A forced tour of Iraq

While flipping through TV channels tonight, I briefly came upon a program on a Dutch channel, where they were interviewing protesters at an Amsterdam "anti-war" march. Asked why he was there, one protester said he was against war. Then the interviewer asked him which other protests he'd been involved in, and the protester fondly recalled his memories of Vietnam, Panama, the first Gulf War. Then a question reporters never think of asking: "So it's all war where America was involved. Did you protest against any wars where other countries were involved like Russia or China?" The protester was clearly taken aback and could not answer. After some prodding he said "Tibet, I'm against Tibet."

At least all those years of protesting haven't dulled the intellectual vigor of the left. They're as sharp as ever. (Others who were interviewed were similarly flummoxed, but I didn't have much time to watch. I should have taped it.) It wasn't a big surprise to see that the protesters' main driving motive was anti-Americanism. They've long been Moscow's useful idiots, and since our victory in the Cold War they've been looking for new tyrants to appease. Now that Saddam is gone, I'm sure they'll find the next one soon.

What to do with such people? It's obvious that they're not amenable to reason, as they're living in a fantasy world of their own making. One interesting suggestion would be to give them a tour of Iraq:

It is those outside Iraq, those who enabled Saddam's killing machine, those who extended his rule through the perversion of diplomacy, those who protested and signed petitions against the "immoral war" to remove him from power but who never once mentioned Saddam's victims, whom Gen. Franks should force to see the meat hooks hanging from ceilings, the electrodes, the human meat grinders and the acid baths.

It is they who should be forced to see the flimsy coffins stacked one upon another, the thousands of corpses - men, women and children - with mutilated bodies and a single gunshot wound to the head. It is they who should be forced to see the pictures and read the record books of Saddam's victims - like the Nazis, Saddam's executioners kept detailed records in order to demonstrate their ideological commitment to the cause.

That's the only way I'd welcome Jacques Chirac and Dominque de Villepin, Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer to Iraq: on a guided tour by Tommy Franks.