The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Monday, November 22, 2004
Doing what is necessary...
Great read in this morning's London Telegraph entitled "A Marine's gotta do what a Marine's gotta do", which shows that some Europeans are finally starting to "get it" too about the enemy we face in Islamic Jihadism:
Not being a subscriber to al-Jazeera television, I can only imagine what it has recently been playing on its news service - but I'd go bail it was clips of the US marine shooting dead a wounded Iraqi in a mosque in Fallujah. Indeed, it is probably on a continuous loop. Needless to say - for reasons of "sensitivity" - al-Jazeera is not showing the murder of Margaret Hassan.
The outcry over the killing by the marine passes all belief. Moreover, we actually know the context for the shooting. The marines thought the room in the mosque contained only dead bodies, not wounded. When the marine saw a "dead" man move, he cried out first, and then shot him.
Lance Corporal Ian Malone and Piper Christian Muzvuru, 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, RIP, took no such precautions in Basra in April last year. They simply ignored the body of the dead fedayeen fighter as they dismounted from their Warrior armoured fighting vehicle - and it, being on a suicide mission, promptly rose up and shot them both, before itself being blown apart. Thenceforth, the "Micks" probably made it their business to re-kill every corpse they saw.
I agree it's not nice. War is not nice - and the US marine that the entire world has now seen kill a defenceless, wounded man, had probably spent the previous two days in street-fighting and house-clearing. This kind of warfare causes unspeakable stress, for soldiers are in danger every second, for hour after hour after hour. It is simply fatuous to sit in high moral judgment on the split-second decision-making of some 20-year-old in the middle of such combat.
In other words, I'm saying the marine who killed the Iraqi did the right thing - he put the lives of himself and his colleagues first. Ask Mrs Malone in Dublin or Mrs Muzvuru in Harare what they now fervently wish their sons had done.
No, the real issue here is the presence of the cameraman in the frontline and the decision to broadcast the footage he took. Supposedly, all material filmed by "embedded" cameramen - ones formally attached to a unit - is vetted by military commanders before transmission. I don't know whether this footage was vetted; if it was, then the commander who authorised it is an utter fool, and if it wasn't, then the cameraman responsible should congratulate himself on handing such a propaganda coup to the enemy.
What about the freedom of the media? Well, that is a question that only one side of this war will even begin to understand. To Islamic fundamentalists, such freedom is taking a liberty with common sense, self-interest and the very reason why they're fighting. Indeed, their war is against all such effeminate, self-indulgent weaknesses that so characterise Western society.
Even for democrats, the media cannot be free in war: the zaniest of media-libertarians understand that they may not disclose military secrets. If that principle is accepted, is it then so very wrong for the defenders of freedom to ensure that that freedom is not used as a weapon against them? For the media cannot have true freedom in a battlefront where their existence and their survival are only made possible by the presence of allied armed forces.
So what was an independent camera crew doing with frontline troops in the course of urban fighting - the filthiest kind of war there is? An "atrocity" of some kind is sooner or later bound to happen, the revelation of which can serve to assist only one side in this war. Why therefore allow cameras to be free to record what can only be of value to your enemy? Freedom's freedom is freedom's foe.
To allow such unfettered media access to the fighting is to forget the stakes being played for in Iraq. All the enemy has to do is to maintain the status quo: that is his victory. On the other hand, it is not necessary for the allies to force a surrender of the enemy, as in 1945, before they withdraw - as withdraw they must. But they do have to make the equivalent of the Rhine crossing, and allow the Iraqi security forces to get on with the job, meanwhile ignoring the largely narcissistic needs of the Western media.
Moreover, an unprecedented struggle awaits us when Iraq is done. We in the media must learn what our role in that struggle will be. Vicarious indignation at so-called atrocities is a moral frivolity: it proves that we are unaware of the scale of the crisis we face, now and into the foreseeable future. Our common enemy has vision, dedication, courage and intelligence. He is profoundly grateful for whatever tit-bits come his way: our media have a moral obligation to ensure that we are scattering absolutely none in his direction.
