From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Saving
Private Lynch
Army Rangers and Navy SEALs yesterday rescued 19-year-old Pfc. Jessica Lynch,
an Army supply clerk from the delightfully named town of Palestine, W.Va., who
had been missing for nine days after Iraqi forces ambushed her supply line.
The New York Post explains how the good guys found Lynch:
In a twist right out of a Hollywood movie, U.S. intelligence may have pinpointed her exact whereabouts thanks to an Iraqi citizen--who passed a note, apparently written in English by a woman, to a Marine in the area yesterday, NBC reported.
"She's still alive. She's in room [deleted]," the note said, according to the network.
An NBC reporter also said he was approached the same day by an Iraqi who told him in English: "There's a woman in the Saddam Hospital who's an American soldier. Please make sure the people in charge know."
Lynch was "apparently shot several times during the ambush," reports the Post, but she's described as being in "good health."
Compare this courageous young woman's story with that of Lance Cpl. Stephen Funk, a 20-year-old Marine reservist who is seeking "conscientious objector status." Yes, there actually is such a thing, even in the all-volunteer military. According to the Associated Press, Funk claims he joined up because he was in a funk:
"Ultimately, it's my fault for joining in the first place," said Funk, who didn't show up when his unit was deployed to Camp Pendleton. "It wasn't as well thought out as it should've been. It was about me being depressed and wanting direction in life."
Funk, who "said he's attended every major San Francisco Bay area anti-war rally since finishing his military training last fall," adds: "They don't really advertise that they kill people."
The AP dispatch begins by setting the stage, noting that Funk had "his sister carrying his duffel bag and his mother holding his hand." No word whether he was sucking his thumb.
'Where
Do They Get Young Men Like This?'
Military blogger L.T. Smash recounts a televised vignette that requires no further
comment:
Martin Savidge of CNN, embedded with the 1st Marine battalion, was talking with 4 young Marines near his foxhole this morning live on CNN. He had been telling the story of how well the Marines had been looking out for and taking care of him since the war started. He went on to tell about the many hardships the Marines had endured since the war began and how they all look after one another.
He turned to the four and said he had cleared it with their commanders and they could use his video phone to call home.
The 19 year old Marine next to him asked Martin if he would allow his platoon sergeant to use his call to call his pregnant wife back home whom he had not been able to talk to in three months. A stunned Savidge who was visibly moved by the request shook his head and the young Marine ran off to get the sergeant.
Savidge recovered after a few seconds and turned back to the three young Marines still sitting with him and asked which one of them would like to call home first, the Marine closest to him responded with out a moments hesitation "Sir, if is all the same to you we would like to call the parents of a buddy of ours, Lance Cpl Brian Buesing of Cedar Key, Florida who was killed on 3-23-03 near Nasiriya to see how they are doing."
At that Martin Savidge totally broke down and was unable to speak. All he could get out before signing off was "Where do they get young men like this?"
Lusting
for Defeat
Boston Globe columnist James Carroll really, really wants America to lose the
war. And defeat is so close Carroll can almost taste it. It's only--well, about
35 years in the past. Carroll celebrates Lyndon Johnson's announcement, 35 years
ago Tuesday, that he was withdrawing from the 1968 presidential campaign.
"Johnson's decision . . . was a triumph of democracy. The war
had to end. The people knew it. And now the president did, too."
Of course, the American withdrawal from Vietnam didn't happen for another five years, and it was two more years before Saigon fell and the communists subjugated the South Vietnamese people. Carroll blames the delay in America's defeat on Martin Luther King's assassination four days later. But no matter; it's all enough to give him hope that Saddam Hussein can win this war:
It is April again. The war machine is loose, apparently unstoppable. An escalating air war, a rush of reinforcements, an enemy that surprises, demonstrators in the streets, a nation divided. But as before, Washington's war policy is made in fantasyland--and is even now being exposed as such.
This anniversary suggests that an on-track war machine can be derailed. A prideful president can be brought down. An April Fools' Day when peace became a joke can be redeemed. Stop the war!
Democratic Presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich echoes the theme in a Tuesday speech on the House floor:
Stop the war now. This war has been advanced on lie upon lie. Iraq was not responsible for 9/11. Iraq was not responsible for any role al Qaeda may have had in 9/11. Iraq was not responsible for the anthrax attacks on this country. Iraq did not tried to acquire nuclear weapons technology from Niger. This war is built on falsehood.
