Good Start
Falls apart. Walter Rodgers, formerly of CNN, embedded with 3/7 Cav in the invasion of Iraq, on the latest evolution in the Spanish persecution of Gibson, Wolford and deCamp, spanks the Euro-righteousness that has prompted several Iraq-related political prosecutions. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much where we part ways. CSM via Yahoo:
The Spanish case seems to be a venting of Europe’s still-simmering rage over President Bush’s unnecessary war in Iraq. It is also a classic example of allowing the architects of war to go unpunished while attempting to string up the soldiers.
Europe’s prosecutorial critics of Iraq became as unjust as the war itself. Two years ago, the Italians tried in absentia Mario Lozano, a US soldier who shot and killed an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Iraq. This case inflamed Europe’s anti-Americanism and strained Italian-American relations.
It’s too bad that, to attack the myth of murderous American soldiers, Rodgers feels like he needs to push the “Bush lied” canard. Without belaboring the realities of 2003 and the long-term threat Saddam posed yet again, there was nothing unjust or unnecessary about the war. Barack Obama and the rest of us owe Bush and the soldiers who gave their all in Iraq a debt of gratitude for leaving the world and the Middle East a better place. Here’s hoping Obama doesn’t drop the ball. While Rodgers slams the Euros for impotently trying to lynch American soldiers to satisfy their Bush Derangement Syndrome, he fails to follow through on his thesis. If the Spaniards and the Italians want to prosecute the Iraq war, they have their own complicit pols they could go after … Bush allies Jose Maria Aznar and Silvio Berlusconi … as well as Bush himself. Much as the American left could. That might require more fortitude than they have managed to show so far, but no less illogic.
My own take on the Palestine incident, which involved the unit I was attached to: Spanish Judicial Misconduct Thwarted.
Here’s Rodger’s embed book, BTW: Sleeping with Custer and the 7th Cavalry: An Embedded Reporter in Iraq. I may not agree with him on what we were doing there, but he was there and gives a damn about the people who had to do that dirty job, and that counts for something.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:57 am on Monday, August 10, 2009
One Response to “Good Start”
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August 10th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Can’t we just explain to the Spanish that, hey, in the middle of a hot firefight in urban conditions and with lots of un-uniformed Iraqis running around, standing on a roof pointing lenses at an Abrams tank is not recommended. It will, in point of fact, probably get you killed.
Point taken?