Insurgent's Publicist is Doing Great Work

There's a syndrome or an affliction of some sort known as "white man's guilt" that is best described as overcompensation in regards to all things racial. There seems to be a variation of this syndrome in America today in regards to all things Islamic.

A US Marine is shown by NBC shooting an Iraqi insurgent. Apparently, such an inconceivable atrocity (sarcasm, since it's in the midst of war) makes it newsworthy. This choice by NBC should be seen in contrast with their decisions not to air the multiple videos of Islamic terrorists beheading US and British civilians. This imbalance portrays the US Marines as cold blooded killers rampaging through the streets of Fallujah murdering any Iraqi man they encounter whereas the Iraqi insurgents (to call them insurgents is generous) are portrayed as freedom fighters, struggling to match forces with a vastly superior US military. That view of these current events is only possible when the complete context is ignored.

I can read a single sentence of any great book and you, faithful reader, will have difficulty identifying the author or the work. Let's not make that same mistake as we review these recent events in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein, with the help of his sons committed such gruesome acts against the people of Iraq that the memory of them and the videos of them make me physically sick. Let's recall the men being dropped off of three story buildings. Let's recall the arms being cut off with circular saws. Let's recall the tongues being cut out. Let's recall the hands and arms being broken with wooden poles. Let's recall the mass graves filled with men, women and children. Let's recall the poison gas victims lying burned and bloated in the streets where they fell. Let's recall the original Abu Ghraib prison, with it's rape rooms (built to hold women who were raped and then killed) and torture chambers where Iraqis were brutalized in whatever way a depraved Uday Hussein could invent. Let's recall the gold and marble of Hussein's many palaces as the children of Iraq starved to death. Let's recall the heroin, the pornography, the bundles of cash in those palaces as Iraqi children died because their water supply was contaminated and they couldn't get medicine for common diseases. Let's remember that the men who are videotaping themselves cutting the heads off of aid workers, contractors and civilians (working to make Iraq a better place) are Saddam's friends. These men, friends of Saddam want to make Iraq what it once was under Saddam Hussein, a royal paradise for them and a bloody, nightmarish hell for anyone that didn't agree with them.

Don't get misty eyed over these poor Iraqi insurgents. If they have their way Iraq will return to it's former "glory" and you can bet there are Iraqis who begged for a bullet in the head to end their misery in those "good old days." Don't be tricked into a new form of white man's guilt. We are doing good things for Iraq and for the world. Don't let (the media coverage of) one Marine's decision in the heat of battle make you believe that we are anything but the good guys in this world.