Refugees Stream Out of Fallujah
“As the struggle for Fallujah entered a fifth day, hundreds of women, children and the elderly streamed out of the city. Marines ordered Iraqi men of ‘military age’ to stay behind, sometimes turning back entire families if they refused to be separated.”
This sure does sound familiar. Oh yeah, we used these sorts of actions as justification for our military interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Then again, the difference is we are good and they are evil.
Nebojsa Malic replies:
As a matter of fact, I seem to recall “separating men from women by force” being a major part of the Srebrenica indictments as proof of genocide. I would say we could dismiss that now, but you are right – the difference is that under the current school of “reasoning” anything Americans (or other designated good group) does is justifiable and good, while anything the designated demons (Serbs, Iraqis, etc.) do is bestial, genocidal and evil. This mode of thought seems to be very hard to break. I hope this helps, so thank you for sending this in.
I visit this site to, reluctantly, view “The List” to check for names from our former unit (1st Infantry Division, Germany). I don’t want to look – but I do – I have to.
I decided to go a bit further this morning, and read through the blog. My heart sunk.
More propaganda.
It doesn’t matter what side of the fence it’s from – if you’re only providing ONE viewpoint, it’s propaganda.
For each voice of concern you have from “someone in Baghdad” I could find you 10 voices of those who have positive news to report, and who are also in Baghdad (and far worse places).
Yet the positive news does not get reported. Why is that?
Believe it or not, there are Iraqis there who will pull our soldiers aside and discreetly offer words of support. If they were to do this publicly, they would risk being shot, and their families killed as well, for appearing pro-American.
Right now – they will say and do what they have to just to survive. Who can blame them.
In the interest of fairness, and all around good journalism, your blog should at least attempt to offer both sides of this tragic issue.
Otherwise, you risk contributing to the intents of the terrorists, who want nothing more than to see our country, our soldiers, and our government fail.
You fall right into their gameplan, and it is a troubling thought, as well, knowing how they must smile in delight when they read your website.
To watch terrorists gain footing as they play with American minds means they are successfully employing another method of destroying us.
Please, be careful what you write.
If you care about the very soldiers you claim to support, make as much “ado” about the fact that there are good soldiers out there making GOOD THINGS happen for Iraqi people – and that the majority of Iraqis are hoping and praying for a democratic, free lifestyle such as the one we are privy to.
Thank You.
~ Kim Petersen, Okinawa, Japan
Mike Ewens replies:
First, propaganda is not a bad thing, it is merely a way of saying that we have principles and strong opinions based on those principles. So your labeling of our cause as “propaganda” is far from offensive.
I suspect that the “positive news” that you wish for us to cover concerns, “freer Iraqis”, new pipelines, more Iraqi schools, etc. Defining these things as “good” or “positive” assumes that America should be doing such things in the first place. Again, we return to principles.
Antiwar.com believes in nonintervention, viz the idea that the US government has no role intervening in foreign lands. Our opposition rests on Constitutional and pragmatic grounds. So despite a new school here or a “appointed council” there, we don’t feel – nor can we principally do so – that such things are positive. The war on Iraq should not have happened and thus all its manifestations are wrong, no matter their “goodness.”
I bet if you looked back at Hitler’s time you could find many positive results of his march for conquest (This is just an extreme example, no direct analogy intended). One reason for the resounding German support for Hitler was the horrible conditions of a normal German citizen who perhaps a better life and thought Hitler’s agenda (growth, conquest, etc.) was a path to prosperity. A few years into the war – disregarding, as you have, the deaths of its young men – German unemployment (I gather) was near 0 percent. Here is some “positive news” from the fronts of an aggressive war.
Your demand for fairness is in fact a demand for a dilution of our principles which none of us at Antiwar.com will ever allow to happen.
Ran HaCohen writes that “Yassin’s assassination, the assassinating of a religious and a political leader, is a crime of a very special kind.”
Yassin wrote the Hamas covenant. Its preamble states: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” Article 7 asserts: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him”.
This “old man in a wheel chair, a religious and a political leader” was responsible for the death of 377 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians, including many children. The Geneva Convention prohibits harming or killing civilians, regardless of occupation or not. The killing (not assassination) of Yassin was a moral act of self-defense. The comparison between Hitler and Israel is as odious as is nonsensical. I do not recall that any Polish Jews exploded themselves in buses or restaurants in Berlin.
