A Balance of Outrage

Early afternoon, I returned from work to find photographs of people apologizing for the role of the U.S. in liberating the Iraqis.

Of course, the people's signs state that they are apologizing not for liberation, but for "humiliating" and "causing suffering" to the Iraqi people.

Hmmmm.

Needless to say, in virtually any war, innocents, women and children are killed. Each one a tragedy? Yes.

Yet who is to blame? Does responsibility fall upon those who wish to remove a murderous dictator, one who tortures his own people, fills mass graves with small children, and consorts with other terrorists? Or should we instead blame those who fight to remove the dictator and free the people imprisoned by him?

Sometimes I wish I could sit with every one of these war protestors, those who hold signs like these, who bemoan what a terrible country America has become, who claim that they may need to move to another country if the Bush administration continues for another four years. I might read to them what Wretchard wrote today, of what life is like in a world quite different from our own.

On January 30, 2000 a Light Rail Transit (LRT) commuter train packed with children was blown up by Al Qaeda-affiliated Fathur Rohman Alghozi, with the assistance of Isamudin Riduan Hambali, killing 12 and mutilating 19 others. The Blumentritt station, where the blast occurred, is above an intersection so crowded the street below has been turned into a permanent wet market where hawkers sell vegetables and fish on plaited mats. The wreckage of the train was covered with bloody children's clothes and Christmas toys.

The kidnapping and murder of schoolchildren was common fare on the Island of Basilan, with which I am thoroughly familiar. In May, 2001 a Filipino journalist wrote:

It seems almost a lifetime ago since it happened. Even in the jungles of Mount Punoh Mahadji, there are hardly any signs left of the 44-day ordeal suffered by 53 kidnap victims at the hands of the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf. Indeed, the outcry over the bandits' abduction of 53 school children and teachers in Basilan on March 20 last year died down almost immediately after their rescue by a civilian paramilitary group 1 months later, on May 3. For the kidnap victims, however, the gruesome drama refuses to sink into oblivion. Memories of their sleepless nights in a cramped 12 by 38 ft. windowless wooden cell refuse to fade even in their sleep.

The victims may retain their impressions, but the world is innocent of forgetfulness; because first you have to remember before you forget. But it was not the first time Islamic rebels had kidnapped schoolboys. Just a year before a group of schoolchildren were being held for ransom by the Abu Sayyaf. A little later the Abu Sayyaf demonstrated their eclectic tastes by attacking two high schools. "They kidnapped 30 people after attacks on two high schools in March -- of them 15 have been rescued while six were killed by the guerrillas, including two adult males who were beheaded."

In many ways, our nation isn't perfect. Many, many ways; enough to fill post after post on my blog and others. We could all hold up signs, and apologize somewhere to someone, with excellent justification.

But outrage, as anything else, happens not in a vacuum. Though the death of a child or a mother in war is a loss and a sadness, how does it compare to the chopping off of body parts, tongues, hands, heads, by a police state? How does it contrast to thugs who enter schools and murder small children?

What do these people with the signs really want? Saddam removed from power by one of John Kerry's "secret plans"? - a plan where President Kerry says "Please, do leave these good people alone" and Saddam meekly steps down so that democracy may take hold? And if this does not work - what?

What kinds of signs do the apologists hold for those who are trapped in the nations with Saddams for leaders and Al Qaeda running the show? Where is the outrage for that?

Comments

[Duane]

Great post. I linked it to my site.