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Saturday, November 28, 2009

Why we're better than them, Part II

There has been a lot of press over the past three days about the three SEALS who are charged with dereliction of duty for having bloodied the lip of Ahmed Hashim Abed while he was in their custody.

Abed was the one who organized the murder of four US civilian contractors working as security guards in Fallujah in 2004. After murdering the four men, the terrorists burned two of their bodies and hung them from the Euphrates Bridge.

One of the three SEALs who captured Abed, Matthew McCabe, evidently punched him after they captured him. Abed complained, but the other two SEALs refused to testify against McCabe, so all three will be arraigned on December 7th.

Contrast this to the record of US combat forces who've been captured in Iraq and Afghanistan: not one has returned alive.

The Geneva Convention states that prisoners of war must not be mistreated. But if the we abide by the rule of law while our enemies don't, we're merely hamstringing our troops. And the rules of engagement state that a non-uniformed enemy combatant, when found, can be given a summary execution on the spot as a spy. Armed forces are supposed to wear identifying insignia. Abed was wearing no such thing.

Recent polls indicate that 98% of the American public believes that these SEALs should not be brought to trial. Enough has been said on that score, I won't belabor the point here.

The point I want to make is that this upcoming trial, as ludicrous as it is, is one more piece of proof that we are better than the people we are fighting.

We're so much better than them that they are not, in fact, worth our time. They're certainly not worth American lives and money. We should bring all our troops home and let the Middle Easterners kill each other instead.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

John,
Good Post, Instead of punching him in the mouth they should have put a noose over his neck and hung him from the same bridge. Case closed...I'm sick of us fighting a war with both hands tied behind our backs. They should unleash the dogs of war or bring the men home.
Mad Dog

John Craig said...

Tom --
You're right. The other thing which is frustrating is that the government has decided to not take any chances of killing any Afghan civilians, so the US military has been instructed not to attack near any villages or mosques. So the Taliban has of course responded by putting their men among the villagers or hiding in mosques. What else would they do after our government has made this pronouncement? But in the meantime, more and more of our soldiers die in Afghanistan because their hands are tied.