It is amazing that Ran HaCohen depicts all of Israel, within pre-’67 borders, as “occupied land”. One wonders why is he living there? Or is the salary he receives from the Zionist “occupiers” difficult to give up? When Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Tanzim, and the like, murder civilians in Israel – it is not barbaric, physical extermination of the enemy. When Israel kills the terrorist perpetrators, it is. Typical for the lunatic left.
Ran HaCohen replies:
Precisely: “The Geneva Convention prohibits harming or killing civilians, regardless of occupation or not.” Yassin was a civilian, so his killing – even if he wrote some documents you dislike – was a crime (Is writing a reason for capital punishment without trial? For Hitler it was; for you too?). Since you support his killing, you support the killing of civilians, period. Some Palestinian activists and Israeli generals share your conviction, and so does Bin Laden, but I do not join this choir of terrorism. If the Barbarization of Israel needed any additional evidence, your letter supplies it generously, so thank you for that.
As for the map, I have answered that a thousand times before: find me a better (i.e. less biased) map and I’d use it.
As for the blood libel that murder of Israeli civilians is acceptable to me (I could take you to Court for that), I repeat: unlike you, I oppose the killing of any civilians under any circumstances. Your argument about Hitler is too weak to address, sorry.
Fallujah Revenge and the War Disease
The US military’s response to the Fallujah atrocity has been very measured and not at all vengeful. I don’t know what the point of your whole article was, it was arguing forcefully against committing collective punishment. But you act like that is what is happening now when it is pretty clearly not.
The US forces have not committed any collective punishment, but they are trying to fight the armed militias in the town and defeat them. There is no alternative in this case to urban warfare. The quicker the better, for the sake of the supposedly innocent and peaceful majority of residents there.
Having armed Shia and Baath militias wandering around cannot be allowed, and there is no good way to stop them except sending in the Marines.
I didn’t see any alternate actions proposed in your article. Do you seriously propose packing up and leaving Iraq now? That puts the Iraqi population again under the control of whichever set of thugs can get enough sociopaths with Ak-47s in the streets first. I think the Marines are showing admirable restraint against these militia guys who are pretty clearly sadistic and vicious in the extreme. It is almost as if you are taking the side of anyone except the Americans. The so-called “resistance” is a bunch of gangs who want to establish what would essentially be another government like Iran or the Taliban. If there are any moderate people among the Iraqi population, they presumably are scared as hell of that, and if there are elements who desire such a government, well then they are a committing a crime against humanity.
What sickens me is how the United Nations is doing nothing. They could easily send forces to pacify the country and help set up a democratic government. But like Bosnia and Rwanda and Somalia and Lebanon and Haiti all the other death pits, no one except the US is willing to do anything.
Anthony Gregory replies:
Even if the US military response to Fallujah has been, as you say, “measured” and “not at all vengeful,” by the looks of some photographs of the victims of the response, I would say it’s meant the violent deaths of some completely innocent people, including little children.
It’s pretty much impossible to wage a war on a country and topple its regime without killing thousands of innocents, and it’s nearly impossible to maintain an extremely unwelcome occupation by force, without resorting to barbarism. It should be clear as day to anyone that this occupation has become an ever-increasing cycle of violence and death. About 80 Americans, and far more Iraqis, have died since the beginning of this month.
My main point in the article was to expose the war mentality as it is infecting America’s hawks, many of whom do seek revenge, even if you and the military don’t. But the realities of war, even a “humanitarian” war, are never much brighter than the effects of authentic vengeance.
It’s insane to keep this up. You say it’s “for the sake of the supposedly innocent and peaceful majority of the residents there.” What do you mean by that? It seems to me indicative of a wartime lapse in reasoning to say the U.S. action in Iraq is for the benefit of people you’re not prepared to say for sure are innocent and peaceful. As I alluded to in the article, this war has made Americans defend US aggression on the Iraqis’ behalf, and yet express resent that the Iraqis don’t appreciate it. If they don’t appreciate it, what right does our government have being over there? Why should it be there, where it’s not appreciated? Wasn’t the idea that the US invasion was supported by the Iraqi people instrumental in the pro-war argument a year ago? What is this war about, if not WMD or the Iraqi people who are only “supposedly” innocent?