Note that Kucinich isn't sure al Qaeda was behind Sept. 11, but he's quite certain Iraq is innocent. Kucinich also says he's afraid U.S. servicemen will be hit by chemical weapons (wait, Saddam has chemical weapons?), but it's hard to take seriously his professions of concern, given that he refused to vote for last month's resolution supporting the troops.
In any case, Carroll and Kucinich are deluded if they think America isn't going to win this war. Fox News reports that the allied Central Command says our side has already destroyed the Baghdad Division of Saddam's much-hyped Republican Guard, and the Medina division, is "almost completely destroyed as well." U.S. forces are within 19 miles of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, London's Telegraph reports residents of Najaf gave American soldiers a warm welcome yesterday:
Whole families stood together outside their homes, the children smiling and their parents urging the Americans forward. Young men stood in clusters, while women dressed in black religious robes put down the clothes they had been washing in the river and waved.
"Stop the war," say Carroll and Kucinich. What they really mean is: Condemn the people of Najaf--and their countrymen--to repression or death at the hands of Saddam Hussein. And here are some examples of life under Saddam's rule:
- The Telegraph
reports that the Fedayeen Saddam are using children as young as five as "human
shields." A British tank commander "said that he had witnessed at
least four or five children, aged between five and eight, being grabbed by
the scruff of the neck and held by Iraqi fighters as they crossed a road in
front of his tank."
- The BBC
has a chilling report from a "police station" in liberated Abu al
Khasib: "Dozens and dozens of Iraqi national identity cards were spread
across the chief of police's abandoned large oak desk. . . . In
Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it is a crime not to carry these identity cards wherever
you go, a crime punishable by imprisonment. We stopped to think why these
dozens of men did not need their ID cards anymore."
- Fox
News reports that "coalition forces in Najaf are reportedly receiving
hostile fire from Iraqi forces positioned inside the Ali Mosque--one of the
most important religious shrines to Shiite Muslims. Coalition troops, seeking
to protect sacred religious and historic sites, did not return fire."
The abuse of sacred sites is another tactic Saddam has borrowed from Palestinian
Arab terrorists, who last year hijacked and desecrated the Church of the Nativity
in Bethlehem.
- The New York Post reports that Sahid Mohammed Bakir Almohari, a "prominent Muslim cleric," says Saddam's men are to blame for yesterday's shooting of seven Iraqis in a van who ran an allied checkpoint. "These people, children and women, those were put in the bus by Saddam Hussein's forces, their husbands or fathers were taken hostages and the driver was ordered to speed up to the checkpoint and not stop so that they would be shot at," Almohari tells Fox News Channel.
Whatever arguments there may once have been on the "antiwar" side, only a a sadist or a moral cretin would hope now for America to stop short of victory, which would subject the Iraqi people to more such brutality.
Weasel
Watch
James Carroll and Dennis Kucinich's position may be a fringe one here in America,
but one in three Frenchmen hope Saddam wins the war, the Times of London reports.
A poll from the French newspaper Le Monde showed "that only a third of
the French felt that they were on the same side as the Americans and British,
and that another third desired outright Iraqi victory over 'les anglo-saxons.' "
French officials, however, are furiously trying to live down their pro-Saddam maneuverings. The Associated Press reports that "France's ambassador to the United States says his country has been 'a bit of a scapegoat,' portrayed as the driving force in the U.N. Security Council's resistance to the U.S.-led war on Iraq--but he wants bygones to be bygones."
You
Don't Say--I
"Saddam Responsible for 'Loss of Innocent Lives' "--headline,
Washington Times, April 2
Is
Saddam a Ghost?
It remains a mystery whether Saddam Hussein is still breathing. Yesterday state-run
Iraqi TV promised that the dictator would give a speech, but instead of Saddam,
someone who didn't even have a mustache showed up and read the speech
attributed to him. (A Reuters dispatch carries the headline "Saddam Urges
Iraqi Jihad as More Civilians Die." Where are the scare quotes around "Saddam"?)
The Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last points out that when Tim Russert of "Meet the Press" asked Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri, if Saddam was still alive, the ambassador declined to give a straight answer: "You know, anyway I think he is alive, but the question is not there because Iraq is Iraq and Saddam Hussein is the president of Iraq. Now we have to talk about the war against Iraq, against the people of Iraq, not against one person."
So what's the deal? The simplest explanation is that Saddam is dead. CNN's Nic Robertson, reporting from Jordan since the regime expelled him from Baghdad, theorizes that he may be trying to keep his location a secret so as to avoid being attacked.
