When one chooses to write about liberal hypocrisy, the choices are seemingly unlimited. The other day I wrote about the double standard of Democrats requiring photo identification to attend their events while simultaneously opposing such a requirement for American voters. Now, in a recent column, Charles Krauthammer points to even more egregious hypocrisy at the pinnacle of the party. Entitled, “Barack Obama: Drone Warrior,” Krauthammer’s column notes that the very same liberals who were furious with the Bush Administration for torturing terrorists for essential intelligence are now quietly acquiescent regarding the Obama Administrations killing of same, seemingly on presidential whim, without review by any other authority and with absolutely no legal safeguards afforded to those so targeted.
As a soldier, I have never understood the Left’s frothing outrage at inflicting mere pain on an enemy combatant to obtain intelligence which might save friendly lives, while at the same time they take a rather antiseptic attitude toward the actual killing of the same enemy. I have always been similarly puzzled by that same odd outrage being directed at American troops, who in moments of ill-advised jubilation following victory in combat, may desecrate the body of someone who mere minutes before was most likely doing his determined best to reverse the circumstances. You have killed them, taken from them that which is the most precious human attribute they possess: life; and yet, according to the confused morality of liberals, it is an atrocity, possibly a war crime, for you to disrespect a dead husk of immediately decaying flesh from which, even most world religions concur, the human spirit has departed. While I would not encourage such demonstrations, I can see where they are the grunts’ somewhat more prosaic celebration of prevailing in a deadly contest of will, skill and courage, akin to a jet jockey’s victory roll after he’s just vaporized an entire enemy unit with a smart bomb. All the victims are equally dead with the main difference being that the grunts’ have bodies to bury while the jet jockey has a celebratory cerveza or two back at the base or aboard the carrier.
When presented with this moral contradiction, liberals, having no rational explanation for their irrational outrage, tend to splutter something to the effect that, “We’re Americans. We don’t do that. We don’t stoop to the behavior of our enemies.” None of which explains why it’s okay to kill them but not okay to torture them or disrespect their spiritless corpses. Nor is their Pollyanna view true; combat is a very brutal endeavor and American warriors fighting for their lives can be every bit as, and even more brutal, than those they are fighting. That same apple-cheeked kid from Iowa who hands out candy to the children in every village is also capable of blasting a mujahedeen into Paradise without a second thought. That capability to quickly transform from kindness to killing is one reason why we win far more battles than we lose. We are in fact, every bit as merciless on the battlefield as our adversaries. Any military force that doesn’t meet brutal force with even more brutal force is doomed to defeat. As I have written before on American Thinker, combat is not a game and in battle there is no such thing as fair, a concept for losers.
That we didn’t torture prisoners at all in the World Wars, or Korea, or Vietnam is, to put it politely, pure poppycock. While perhaps not a standard practice, torture, or rigorous interrogation was used when conditions demanded it. That was certainly the case in my war, Vietnam, where some enemy prisoners, especially those captured in an ongoing battle, were interrogated rigorously, on the spot, to obtain critically needed information regarding the strength and disposition of the forces opposing us. Did I turn a blind eye and become complicit with my silence? You bet I did. Have I ever once in the four ensuing decades regretted it? Not a chance. Did I witness desecration of enemy corpses? Again, you bet I did. One of the battalion commanders in my brigade whose radio call sign was Gunfighter and who toted a non-issue six shooter, famously had hatchets distributed to certain of his units to be used for the same purposes as American Indians had used tomahawks. They were put to work immediately and enthusiastically to instill terror in our enemy, until Westmoreland’s staff learned of the practice and ordered them confiscated. By that time though there were American paratroopers openly sporting necklaces of human ears. Grisly? Yes, but also the harsh reality of ground combat.
And no, I really don’t have any lingering regrets about that either. I saw far more evidence of torture and desecration committed by the Viet Cong and NVA against their own civilian populace than we ever inflicted upon them. It is those mental images of dead, defiled young women and children, of old mama sans and papa sans brutally tortured and disfigured before being killed that remain with me all these long years later.
So perhaps you’ll understand why, with that kind of grounding in reality, I’m with Krauthammer on this issue. Liberal Democrats, loudly condemning torture while simultaneously condoning their anointed leader to have a free, completely unaccountable hand in doling out death from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to foreign (so far) terrorists, and, as Charles notes, sometimes their non-combatant families, have taken hypocrisy to a new lethal level. Obama’s campaign team in releasing such information in an effort to lend some badly needed macho to their dear leader’s wimpy image may have taken ineptitude to a new level as well; perhaps not lethal but possibly politically fatal.
And a closing thought as I anticipate a chorus of objection from many of the conservative readers here who tend to think like liberals on this particular issue of torture: one of the primary differences between conservatives and liberals is the ability of most conservatives to face the world as it is and deal with it, while liberals see life as it should be and maintain a constant state of angst because it is not as they wish.
And never will be…
