Last week was a particularly horrible week for the citizens of Iraq. Twenty innocent Iraqi civilians were shot to death Wednesday in a soccer stadium west of Baghdad by the insurgent resistance. That same day, 50 Iraqi corpses were pulled from the Tigris River as a result of the barbaric acts of these insurgents. The insurgent resistance shot down a civilian helicopter Friday; eleven people were killed. There was one survivor, who was then brutally murdered on videotape. The insurgents set off roadside bombs all over Iraq Saturday, murdering 16 people in cold blood.
The insurgents murdered Margaret Hassan, a CARE International worker for over 30 years, in October. It has been reported her body was mangled into so many pieces it was unrecognizable. Another humanitarian, Marla Ruzicka, endured the same fate last week in a roadside bomb attack. We all remember the four American contractors, who were burnt to a crisp after insurgents set fire to their Humvee and then hung their bodies from a bridge, beating their scorched corpses with baseball bats.
That’s why I was horrified, saddened and, frankly, sickened to think about how we have a woman on this campus who is sympathetic to the barbarians who carried out these unthinkable acts of terrorism on innocent Iraqi men, women and children and the United States soldiers and civilians who are working for stability in Iraq. According to an April 14 article in the Capital Times, University of Wisconsin Sophomore Pam Holschuh said she “supports the resistance in Iraq.” