Give him a shower, a shave and a haircut, and bring him back. We need him. They deserve him.
We're not facing a people deprived for some 40 years. They've been at it for nearly 1,400 years. We're caught in the middle of Islam Gone Wild.
We call it liberation. They call it occupation. (Now even we call it occupation.)
The table for Iraq was set in Israel, in the territories of Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Israel's Ramallah, where two Jewish innocents were festively hacked to death, is America's Fallujah, where four Americans were slaughtered and dismembered amid the frivolity of the Arab Street.
To know the people of Iraq, first know the people who call themselves Palestinians.
From Jenin to the "holy" city of Najaf, they lace bombs with rat poison and are happy to call themselves brothers in the same jihad against Christians and Jews.
From Israel's Nablus to Iraq's Basra, they stampede with hoods to cover their faces and to conceal their cowardice and their shame.
They repay our sacrifices on their behalf with ambush and the slaying of our soldiers and the kidnapping of our civilians. They thank us by chanting "Death To America." We toppled Saddam for them and spared them from his death squads and his rape rooms. They proclaim their gratitude by murder and mutilation.
For a single Saddam, hundreds of mullahs have sprouted in his place. Where were they when he was in power? Where was their courage before we opened the floodgates?
They smile for us with curses. They wave white flags of peace and surrender beneath which they cloak bayonets, like their ancestor, Amalek.
This did not start yesterday and it will not end tomorrow. Ask Israel.
We're Americans. What do we know? We faced the Nazis and we won. We engaged the Soviets and we triumphed. But this is new and even more terrible.
The leave-taking was good when we nabbed him in the flesh, or even before when we downed him in marble. That should have been our "exit strategy." We're gone, good people. We did the job. The rest is up to you. We won. So long. It's all yours. But we stayed and found out that not everybody welcomes a chance at freedom.
This is a different fight, a different people. These are terrorists without borders. They have no address. We love life. They love death. We are strangers in strange lands.
What do we know of tribal grudges that date back tens of centuries? We know nothing of the kaffiyeh and the casbah. We know there is goodness in them because we are brothers and sisters in humanity, but we know nothing of Shiites and Sunnis and a thousand other rivalries that divide them, except when it comes to Christians and Jews. In this, they are one nation under Allah.
We won our virtues from Hollywood and from Sinai. From the legacy of Gary Cooper in High Noon and Alan Ladd in Shane, we learned to stand tall and shoot straight and thereafter righteousness will prevail. Our Judeo-Christian heritage commands us to pursue justice: "Justice, Justice, shalt thou pursue!"
April, said the poet T.S. Eliot, is the cruelest month. If you're an American, that's for sure. If you're an Israeli, that's every month.
Israel is the stage for the first act and all acts to follow. If we don't learn from Israel, we will never learn. But just as Prime Minister Sharon lives in deluded folly for all his concessions and appeasements, so President Bush is wrong in his belief that what we're facing is a brush-fire that is narrow and containable. What do the Philippines and Mosul have in common? Certainly not the Jews. Definitely the Koran and its net to snare the infidel.
So naive are we that we play by their rules and traffic their language. Their killing fields we promptly name "holy" cities. They savage our churches and synagogues, but we daintily preserve their mosques. A tinhorn wannabe tyrant shows up with a beard and a headscarf and immediately we call him "mullah" and "spiritual leader".
Of Ahmed Yassin in Gaza and Muqtada Al-Sadr in Najaf, any action of ours to detain them from more blood-lusting is picked up from their lingo as "provocative."
We call the enemy Bin-Laden or Al-Qaeda for fear of offending Islam, whose best (and there must be a Silent Majority that is good and noble) have yet to collectively denounce the radicals and malcontents that have abducted their faith. Their sermons for elders and their textbooks for children are not so bashful and delicate in what they say about Christians and Jews, Americans and Israelis.
We are reminded, by President Bush and his generals, that soon freedom and security will prevail.
Ask Israel. Ask Israel to define security. Israel is young and Israel is old and Israel knows.
Israel has faced Amalek for more than 3,000 years, and the Amalekites are different from anything we've ever known in our brief history.
Their dreams are not our dreams. Their justice is not our justice. Their god is not our God. Their prayers are not our prayers.
From the movie Cool Hand Luke, we have the line: "What we've got here, is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach."
That says it better than the philosopher Fukuyama, who announced history at an end, when in fact, it is just beginning with an idealism that is staggering in its depravity.
Some men you just can't reach.
But we were right to go in. We pursued justice. We came with the best of intentions, but we don't know these people. Saddam knew them.