I do in fact think the US should pull out now. You say this will put Iraqis at the mercy of warlords, but for far too long they were under Saddam, whom the US government helped put into power and supported during his worst crimes against humanity. For too long they were at the mercy of the sanctions of the UN, an organization you criticize, though it was the US that called for the sanctions. The idea was to make life so miserable they’d overthrow Saddam. Sounds like collective punishment to me.
As far as the moderates go, Iraq’s majority are Shiites who are more fundamentalist, in most ways, than Saddam’s secular regime was. Opponents of the war never had a solution in mind for the Iraqi people because no easy solution existed. The people in the regime have been oppressed by local and foreign rulers going back hundreds of years. There was never a quick way to turn it into a free Jeffersonian republic, and the more honest of the doves never pretended there was.
But killing more people, and inspiring more and more people to strike back, is clearly not the best alternative facing us. And we shouldn’t kid ourselves. The only thing keeping the war alive is its own momentum.
We need to stop it before it’s too late and the war disease becomes incurable.
Look into the abyss of the Clash of Civilizations cooked up by the Neo-cons and their brain trusts, one realizes that the world is in dire need of a fair minded media to build the bridge of understanding between peoples and civilizations. At the risk of being naive, I still believe in the basic decency of humanity. Even in the age of massive warmongering from the mass media, at least there are voices of sanity like yours that could advocate fairness and respect for our common humanity. However, after reading your An American in China series, (your only commentary about China for quite some time), I wonder how could your editors allow Antiwar.com, which has been advocating for the value of the American founding fathers and their virtue of the republic (rather than of the Empire), to slip to the level of Weekly Standard, The New Republic, The Spectator, and WSJ?
It is the common knowledge that before the Neo-con gangs identify a “rogue” country to practice their sport of preemptive strike they must start their campaign against that specific country for a substantial period of time. I do not have to write a long list of countries and their leaders that have been characterized as Nazi, fascists, or Hitler. In terms of demonizing China and advocating a “China threat” your columnist can’t even be called innovative. Just add “China fascist” and “nazi,” and you could find a long list of names like Michael A. Ledeen, Jasper Becker, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, Gary Schmitt. Do I have to go all the way back to Leo Strauss, their common spiritual godfather? Now your first hand front-line reporter is dispatching right in the heart of darkness of China, Sichuan province. …
And if you wonder why the columnist made so broad “Chinese Generalizations” it is just because he lives in the environment and unwillingly went native. My advice to the editor is that please review the said columnist’s reports from China and reflect for a moment whether he is advocating peace or war, friendship or hostility, republican nonintervention or bearing up the imperial burden and please kindly inform me how his writings could further the American Founding Fathers’ republican principle? ….
Sascha Matuszak replies:
Is it me unwillingly having gone native that makes me unfit to write anymore columns about China or is it that what I write is anti-native?
I am pretty sure, though, that you have read a column or two, most likely the ones with headlines that sound anti-China, and you have decided that I am a neo-con sent from the halls of the Weekly Standard to infiltrate Antiwar.com and sow dissent.
I wonder if you, living abroad, most likely having studied abroad and worked abroad can refute anything I said in these last two columns – the two which have a lot of Asians calling for my head.
Can you show me that these Sichuanese do not have these stereotypes? Can you prove to me that the businessmen who get up and yell Heil Hitler were actually figments of my imagination? (They were joking, so I am not implying that Sichuanese are fascists – they just don’t know what connotations Hitler’s name has for most Westerners).
Basically, it was an article that pissed you off, and now I am a warmongering, lying, ignorant necon spy. Next time I spout some lies about the people I live with, I’ll be sure to think of your happiness.
What the hell has happened to that boy? Is he off his medicine or what? He’s writing some strange stuff lately.
Eric Garris replies:
Less than a month after being turned down for a job at The American Conservative, and after Antiwar.com rejected one of his columns, Gancarski renounced his antiwar positions and pledged his loyalty to the neocons and President Bush. Obviously, he had very deep commitments.
