What We're Fighting For

The White House would have you believe over 2,000 Americans have died in Iraq because creating democracy in Iraq will make us safer. Here’s a look at some of the folks who are supposed to do this for us.

It’s not politicians, or closet Ba’athists, or even the insurgents who won’t have blown themselves to tiny bits by then. I’m talking about grass roots, average Joes and Janes who make up the bulk of any electorate, what Nixon would have called the Silent Majority.

The valley of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers is allegedly the birthplace of civilization; since then local civilization has suffered from what is, at best, arrested development, if not profound retardation. Witness the quaint local custom of honor killings.

Honor is important to Iraqis, and is provided by men doing manly (to them) things. Women can dishonor the family a million ways, even though almost all of them requires a man, who may not leave the woman any choice. Women who don’t measure up, regardless of the circumstances, have dishonored the family, and must make amends. We’re not talking about washing dishes for a month, or being banished; they have to die, and a family member has to do it.

National Public Radio recently interviewed an Iraqi family whose sixteen year-old daughter was kidnapped in an extortion plot. The daughter was returned, but since no one could prove she hadn’t been raped, she had to go. Her cousin, a policeman, shot her with his service weapon because, in his words, her father and brother lacked the courage. He made it sound like he did her a favor. She could never have shown her face again. She didn’t go to school, or have a job, so no one there will wonder about her. The only people who know she’s gone are her family and her tribe, and they know why. No charges will be brought because no one sees anything wrong with this.

I’m rarely accused of being politically correct, yet I try not to be too harsh on the customs of others, knowing many of ours can seem pretty strange to someone looking in from the outside. Honor killings are easy: these people are animals. Not “animal,” as in having disgusting personal habits; “animal” as in “sub-human,” or even better, “not human.” George W. Bush thinks it’s worth thousands of young American lives and billions of dollars he won’t spend to ensure Americans’ health care to turn Iraq over to vermin like this. He thinks it will make the world a better place.

Bush and I finally agree: give them the country. Quickly. The elections are December 15. Sit down with the winners on January 1 and give them the timetable by which they’re going to get their army and police in gear, and get our people out of there by Christmas 2006. Then the Iraqis can live in their little cesspool without infidel intervention. The United States has done more than enough wrong in Iraq over the last decade; at least we didn’t create Iraqis.