Jeff Jacoby quotes the late Michael Kelly:

The United States may not be able to stop every homicidal fascist on the planet, but that is hardly an argument for stopping none of them. If the Bush administration had listened to Kennedy and to the millions like him the world over who protested and marched raised their voices against invading Iraq, would the world be a better place today? Leaving Saddam and the Ba’athists in power — free to break and butcher their victims, to support international terrorists, to menace other countries — would have emboldened murderous dictators everywhere. The jihadists of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas, celebrating the latest display of American irresolution, would have been spurred to new atrocities. The Arab world would have sunk a little deeper into its nightmare of cruelty and fear. And women’s heads would still be getting nailed to the front doors of Iraqi homes.

Three years into the war, with many Americans wondering if it was a mistake and the media coverage endlessly negative, one voice I miss more than ever is that of Michael Kelly. The first journalist to die while covering the war, Kelly was the editor of The Atlantic and a columnist for The Washington Post. He had covered the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, and in one of his last columns, filed from Kuwait City, he reflected on the coming liberation of Iraq: “Tyranny truly is a horror: an immense, endlessly bloody, endlessly painful, endlessly varied, endless crime against not humanity in the abstract but a lot of humans in the flesh. It is, as Orwell wrote, a jackboot forever stomping on a human face.

“I understand why some dislike the idea, and fear the ramifications, of America as a liberator. But I do not understand why they do not see that anything is better than life with your face under the boot. And that any rescue of a people under the boot (be they Afghan, Kuwaiti, or Iraqi) is something to be desired. Even if the rescue is less than perfectly realized. Even if the rescuer is a great, overmuscled, bossy, selfish oaf. Or would you, for yourself, choose the boot?”

There is a quotation of unidentifiable origin, usually attributed to George Orwell, one version of which goes:

We sleep safely in our beds at night because rough men stand ready to visit unspeakable violence on those who wish to do us harm.

Rough men from Canada and the United States broke into a house on the outskirts of Baghdad today, where they freed, from a “kidnapping cell,” one British and two Canadian members of a Chicago-based Christian Peacemaking Team, kidnapped last November 26. The body of a fourth peacemaker, the American Tom Fox, was found March 9th, discarded along a railway line. Fox had been tortured, and then shot.

Coalition forces had learned the location of the kidnap victims only a few hours earlier as the result of the interrogation of a prisoner captured last night. Is it possible, do you suppose, that someone may possibly have employed violence and coercive methods, thus violating his human rights?

Associated Press reports:

The Christian Peacemaker Teams volunteers have been in Iraq since October 2002, investigating allegations of abuse against Iraqi detainees by coalition forces.

And, see! They may actually have found just such a case.

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One would think that the Moonbat Galactic Central Headquarters web-site would have a comment on the rescue, and so they do. One notes that it contains not single word of thanks for the men, who obviously at some personal hazard and inconvenience, went out and saved these bleating moonbat imbeciles from painful death at the hands of evil men. On the contrary, the statement actually condemns their efforts generally.

We believe that the illegal occupation of Iraq by Multinational Forces is the root cause of the insecurity which led to this kidnapping and so much pain and suffering in Iraq. The occupation must end… We pray that Christians throughout the world will, in the same spirit, call for justice and for respect for the human rights of the thousands of Iraqis who are being detained illegally by the U.S. and British forces occupying Iraq.

Michelle Malkin was pretty steamed over this one, and who can blame her?

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Wretchard is eloquent as usual.

Sir Charles Napier

Even liberal Time Magazine sounds indignant:

When a Christian believer in a nation wholly dependent on U.S. support faces trial and possibly execution simply for embracing the same faith as the President of the United States, you’d think that country would be read the riot act. Instead, Washington’s response to the trial in Afghanistan of Abdul Rahman has been rather muted. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns has emphasized the U.S. commitment to freedom of worship, and urged the Afghan authorities to follow what he said was their own constitution’s commitment to the same principle. But, he added, the U.S. was not going to pressure the Afghan authorities on the matter. “This is a case that is not under the competence of the United States,” he said. “It is under the competence of the Afghan authorities. We hope that the Afghan constitution is going to be upheld, and in our view, if it is upheld, he will be found to be innocent.”

Mr. Bush said he was “deeply troubled.”

I’m troubled when I hear — deeply troubled when I hear that a person who has converted away from Islam may be held to account. That’s not the universal application of the values that I talked about.

So much for that Woodrow Wilson democracy stuff. If the primitive ragheads we liberated want to relapse into medieval barbarism, we need to revise our theories of political development.

Maybe the heathen Afghans, like the once primitive and blue-painted inhabitants of the British Isles, require a few centuries of closer intercourse with civilization under adult supervision, before they are, in fact, ready to assume their rightful place in the community of nations as a self-governing, independent, and democratic state. Democracy, pace Woodrow Wilson, contemporary expectations, and George W. Bush, is a system characteristic of intellectually advanced and comparatively enlightened states. Give some primitive savage the vote, and what he wants to vote for is liable to be precisely the kind of thing that ought to be illegal in the first place.

The United States ought to contact the government of Afghanistan, and quote what Sir Charles Napier, British commander-in-chief in India, told the Hindus regarding the practice of suttee (the burning of widows on their husband’s funeral pyres).

You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.

Mosnews reports:

Belarus opposition leader Alexander Kozulin and his campaign headquarters staff are currently working on the plan to set up an alternative government in the country, Gazeta.ru said Wednesday.