As Usual The Wrong Question Is Being Asked
“Then there was all the US government help to Diem in South Vietnam, Suharto in Indonesia, Somoza in Nicaragua, Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Stalin during World War II, Lumumba in the Congo, Saddam Hussein in Iraq (yes, that Saddam Hussein), and dozens more tyrants — all of whom used American taxpayer money to oppress their own citizens.”
This is an egregious error. Lumumba got no help from the United States. It was opposed to him and there are even rumors that President Eisenhower ordered his assassination. This occurred during the cold war and Lumumba was alleged to be a Communist. It’s not clear who killed him but Belgian colonialists with the help of native Lumumba opponents are suspected. Lumumba was the leader in the struggle for Congolese independence and freedom from colonialism. He is a present day hero amongst his people. He was the first and only elected Prime Minister of the newly freed Congolese nation.
You better go back and do some research on this, don’t you think?
Harry Browne replies:
Lumumba was a Communist who studied in Moscow, and there’s a university named after him there (although it’s possible the name has been changed since the fall of the USSR).
When the Congo received its independence from Belgium, Katanga province, under the leadership of Moise Tshombe, tried to secede from the Congo. A war broke out. The United Nations, with the help of the US, sent troops to Katanga to put down the secession. The US help was remarkable (although not that unusual) because Lumumba was pro-USSR and eager to set up a socialist government – while Tshombe was pro-US and wanting to establish a free market in Katanga. Why the US supported the UN in putting down a pro-US movement, I’ll probably never know – but it happened nonetheless.
General: No More Troops to Send to Iraq
Pete Wenk: Yes he does say where he’s going to get the troops.. He’s going to activate brigades of National Guard troops. Then, when the Guard and Reserve are completely pissed off, there will be a need for a draft.
Eric Garris: Thanks for paying attention, I have altered my blog entry.
Pete Wenk: You know, I’m sixty-four years of age, graduate of a military academy, three years in Sam’s Army, great grandfather fought for the Union, etc., etc.
Also spent some considerable part of my younger days, after leaving Sam’s Army, demonstrating against that horrible epoch we endured in the late sixties and early seventies.
But this thing is beyond anything I understand. It completely violates every damned American principle that I have any understanding of. These idiots are mental cases. They need to be locked up.
The problem is we haven’t just been waiting; we’ve been fanning the flames.
40/wk x 52 = over 2000/year. Considering we only have 1/4 the number of troops there than we did in Vietnam, our casualty rates in the last two weeks have been very Vietnam-like. Perhaps even worse, since the ratio of wounded:KIA is much higher than in Vietnam.
Also, since we have not allowed any viable Iraqi political structure to grow, there’s nobody with the authority to call things off on the Iraqi side – nobody to negotiate with. Killing or capturing al-Sadr will not reduce the violence and will just remove another leader the Iraqis respect.
One of Three Sisters Serving in Iraq Killed
During the Vietnam War it was rare for more than one sibling to be in the combat zone simultaneously unless they both volunteered. Did these three Wisconsin sisters have this option? Criminal if they did not. I suppose President Bush‘s own daughters never have to fear an Iraqi bullet or a bomb – and may they never have to – but why should other American families be forced to sacrifice their daughter for a cause Mr. Bush claims to believe in so strongly? Something is very wrong here. Good people are dying – American and Iraqis – and we need to loudly and boldly ask our leaders why.
~ Douglas Herman, USAF veteran
“Dark Suspicions About 9/11″ is another trenchant analysis by your ace columnist. Thanks to Mr. Raimondo once again for his good work!
Here’s a two-part criticism, however, on which I urge him and his editors to reflect. The “bad Barbie” link is a superficial jab at Ms. Rice and is inconsistent with his substantive analysis of her testimony. I clicked on it expecting to find a parody of Condi Rice and instead saw displayed, as you must know, several reductive and simplistic images of women – especially the sorority slut, exotic dancer, and lesbian. I fail to see any connection between the images on that link and what’s at stake with Ms. Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission.
Now, I don’t consider myself a feminist and am not lobbing a “radical feminist” broadside at Antiwar.com. As someone who reads your website every day and who urges others to do so, it’s embarrassing to see. I strongly urge Mr. Raimondo and his editors to think about how much it detracts from the quality of this particular article and from your website generally.
