Let the Death Squads Begin Their Holy Work

Newsweek reports this new thinking, over at the Pentagram... er ... gon:

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.

Why try half measures? I say, kill every single Iraqi, man woman and child. Wipe them, and the memory of them, from the face of the Earth. Only then will they be truly free.

Sarcasm aside, I don't agree with everything the current Pope, John Paul II proposes, but when he warned at Christmas of 2000 about a cuture of death this is the sort of thing he had in mind:

The pope said the world was confronted by "alarming signs of the culture of death which pose a serious threat for the future."

Sin, he said, was reflected in many of the problems that continue to mar humanity, including violence against women and children, the marginalisation of the young and elderly, and "endless streams of exiles and refugees."

The United States has already brought itself to very brink of the final abyss with its War on Terrorism. It's not going to be long before genocide starts to look like a reasonable response to the insurgency in Iraq. The United States has already lost more of its soul and its humanity than I care to tabulate. Before we become complete monsters, it's time to disengage from Iraq, stop affording Israel mindless support for all its doomed policies, and pull our troops from Saudi Arabia, rather than let another day go by when Americans act as a mercenary army to support a corrupt regime. We have enough problems of that kind at home. It's time to let the Middle East care for itself.