The “People’s Trust Government” project will then be introduced to the political council of Belarus democratic forces.

Alexander Kozulin previously called for an end to the demonstrations in October Square, and is suspected of functioning as an agent of Moscow or the Minsk regime. One wonders if he is about to be promoted internationally by Russian Intelligence as a purported democratic opposition successor to Lukashenko, but one who who would, in reality, continue to operate as a puppet of the Kremlin.

The German state of Hesse is starting to test immigrants who wish to become German citizens on their knowledge of German history, culture and politics. The test consists of 100 questions. Handelsblatt has on-line an 18 question excerpt (in German, natürlich).

test

On Sunday, the New York Times described the US invasion of Iraq as “a debacle.” To read the liberal MSM, you would think the occupation of Iraq was a bloodbath resembling in casualties the battle of Verdun. Proud Kaffir at Red State Diaries cites some illuminating statistics:

Take a look at the actual US Military Casualty figures since 1980. If you do the math, you will find quite a few surpises. First of all, let’s compare numbers of US Military personnel that died during the first term of the last four presidents.

George W. Bush . . . . . 5187 (2001-2004)
Bill Clinton . . . . . . . . . 4302 (1993-1996)
George H.W. Bush . . . . 6223 (1989-1992)
Ronald Reagan . . . . . . 9163 (1981-1984)

Even during the (per MSM) utopic peacetime of Bill Clinton’s term, we lost 4302 service personnel. H.W. Bush and Reagan actually lost significantly more personnel while never fighting an extensive war, much less a simulaltaneous war on two theaters (Iraq and Afghanistan). Even the dovish Carter lost more people duing his last year in office, in 1980 lost 2392, than W. has lost in any single year of his presidency. (2005 figures are not available but I would wager the numbers would be slightly higher than 2004.)

In 2004, more soldiers died outside of Iraq and Afghanistan than died inside these two war zones (900 in these zones, 987 outside these zones). The reason is that there are usually a fair number that die every year in training accidents, as well as a small number of illness and suicide. Yet the MSM would make you think that US soldiers are dying at a high number in these zones, and at a significantly higher number than in past years or under past presidents. This is all simlpy outright lies and distortion.

Taken all together, it is clear to see that the military is actually doing a fine job and suffering very low casualty rates. It also shows that our enemies are not quite as efficient as the MSM and world press would like them to be.

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I think the best historical comparison of scale for the US occupation of Iraq would be to the century-ago Phillipine Insurrection.

PHILLIPINE INSURRECTION versus US OCCUPATION OF IRAQ

Duration – 1899-1913 (14 years) versus 2003-? (3 years so far)
US Forces Deployed- 126,000 versus 133,000
Insurgency- 80,000 versus est.12 to 20,000
US Deaths – 4324 versus 2319

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Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

Eugéne Delacroix (1798-1863), Attila suivi de ses hordes, foule aux pieds l’Italie et les arts (Attila followed by his Horde, Trampling under Foot Italy and the Arts), Bibliothèque, Palais Bourbon, Paris, 1843-47

The Sorbonne was occupied for twelve hours by rioters, before being retaken by French police.

“A sad assessment succeeded the forcible intervention of the police: at least six rooms sacked, five offices of the National School of Chartres looted, two lecture-halls and all the cafeterias destroyed, three other devastated rooms, and forty rare books mutilated or burned. Those who held out for reasonable dialogue were overtaken by events, observed someone from the Rector’s office. Everything degenerated because of a horde of savages.

RARE BOOKS STOLEN OR BURNED

Rare religious books of great value were burned or stolen at the time of the occupation of the Sorbonne on the night of March 10 to March 11. Not only were hundreds of tables and chairs destroyed in the Sorbonne. Some 300 people, some students, some not, who occupied the place also violated works of a great historical value. A preliminary list of books burned on the spot or stolen has been just transmitted to the vice-chancellor of Paris by the Director of Studies of the School of Chartres, Jerome Belmon.

An American commie web-site has a manifesto from the barbarians.

Bloggers wishing to register support for the efforts of the people of Belarus to free themselves from dictatorship and rejoin the community of civilized nations might choose to display on their blogs the 600 year old national arms of Belarus: the Ðu0178агонÑ [Pahonia – “the Pursuer”], linked to Belarus Elections 2006, or to any other website associated with the Belarussian Opposition. (A smaller version will be found in the lower portion of the right column.)

The Ðu0178агонÑ [Pahonia, Vytis in Lithuanian, Pogon in Polish] is the coat of arms of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, adopted in 1386 by Grand Duke Jagiello on the occasion of Lithuania’s conversion to Christianity and dynastic union with Poland.

link

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Today, the forces of planetary political correctnesss are celebrating an “International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,” but don’t suppose that is intended to mean white farmers should be permitted to own farms in Zimbabwe.

No, the poster reference is a Lego, the product of Denmark’s best-known company, and the form that racism is purportedly taking is colored red, like the Danish flag.

Sandmonkey gets it right.

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The Blogosphere wins another one. The Lego poster was taken down.

Bird and Begonias, Koson Ohara (1877-1945) c.1910

Subject: A silhouetted bird flying through the driving rain, beneath it sprays of flowering Begonia.

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The same essential image was recorded almost 1200 years earlier in Europe.

Venerable Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of England, Book II, Chapter 7:

The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant.