Ja: La-la-la, high on something

The ideological basis of the war was flawed. It was compounded by the decision of the Anglo-American consortium to snub the United Nations in the face of the unease of the international community over an attack on Saddam Hussein.

The relatively quick collapse of Saddam's regime in the face of the "shock and awe" of US military might and technological superiority may have lulled the Americans into believing that pacifying Iraq would be easy business. It has not turned out to be so. The Americans are facing a nasty urban guerilla war waged by some people who may have hated Saddam but do not want US troops in their country.

It is this miscalculation, we believe, that set the basis for the atrocities committed by US troops against Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. The dehumanising of the detainees may not be official policy and might not have been ordered by senior officers - although questions have been raised in this regard - but the context of the war created the environment for this mistreatment.

There is little doubt, it seems, that the US military in Iraq operates in an atmosphere of deep fear. No one knows who is the enemy; when the next mortar will hit a hotel or military base; or when the next roadside bomb will blow a convoy to smithereens.

Moreover, the administration's strategy for justifying the war contributed to the environment that has been created in Iraq and the context within which the soldiers operate. The Iraq project, ultimately, was made to transcend Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction to envelope this broad 'war on terrorism'. In this war, unfortunately, Arab and Islam have, for the kid from Idaho, become synonyms for terror. In the absence of the WMDs, Saddam and bin Laden have largely become indistinguishable.

The images from Abu Ghraib have done what the reports of the mounting casualties in Iraq, military and civilian, have so far failed to do: galvanise people opposed to America's Iraq policy. The reason is that these images undermine the moral high ground that Americans often seek to stake out for themselves.
...
In the process America must also change tact on the Israeli/Palestinian question and become more even-handed. It may demand swallowing some pride, but the United States is usually willing to do what is right.

Okay, boys and girls, whip out your von Clausewitz and read Chapter 5 on "The Military Virtue of an Army." As for fear, it's a healthy part of being human and being in a dangerous situation. However, here's how the U.S. Marines have responded under fire; baby, in the heat of fire, fear ain't what's uppermost in your mind. Maybe fear comes after the adrenaline rush has faded. From personal experience, my response to fear has been, oh yeah? Curses to that. Then come the shivers when all is over. You want a picture of fear? Look at the panty-waists at the U.N. who cut and run at the first bomb.

Dolts. Arab and Islam are synonyms for terror. Who's bombing and killing all over the world? Catholic nuns? We didn't set up the equation. They did. Caribbean journalists have to learn to play on the field as it is, not as they want it to be.

Practising even-handedness in the West Bank/Gaza Arab-Israeli situation is no more than equating self-defense with terrorism. Enough of that nonsense. The Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza had their chance; all they had to do was renounce terror; however, doing that required them to abandon their expressed aim of genocide -- destroying every Jew in Israel. The Arab anti-Semitic code is "Zionist," by the way. For the Arabas, killing every Jew in Israel -- written into the charters of Hamas and the PLO -- is more important than peace and establishing another Arab state in West Bank and Gaza. In fact, they want no one but Arab Muslims in the Mid East, as the Arab Christians will soon discover should Israel ever be destroyed.