You all know by now the sad, horrific story of Privates Kristian Menchaca and Thomas L. Tucker. How they were captured by Iraqi insurgents (Zarqawi’s successor, to be precise), brutally tortured, and beheaded.
Who is not filled with rage? Liberals and conservatives, moderates and independents, Democrats and Republicans. Surely all good and decent people find this abhorrent. Whatever our differences on the war in Iraq, and there are many, and many have been fleshed out here at TMV, this, if nothing else, should be cause for unity.
Perhaps these two men never should have been there in the first place, just as, perhaps, all U.S. troops never should have been there in the first place, but there is absolutely no moral equivalency here, whatever the inclination of some of the war’s more anti-American critics to suggest otherwise.
Yes, Gitmo and Abu Ghraib were (and, in the case of the former, still is) bad — and I and others have made that case repeatedly here and elsewhere, arguing that the U.S. should be held to, and should aspire to, higher standards — but, simply put, we do not do this to our enemies.
This is not a justification for the war, and our differences are not about to be smoothed over and whitewashed, but surely we see that, in the grand scheme of things, we’re all on the same side.