Reuters has a preposterous--Onion-worthy, really--dispatch titled "Iraq's No-Frills Media Show Outshines US, Britain." Get a load of this:
Iraq is winning battles in the propaganda war with a modest media strategy, despite a multi-million dollar U.S. campaign featuring painstakingly choreographed briefings and Hollywood-style sets.
Undeterred by America's elaborate media plan, Iraq is making its mark on the airwaves with its decidedly basic approach, media pundits say.
From a crude Baghdad set, Iraqi ministers each day knock down Western media reports and list their latest claims of conquest, sometimes wielding chrome-plated Kalashnikovs.
Unlike America and its allies, theirs is a simple message delivered directly: "We will defeat the infidel invaders."
Well, Iraqi propaganda may wow 'em in Reuterville, but Saddam is either unable or afraid to go on television and prove that he's still alive--an action that would surely boost the confidence of his supporters and strike fear in the Iraqi people.
Retiring
From Repression
On the off chance that Saddam is still alive, he might check out this 1996 Mother
Jones piece by David Wallis, which describes the lives (at the time) of 11 erstwhile
rulers, including Eastern European kings as well as African, Asian and Latin
American despots. Columnist Dennis
Prager, meanwhile, offers this suggestion:
We are not far from the following address by a college president:
As president of our university, I am proud to announce that we have extended a formal invitation to Iraq's President, the Honorable Saddam Hussein, to occupy the newly endowed Jimmy Carter Chair in Appeasement Studies.
Prager is writing tongue in cheek, but our Collin Levey noted last year that "Boston University announced it plans to offer former African presidents a resident fellowship if they leave power peacefully and democratically."
Is
Syria Next?
The Times of London reports that "Syria has issued about 2,000 passports
to people volunteering to fight for President Saddam Hussein in recent weeks."
On the bright side, that means 2,000 fewer people to fight for Bashar Assad,
should it come to that.
You
Don't Say--II
"Race Case Could Affect Admissions at Schools"--headline, Washington
Times, April 2
Dispatch
From the Porn Belt
The Washington, D.C. (Gore by 76.21%), Department of Human Services is distributing
"an explicit guide to safe sex in the House gym," reports the Hill,
a Capitol Hill newspaper. The paper quotes one "offended representative":
"I was downstairs in the House gym using the phone, and during a break I just
grabbed something to read. And I learned not to use a condom twice, among other
things."
Being
There
Remember Sheila
Sonnenschein? She's the real-life Chauncey Gardner who, as we noted
last month, offered this zany proposal: "I think that if presidents,
dictators, kings, queens and prime ministers took a course in gardening, maybe
they wouldn't have thoughts of war or amassing weapons that destroy life and
our environment."
Sonnenschein may be encouraged by this news, from the Columbus dispatch: "The war in Iraq isn't affecting garden spending for most Americans, a new poll shows. About two-thirds of the 1,002 households polled by the Garden Writers Association expect to spend the same or more on plants this spring." No doubt they're planting seeds of liberty, to be fertilized by the blood of Saddam and other tyrants.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Shelley Taylor, Barak Moore, S. Murphy, Gadi Niram, Damian Bennett, Judie Amsel, Brian Pleshek, Yehuda Hilewitz, Natalie Cohen, Raghu Desikan, Michael Segal, Daniel Schwartz, Robert LeChevalier, Dave Bell, Marcia Wilson, Joy Rothke, David Wheeler, Edward Hinzman, Glen Smith, Marie Bourgeois, Terry Young, Michael Moynihan, Joel Goldberg, Mara Gold, Jerome Marcus, S.E. Brenner, Joe Deltoro, Michael Pittard, Burt Rublin, Justin DelPrince, Danny Garcia, Michael Zukerman, Jennifer Ray, Gad Meir, C.E. Dobkin, Pat Mizell, Paul Music, Kevin Brotz, Rosanne Klass, T. Norton, Jim Orheim, Jonathan Rothenberg, Ryan Nelson, Edward Tannen, Michael Hopkovitz, David Schlosser, Reuven Weiser, Edward Himmelfarb, Edwin Acosta, Gabe Sunshine, Cliff Thier, Janice Lyons, Alan Ridgeway, Daniel Mintz, Ken Ross, Nicholas Barnes, Thomas Crimmins, John Hyman, Andrew Cooper, Carl Sherer, Matthew Franck and Todd Hartman. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Regina Herzlinger: My son is an Ivy League soldier. Why is that such a rare combination?
- Claudia Rosett: Who lost Turkey? The International Monetary Fund.
- Amy Finnerty: The Pentagon's spokeswoman catches flak for her jackets.
