on the side of the road shooting at any car that drove by.
Funny, that’s also how Iraqis describe them to the New York Times.
As an aside, the other reason I disagree with your description is because it places a larger probability
of harm on the American’s manning the road block. I would rather place the larger probability of harm on
the Iraqi citizen. If someone has to die, better an Iraqi then an American soldier.
Are you forgetting, Keith, whose country it is? Under normal circumstances, Iraqi lives are equal to American lives. When Americans are manning a roadblock as part of a hostile occupation force out to steal Iraq’s natural resources, oppress its people and turn the whole shebang over to a Shiite theocracy, their lives are worth less than Iraqi civilians they’re supposedly there to liberate. The best way to protect American troops, after all, is to deploy them only to places where America is being threatened. Iraq is not such a place, and we should get out now.
Those soldiers are there to defend America and American interests. And they are doing that. A large number terrorists, probably most of those who know which end of an AK-47 the bullets come out of, is
either on the way to Iraq or already there. The more of them we kill in Iraq the less of them we will have
to kill later and the fewer of them who can come here and try and kill us.
Are you high?
Every terrorist killed in Iraq whether foreign borne or Iraqi makes us safer. And that is why I support the war in Iraq and why the war makes us safer. Better to kill them over there than have them over here killing us.
I applaud Keith for his nativist honesty. Here, I’m afraid, is the attitude of many who support Bush and his wars.
