Monday, February 18, 2008
Michael takes a tour of a 'modern' Iraqi prison: The Dungeon of Fallujah. Must-read, as always, though one of my take-aways isn't actually related to the main theme:
[USMC] Sergeant Dehaan was comfortable with his mission in Iraq and the flaws of the Iraqi Police he was tasked with training and molding.
"I prefer these small and morally ambiguous wars to the big morally black-and-white wars," he said to me later. "It would be nice if we had more support back home like we did during World War II. But look at how many people were killed in World War II. If a bunch of unpopular small wars prevent another popular big war, I'll take 'em."...
Makes a lot of sense.
Of course he's right, though the Cold War was the more recent larger conflict we faced and the hard and the softer Left ensured there were plenty of moral ambiguities relative to that decades long conflict. Not that there weren't at times, to be sure, but the Left ensured that the "baby" and the "bath water" were not distinguished very well very often.