~ Jeremiah Duboff, Alameda, CA
You seem to have neglected another possibility: that the Israeli agents DID “share” their suspicions of the 9/11 attacks ahead of time, but that they were ignored, possibly deliberately, by the same groups in or near the US government whom Sibel Edmonds has been talking about.
About the “fairly high-level obstructionism that occurred in the crucial prelude to 9/11”: Don’t forget John O’Neill, counterterrorism expert getting countermanded (by a Bush appointed ambassador) in Yemen and, later, smeared about an unattended briefcase at a law enforcement meeting (and supposed womanizing), only to take up the position of head of security at WTC (dying there shortly after trying to rescue people in the towers). From my understanding, he was the ostensible point man on getting Osama.
I am an educator who has worked with learning disabled children for 30 years. I am troubled by the reference to the learning disabled in this article. I enjoy Charley Reese’s writing and I appreciate his perspective. However, the Bush administration and fellow Neo-Cons are deceptive conspirators with a malevolent plan which they are following. They are not learning disabled. They are dysfunctional, grandiose, selfish and insane.
Please maintain respect for those who are learning disabled and are punished by the poor educational system in this country.
~ Susan Porcaro, Rogue River, Oregon
You mentioned: “Zionism, communism or Islamic extremism. Their minds all work the same way,” in your article. You forgot the right wing Christian fundamentalists. These people are equally as zealous and ideological in their chosen beliefs. Contrary to the teachings of the New Testament, to which they claim to be adherents, they are quick to prosecute and send the military out to kill whoever happens to disagree with their views. This group comprises a large portion of Bush’s support base.
Much as I admire Mr. Reese’s insightful column, I must disagree with this one. Why? Well, please preface every sentence that follows with a “As far as I can tell from the available facts…”:
The neo-cons are not learning-disabled, they are goal-disabled as is the Bush administration in general. The neo-cons are not in exclusive control of US foreign policy; lots of things are being done – or not being done – that do not support the neocon strategy, as spelled out by PNAC and in “An End To Evil”.
The Bush administration, including the neocons, were selected for a purpose, which they have to serve. The overall aims of the US corporate /financial /military elite remain US economic hegemony, financed and fought for by the US non-elite population, with the rest of the world footing its part of the bill by buying the dollars that are the only means to acquire oil.
US industrial superiority is no longer enough to support this pleasant state of affairs – the economies of China, India and others are growing as fast as the US budget deficit, and key oil producers have been flirting with the Euro. Direct, i.e. military, control of economies and resources is called for. This project is a hard sell, as the overall US population is reluctant to pay and bleed for elite interests. The Bush administration, neocon and otherwise, were selected to sell and run the project. This explains their shifting policies, such as from UN-stay-out to UN-please-help, from democracy-in-Iraq to no-elections-in-Iraq, from Rice-will-never-testify to Rice-is-happy-to-cooperate.
All these policy choices are merely what appears to be the best policy of the moment to keep the project on track. The enduring policies remain firm: Iraq oil sales back to dollars, expanding US presence worldwide, new nukes, missile defense and US-only militarization of space. Certain policy choices, however sensible they may appear, are no-go: anything that conflicts with the described project is untenable. Any policy that would give the US control of Iraqi oil without violence would be most likely be more than welcome. As would any policy that would provide a global military superiority without the need for US casualties.
The violence is creating more violence and thus more casualties, hurting the US population’s will to pay and bleed. New nukes – in space – seem to be the long-term solution, as it would provide the ability to shock and awe any opponent from a safe distance, with a high-tech, low-people military. Unfortunately, this policy may gut the already flagging US economy, and set off a new arms race, so it is another hard sell, and thus not (yet) a realistic alternative. So, as long as realistic alternatives (vis-à-vis the overall goals) do not exist, we should expect to see Bush administration”stay the course” with persons and policies that may appear learning-disabled to the rest of us, who do not share the same goals and priorities.
~ Tom H.
Thanks for the article.
What I don’t understand is why the system of government in the U.S. which is built on a “balance of powers” has failed to contain Bush? If Bush can skew the whole system to serve his personal ideology , can you just imagine what a more intelligent and more determined individual elected as president can do? Just imagine Hitler, Stalin, Sharon as presidents of the US WOW! I think it is time we asked the US to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.
