Tiptoe Around the Mosques

Thomas Sowell, formerly a respected economist, now a deranged maniac wonders how future generations will regard our handling of our wars in the Middle East.

What will future generations think when they see the front pages of our leading newspapers repeatedly preoccupied with whether we are treating captured cut-throats nicely enough? What will they think when they see the Geneva Convention invoked to protect people who are excluded from protection by the Geneva Convention? . . .

During World War II, German soldiers who were captured not wearing the uniform of their own army were simply lined up against a wall and shot dead by American troops. This was not a scandal. Far from being covered up by the military, movies were taken of the executions and have since been shown on the History Channel. . . .

The frivolous demands made on our military -- that they protect museums while fighting for their lives, that they tiptoe around mosques from which people are shooting at them -- betray an irresponsibility made worse by ingratitude toward men who have put their lives on the line to protect us. . . .

If American troops kill a hundred terrorists in battle and lose ten of their own men doing it, the only headline will be: "Ten More Americans Killed in Iraq Today." . . .

What will the generations of the future say if we allow Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, which are then turned over to terrorists who can begin to annihilate American cities?

Our descendants will wonder how we could have let this happen, when we had the power to destroy any nation posing such a threat. Knowing that we had the power, they would have to wonder why we did not have the will -- and why it was so obvious that we did not
(emphasis added)

Note that Sowell seems to favor a preemptive nuclear strikes on Iran and Syria as Jeff Taylor pointed out at Reason's website.

World War II was the last major war that makes people feel warm and Fuzzy inside, so neocons are always trying to draw parallels with the current war. But WWII was a total war. The policy of the Allies was to demand unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan and slaughter them until they capitulated. Not only did we execute spies, we terror-bombed cities and slaughtered civilians. Presumably Catholic and Lutheran churches were destroyed and Bibles burned and clergy killed in the bombing of Dresden in 1945. If the U.S. were engaged in a total war against the Islamic world, offending their various sensibilities and sensitivites would be unimportant, but that is not the war the the U.S. is fighting.

Sowell should do a little more perusing of headlines, he might see more than casualty figures. If he thought about it for half-a-second, it might occur to him that casualties remain such a big story because the Bush Administration keeps declaring victory. The first time was the president's infamous carrier landing stunt that set neocon hearts to fluttering. The most recent example was the Vice President's recent claim that the Iraq insurgency is in its "last throes."

Dr. Sowell misses several questions that future generations will surely ask about our handing of the terror war. For example, why did the US invade a country that didn't attack us and posed no threat to us? Also, they might ask why the Bush administration rewarded the people who screwed up and punished the ones who got it right.

It is a messed up war that the United States is mired in. However, it is the war that Bush and the Neocons wanted. If Thomas Sowell wants to see who is to blame for the fact that American soldiers must tiptoe around the mosques like Tiny Tim, he can start by looking in the mirror.