We owe it to them to give them what they want. Prop him up and give him back. That, too, is justice.
We're not facing a people deprived for some 40 years. They've been at it for nearly 1,400 years. We're caught in the middle of Islam Gone Wild.
We call it liberation. They call it occupation. (Now even we call it occupation.)
The table for Iraq was set in Israel, in the territories of Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Israel's Ramallah, where two Jewish innocents were festively hacked to death, is America's Fallujah, where four Americans were slaughtered and dismembered amid the frivolity of the Arab Street.
To know the people of Iraq, first know the people who call themselves Palestinians.
From Jenin to the "holy" city of Najaf, they lace bombs with rat poison and are happy to call themselves brothers in the same jihad against Christians and Jews.
From Israel's Nablus to Iraq's Basra, they stampede with hoods to cover their faces and to conceal their cowardice and their shame.
They repay our sacrifices on their behalf with ambush and the slaying of our soldiers and the kidnapping of our civilians. They thank us by chanting "Death To America." We toppled Saddam for them and spared them from his death squads and his rape rooms. They proclaim their gratitude by murder and mutilation.
For a single Saddam, hundreds of mullahs have sprouted in his place. Where were they when he was in power? Where was their courage before we opened the floodgates?
They smile for us with curses. They wave white flags of peace and surrender beneath which they cloak bayonets, like their ancestor, Amalek.
This did not start yesterday and it will not end tomorrow. Ask Israel.
We're Americans. What do we know? We faced the Nazis and we won. We engaged the Soviets and we triumphed. But this is new and even more terrible.
The leave-taking was good when we nabbed him in the flesh, or even before when we downed him in marble. That should have been our "exit strategy." We're gone, good people. We did the job. The rest is up to you. We won. So long. It's all yours. But we stayed and found out that not everybody welcomes a chance at freedom.
This is a different fight, a different people. These are terrorists without borders. They have no address. We love life. They love death. We are strangers in strange lands.
What do we know of tribal grudges that date back tens of centuries? We know nothing of the kaffiyeh and the casbah. We know there is goodness in them because we are brothers and sisters in humanity, but we know nothing of Shiites and Sunnis and a thousand other rivalries that divide them, except when it comes to Christians and Jews. In this, they are one nation under Allah.
We won our virtues from Hollywood and from Sinai. From the legacy of Gary Cooper in High Noon and Alan Ladd in Shane, we learned to stand tall and shoot straight and thereafter righteousness will prevail. Our Judeo-Christian heritage commands us to pursue justice: "Justice, Justice, shalt thou pursue!"
April, said the poet T.S. Eliot, is the cruelest month. If you're an American, that's for sure. If you're an Israeli, that's every month.
Israel is the stage for the first act and all acts to follow. If we don't learn from Israel, we will never learn. But just as Prime Minister Sharon lives in deluded folly for all his concessions and appeasements, so President Bush is wrong in his belief that what we're facing is a brush-fire that is narrow and containable. What do the Philippines and Mosul have in common? Certainly not the Jews. Definitely the Koran and its net to snare the infidel.
So naive are we that we play by their rules and traffic their language. Their killing fields we promptly name "holy" cities. They savage our churches and synagogues, but we daintily preserve their mosques. A tinhorn wannabe tyrant shows up with a beard and a headscarf and immediately we call him "mullah" and "spiritual leader".
Of Ahmed Yassin in Gaza and Muqtada Al-Sadr in Najaf, any action of ours to detain them from more blood-lusting is picked up from their lingo as "provocative."
We call the enemy Bin-Laden or Al-Qaeda for fear of offending Islam, whose best (and there must be a Silent Majority that is good and noble) have yet to collectively denounce the radicals and malcontents that have abducted their faith. Their sermons for elders and their textbooks for children are not so bashful and delicate in what they say about Christians and Jews, Americans and Israelis.
We are reminded, by President Bush and his generals, that soon freedom and security will prevail.
Ask Israel. Ask Israel to define security. Israel is young and Israel is old and Israel knows.
Israel has faced Amalek for more than 3,000 years, and the Amalekites are different from anything we've ever known in our brief history.
Their dreams are not our dreams. Their justice is not our justice. Their god is not our God. Their prayers are not our prayers.
From the movie Cool Hand Luke, we have the line: "What we've got here, is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach."
That says it better than the philosopher Fukuyama, who announced history at an end, when in fact, it is just beginning with an idealism that is staggering in its depravity.
Some men you just can't reach.
But we were right to go in. We pursued justice. We came with the best of intentions, but we don't know these people. Saddam knew them.
We owe it to them to give them what they want. Prop him up and give him back. That, too, is justice.