Who cares if we offend Muslims? We voted for war
By Bill McClellan
Of the Post-Dispatch
Monday, May. 23 2005
My mail continues to run heavily against my so-what attitude toward allegations
that interrogators desecrated the Quran. We have offended the Muslim world,
letter-writers tell me.
So what? Wars are like that. Some people get killed. Some get offended.
As regular readers know, I was very much against this war in Iraq. In the weeks
leading up to the invasion, I was a loud, strident anti-war voice. But the
government did not listen to me or my kind and off to war we went. There was
much cheering.
Recently, a reporter asked President Bush what he thought the results would be
if there were a referendum on the war. We had a referendum, the president said.
It's called an election.
As far as I'm concerned, the president was right. The election was about the
war. I suspect that very few people voted for George W. Bush because of his
economic programs. His administration was the first since Herbert Hoover's to
have a net loss in jobs. We went from surpluses to deficits. For the most part,
he ignored that stuff and ran on the war. He won.
Everything we know now we knew then. Weapons of mass destruction? There weren't
any. The happy theory that Iraq's oil would pay for reconstruction? No way.
We've spent billions and 85 percent of Iraqi households still lack a stable
source of electricity. We'd be greeted like liberators? Even the Shiites call
us occupiers. Furthermore, anybody who wanted could get on the Internet and
look up the Project for the New American Century, the neocon manifesto that
called for the remaking of the Middle East. Iraq was just the first step. We
knew all that and we re-elected President Bush.
Country singer Toby Keith expressed the popular sentiment pretty well. "We'll
put a boot up your (behind). It's the American way." It wasn't just the
honky-tonk crowd, either. A great many religious leaders supported the
president. Archbishop Raymond Burke went so far as to say that if a Catholic
voted for the other guy, that Catholic couldn't take Communion without first
going to confession. Gay marriage was a greater evil than war, Burke opined.
So, yes, we had a referendum on the war. My side lost. I can live with that.
Still, I'm afraid that a great many people don't understand how nasty wars are.
Remember the last election when the neocons accused John Kerry of having shot a
Viet Cong in the back? Like it matters which way a guy is facing? Just last
month, Captain Rogelio Maynulet was court-martialed for shooting a wounded
insurgent, who had been deemed "untreatable" by a medic. The captain said it
was a mercy killing. He was thrown out of the Army.
I thought of a sniper from a different war. He saw a man in a clearing about
150 yards away. He shot him. The man flopped around. The sniper waited and
watched. A minute, two minutes. He waited to see if someone would come over to
help the man and he could then shoot the helper. Nobody came. Either the man
was alone, and that was unlikely - few people traveled alone in the Big Woods -
or his friends knew what they were doing. Either way, the sniper figured he
should leave. First, though, he shot the man again. Should the sniper have been
court-martialed?
I say no. Then again, I would not have court-martialed Captain Maynulet. War is
war.
Which brings me back to the interrogators. I try to be more than just tolerant
of other people's religious beliefs. I try to be indifferent. But if people
believe their religious duty is to kill unbelievers like me, well, I am no
longer indifferent to their beliefs. I am hostile toward them. Furthermore, I
figure it is they themselves who have desecrated Islam, and if the Muslim world
is going to be offended by the actions of our interrogators, that's
unfortunate.
Sadly, things are likely to get worse. More deaths, more hate, more resentment.
We are in the process of remaking the Middle East. We're going to impose
democracy on the region. We had a referendum on this, and we have sent an army
of working-class kids over there to get it done.
Let's not get squishy now.
E-mail: bmcclellan@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8143
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