Was the PDB CUT?
Something weird is happening here – so weird, I expect I’m just missing something. But it sure looks like the August 2001 PDB “released” by Bush over the weekend was shortened drastically. The German magazine Die Zeit reported on the PDB in Oct. 2002, giving the the correct title and saying that it was ELEVEN AND A HALF PARAGRAPHS LONG.
I don’t get it. What is happening here?
Here’s the relevant passage in German, then English, with the link:
IN GERMAN:
“Crawford, 6. August 2001…. Sein PDB-Papier hat statt der sonst
üblichen zwei bis drei diesmal elfeinhalb bedruckte Seiten und trägt die
Überschrift ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U. S.'”
IN ENGLISH
“Crawford, 6. August 2001….This PDB had, instead of its usual two to
three, this time eleven and a half [elfeinhalb] printed pages, and
carried the title ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U. S.'”
LINK:
“Dossier 41/2002 – Tödliche Fehler“
Yes this is Vietnam (1963)
Yes this is Vietnam, not 1971 when I was there, and not 1967 with high casualties. What it is is close to 1963. People forget that we had imposed Diem, a Maryknoller, our of “retirement” to run South Vietnam. He was seen as foreign to the Buddhist Vietnamese, just as Chalabi is not viewed as as “true” Iraqi. When the Buddhists rose up – remember the monks setting themselves on fire? – this was put down quite brutally. Diem sent his men into the most sacred pagodas – sound familiar? – to put down this insurrection. And how about this for another “sound familiar?” The US declared the Buddhists were rising up due to communist control. We had to get rid of Diem and Nhu over this and mounted a coup to put in a group of generals who then ruled like a people’s democracy. Casualties back then were only in the hundreds. Again, sound familiar? The only question now, to me, is can we avoid thousands of American casualties over this disaster? Oh, and let us not forget that the Tonkin Gulf attack was about as real as WMD.
Condescending Rice and the Cold Warriors
These Cold Warriors still don’t get it. When Commissioner Thompson asked Condescending Rice if the Bush administration recognizes that our biggest threats are from rouge states AND Stateless terror organizations, she replied:
“…The only thing I would say is that they [terrorists] are much more effective when they can count on a state either to sponsor them or to protect them or to acquiesce in their activities… When they can get states to cooperate with them or when they can get states to acquiesce in their being on their territory, they’re much more effective.”
Well, true enough, but I have a couple of questions for Ms. Rice. Did Timothy McVeigh have a state sponsor? Did the US “allow” him to operate on its territory?
Cold Warriors are so obsessed with framing everything in 20th century terms of nation on nation warfare (i.e. Hitler and Hirohito) that they grossly underestimate the power of ordinary people to effect change. They discount the fact that guns are readily available to anyone who wants one; that perception of victory means just as much to a Guerrilla group as a real victory itself. Go ask the Viet Cong. Add to this the “new” dimension of “improvised explosive” material, stuff that can be found at any construction site in the world, and you have a very volatile situation.
If enough of the Iraqi people don’t want us there, then there is no way an army of 150,000, built for nation on nation combat, can hold them down without also turning themselves into internationally despised war criminals. Go ask the French about Algeria.
These Cold Warriors believe that Vietnam was just an anomaly in the history of American power. They blame most of our woes from that period on scapegoats such as “the press” or “the politicians”, thereby missing the point entirely. While it is true that we are facing a whole new situation in Iraq, one very different from Vietnam, at least one parallel remains: a whole helluva lot of Iraqis don’t want us there. And that, my friends, is a reality that we have to face.
“I know that those who attacked us that day – … attacked us, by the way, because of who we are, no other reason, but for who we are…”
Condoleeza Rice was asked many questions but not the one that to me seems the most pertinent and which is seldom asked by our political or news media leaders: Why are we Americans the target of choice for these “terrorists?” (I am not counting others who have been targeted after allying themselves with Washington in this unnecessary war.) Why not nations such as those is Scandinavia and Latin America, Ireland, Iceland, Switzerland and many others? All have democratic governments, treat females generally with dignity and respect and the other benefits and virtues which Washington has told us is the reason WE are attacked? Could the reason be that these countries do not bomb others or collude in the assassinations and overthrow of foreign leaders?
~ SBjr