Spot.on.
Not being a subscriber to al-Jazeera television, I can only imagine what it has recently been playing on its news service - but I'd go bail it was clips of the US marine shooting dead a wounded Iraqi in a mosque in Fallujah. Indeed, it is probably on a continuous loop. Needless to say - for reasons of "sensitivity" - al-Jazeera is not showing the murder of Margaret Hassan.
The outcry over the killing by the marine passes all belief. Moreover, we actually know the context for the shooting. The marines thought the room in the mosque contained only dead bodies, not wounded. When the marine saw a "dead" man move, he cried out first, and then shot him.
Lance Corporal Ian Malone and Piper Christian Muzvuru, 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, RIP, took no such precautions in Basra in April last year. They simply ignored the body of the dead fedayeen fighter as they dismounted from their Warrior armoured fighting vehicle - and it, being on a suicide mission, promptly rose up and shot them both, before itself being blown apart. Thenceforth, the "Micks" probably made it their business to re-kill every corpse they saw.
I agree it's not nice. War is not nice - and the US marine that the entire world has now seen kill a defenceless, wounded man, had probably spent the previous two days in street-fighting and house-clearing. This kind of warfare causes unspeakable stress, for soldiers are in danger every second, for hour after hour after hour. It is simply fatuous to sit in high moral judgment on the split-second decision-making of some 20-year-old in the middle of such combat.
In other words, I'm saying the marine who killed the Iraqi did the right thing - he put the lives of himself and his colleagues first. Ask Mrs Malone in Dublin or Mrs Muzvuru in Harare what they now fervently wish their sons had done.
No, the real issue here is the presence of the cameraman in the frontline and the decision to broadcast the footage he took. Supposedly, all material filmed by "embedded" cameramen - ones formally attached to a unit - is vetted by military commanders before transmission. I don't know whether this footage was vetted; if it was, then the commander who authorised it is an utter fool, and if it wasn't, then the cameraman responsible should congratulate himself on handing such a propaganda coup to the enemy.
What about the freedom of the media? Well, that is a question that only one side of this war will even begin to understand. To Islamic fundamentalists, such freedom is taking a liberty with common sense, self-interest and the very reason why they're fighting. Indeed, their war is against all such effeminate, self-indulgent weaknesses that so characterise Western society.
Even for democrats, the media cannot be free in war: the zaniest of media-libertarians understand that they may not disclose military secrets. If that principle is accepted, is it then so very wrong for the defenders of freedom to ensure that that freedom is not used as a weapon against them? For the media cannot have true freedom in a battlefront where their existence and their survival are only made possible by the presence of allied armed forces.
So what was an independent camera crew doing with frontline troops in the course of urban fighting - the filthiest kind of war there is? An "atrocity" of some kind is sooner or later bound to happen, the revelation of which can serve to assist only one side in this war. Why therefore allow cameras to be free to record what can only be of value to your enemy? Freedom's freedom is freedom's foe.
To allow such unfettered media access to the fighting is to forget the stakes being played for in Iraq. All the enemy has to do is to maintain the status quo: that is his victory. On the other hand, it is not necessary for the allies to force a surrender of the enemy, as in 1945, before they withdraw - as withdraw they must. But they do have to make the equivalent of the Rhine crossing, and allow the Iraqi security forces to get on with the job, meanwhile ignoring the largely narcissistic needs of the Western media.
Moreover, an unprecedented struggle awaits us when Iraq is done. We in the media must learn what our role in that struggle will be. Vicarious indignation at so-called atrocities is a moral frivolity: it proves that we are unaware of the scale of the crisis we face, now and into the foreseeable future. Our common enemy has vision, dedication, courage and intelligence. He is profoundly grateful for whatever tit-bits come his way: our media have a moral obligation to ensure that we are scattering absolutely none in his direction.
Spot.on.
