by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n T<\/span>he stories about the video of US troops burning the bodies of dead Taliban are disgusting\u2013\u2013but not because of anything our troops may have done to the corpses of fanatical murderers. What\u2019s disturbing is the groveling reaction of our government and military officials, who are falling all over themselves to apologize to people who cheer every time an American is killed.<\/p>\n Remember what type of people the Taliban are? Like the jihadists we are fighting in Iraq, they are murderers whose religious beliefs warrant any kind of brutality and atrocity against the \u201cinfidel.\u201d These are the people who, when they ran Afghanistan, tortured and murdered their own citizens in a soccer stadium built with Western money. These are the people who behead and murder, the people who kill women and children. And these are the people whose corpses we are supposed to worry about mistreating, whose religious beliefs, the ones that justify murder, we are supposed to be respecting.<\/p>\n I know all the rationales for the apologies and investigations and anxious assertions of how much we respect Islam. We need to win the \u201chearts and minds\u201d of all those alleged \u201cmoderate\u201d Muslims who hate us only because they don\u2019t understand us, don\u2019t realize how much we admire their wonderful religion, don\u2019t quite get everything we\u2019re doing for them, and who are abetted in their misunderstanding by the bad behavior of some of our troops. So the State Department has issued \u201ctalking points\u201d to U.S. embassies \u201cto explain to foreign journalists and officials that the alleged misconduct was an aberration that did not reflect American values,\u201d as the\u00a0New York Times<\/i>\u00a0reported.<\/p>\n The idea that all those millions cheering for the terrorists in Iraq, cheering for bin Laden, cheering for the Taliban are all just misinformed is a monumental delusion, and the most dangerous mistake we are making the war against jihad. The millions of Muslims who support jihadist murder do so not because they\u2019re ignorant of our beneficent intentions and enlightened tolerance, but because of spiritual beliefs that validate jihad, beliefs ratified by 14 centuries of Islamic jurisprudence and theology. We need to get over the peculiar arrogant belief that everything the enemy does is a mere reaction to what we do, as though these people don\u2019t have their own motivations for their actions. They know that we rescued the Muslims of Kuwait, the Muslims of Bosnia, and the Muslims of Iraq. They know that we are sacrificing our own citizens to create an ordered society that will allow Muslims to worship in peace and prosper in freedom. They know that Muslims are killing Muslims all over the world, that the greatest threats to the safety and well-being of Muslims are other Muslims, as we currently see in Sudan. They know all these things, but they don\u2019t care, because what\u2019s important is the jihad against the infidel, the divinely sanctioned struggle to compel the people of the world to accept Islam, live as second-class citizens, or die.<\/p>\n T<\/span>his false belief that Muslims only react to Western deeds also puts a powerful weapon into the hands our enemies, who can then deflect their true intentions and manipulate our behavior, as the jihadists of Palestine have been doing for decades. How else explain the bizarre spectacle of the terrorist Mahmoud Abbas being welcomed to the White House, at the very moment we claim to the world that we are at war with those who use and endorse terrorism? When has Abbas ever condemned terrorism as categorically evil and unacceptable in any circumstance, rather than condemning terrorism for being the wrong tactic at the wrong time? How can we keep saying terrorism \u201cwon\u2019t work\u201d when we are giving financial and moral support to a Palestinian regime that incorporates terrorists like Hamas that say explicitly they want to destroy Israel and will use any means necessary to do so?<\/p>\n More important, when our enemies compel us to apologize and investigate and assure the world how much we really respect Islam, they validate their estimation of our spiritual weakness and corruption. From their perspective, why else would we apologize, unless we had doubts about the rightness of our cause and the beliefs that drive our actions? The jihadists, after all, are convinced of the rightness of their belief, one validated by Islam and its traditional intolerant and arrogant disdain for the infidel. So why should they ever apologize? They believe they are right, and that Allah sanctions their slaughter. Christians can be brutalized, as is happening right now in Alexandria, where Egyptian Copts are being murdered and terrorized by Muslim mobs. Christian churches can be desecrated, Christians and Jews murdered and mutilated on videotape, and we never hear even from secular Muslim leaders the sort of anxious protestations of regret that the leaders of the most powerful nation on earth indulge in.