Saturday, September 16, 2006

The Power of Kindness

I really liked this letter to Andrew Sullivan from a Gulf War veteran who remembers how Iraqi soldiers gave up without firing any shots. They knew that if you surrendered to Americans, you'd be fed well, treated kindly, and not tortured.

Looking back, I think that one of the main drivers in these men's heads was that they knew, absolutely, that they'd get fair treatment from us, the Americans. We were the good guys. The Iraqis on the lineknew they had an out, they had hope, so they could just walk away. (A few did piss themselves when someone told them we were Marines. Go figure.) Still, they knew Americans would be fair, and we were.

Thinking hard on what I now know of history, psychology, and the meanness of politics, that reputation for fairness was damn near unique in world history. Can you tell me of any major military power that had it? Ever? France? No. Think Algeria. The UK? Sorry, Northern Ireland, the Boxer Rebellion in China... China or Russia. I don't think so. But America had it. If those men had even put up token resistance, some of us would not have come back. But they didn't even bother, and surrendered at least in part because of our reputation. Our two hundred year old reputation for being fair and humane and decent. All the way back to George Washington, and from President George H.W. Bush all the way down to a lance-corporal jarhead at the front.

Its gone now, even from me. I can't get past that image of the Iraqi, in the hood with the wires and I'm not what you'd call a sensitive type. You know the picture. And now we have a total bust-out in the White House, and a bunch of rubber-stamps in the House, trying to make it so that half-drowning people isn't torture. That hypothermia isn't torture. That degradation isn't torture. We don't have that reputation for fairness anymore. Just the opposite, I think. And the next real enemy we face will fight like only the cornered and desperate fight. How many Marines' lives will be lost in the war ahead just because of this asshole who never once risked anything for this country?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here are a couple of entries from Wikipedia which you may want to consider before you endorse the ramblings from the unraveling mind of Andrew Sullivan:

The My Lai massacre [pronounced mee-lie] (Vietnamese: thảm sát Mỹ Lai) was a massacre committed by U.S. soldiers on hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians, mostly women and children, on March 16, 1968, in the hamlet of My Lai, during the Vietnam War. It prompted widespread outrage around the world and reduced American support at home for the war in Vietnam. The massacre is also known as the Son My massacre (Vietnamese: thảm sát Sơn Mỹ) or sometimes as the Song My Massacre.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States (1963–1969). After serving a long career in the U.S. Congress, Johnson became the 37th Vice President; in 1963, he succeeded to the presidency following President John F. Kennedy's assassination. He was a major leader of the Democratic Party and as President was responsible designing his Great Society, comprising liberal legislation including civil rights laws, Medicare (health care for the elderly), Medicaid (health care for the poor), aid to education, and a major "War on Poverty". Simultaneously he escalated the Vietnam War, from 16,000 American soldiers in 1963 to 550,000 in early 1968, of whom over 1000 were killed every month.
He was reelected in a landslide in 1964, but his popularity steadily declined after 1966 and his reelection bid in 1968 collapsed as a result of turmoil in his party.