<\/p>\n We may think we are projecting the strength of our values when we chastise our troops for sometimes resorting to unpleasant actions in order to win against a brutal enemy. But in fact, the message we send is that because we have doubts about our cause and our beliefs, we will second-guess and scrutinize our own behavior in the midst of a hard fight. Wars are ugly and cruel, as all violence is. To think that one can fight a brutal enemy within utopian parameters is to court failure and defeat. This does not mean that anything goes, obviously. But we have to be realistic about where those impassable limits lie, given the sort of irregular war being fought. We can argue about those limits later, but burning the bodies of dead murderers to my mind is a long way from actions completely out of bounds, especially if such actions will save the life of even one American and take us one step closer to achieving our goal. After all, we\u2019ve had ample proof for decades that being nice and tolerant doesn\u2019t cut any ice with those who fancy themselves the warriors of Allah.<\/p>\n All means cannot justify all ends, but\u00a0some<\/i>\u00a0means can justify the\u00a0right\u00a0<\/i>ends. Every war this country has fought employed terrible means that none of us would want to choose, but that were justified by the rightness and goodness of the end. If we truly believe that our goals in Iraq are just enough to kill and die for, then we should stop undercutting and second-guessing our troops in the field who are laying their lives on the line to achieve those noble ends. And if we don\u2019t really believe in those goals enough to grit our teeth and do what must be done, as our fathers and grandfathers did in World War II, then we should pack up right now and go home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Americans need to muster the necessary grit to win. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The stories about the video of US troops burning the bodies of dead Taliban are disgusting\u2013\u2013but not because of anything our troops may have done to the corpses of fanatical murderers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,784],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1m0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7530,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/partisan-politics-bad-ideas-the-bergdahl-swap\/","url_meta":{"origin":5208,"position":0},"title":"Partisan Politics, Bad Ideas & the Bergdahl Swap","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine President Obama\u2019s exchange of 5 high-ranking Taliban murderers for a soldier who possibly was a deserter and collaborator encapsulates everything that is wrong with this administration\u2019s foreign policy. The serial failures of the past 5 years reflect a toxic brew of partisan politics\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"Opinion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2545,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-libya-venture-and-double-standards\/","url_meta":{"origin":5208,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Libya Venture and Double Standards","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The champion of shameless chutzpah has always been the guy who murders his parents then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he\u2019s an orphan. But White House spokesman Jay Carney might be the new champ, given his response to the House\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1071,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/another-disgraceful-apology-frenzy\/","url_meta":{"origin":5208,"position":2},"title":"Another Disgraceful Apology Frenzy","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Two recent news stories about Afghanistan reveal the delusional mentality of those conducting our foreign policy. The first is about some Marines who urinated on the corpses of Taliban fighters. Such behavior, of course, is mild compared to the sort of brutal treatment of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4315,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/enough-is-enough\/","url_meta":{"origin":5208,"position":3},"title":"Enough is Enough","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 25, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Civilization has two choices when facing jihadists. by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services After the July 7 London bombings, some in the United Kingdom wondered if the bombing was in retaliation for Britain having troops in Iraq. Perhaps, they suggested, a withdrawal, emulating the Spanish appeasement after the March\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2005"","block_context":{"text":"July 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/july-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5547,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/inside-the-cease-fire\/","url_meta":{"origin":5208,"position":4},"title":"Inside the “Cease-fire”","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 23, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"U.N.'s looming failure reveals West's moral confusion by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers With every crisis in the war against Islamic jihad, the West displays a suicidal appeasement that heartens the enemy and lessens any chance of victory. The absurd \u201ccease fire\u201d the U.N. recently hammered out between Israel and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7515,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-bad-habit-of-negotiating-with-terrorists\/","url_meta":{"origin":5208,"position":5},"title":"Our Bad Habit of Negotiating with Terrorists","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 2, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine \u00a0 Every parent should be happy for the Bergdahl family, whose son was returned to them after five years of captivity among the Taliban. 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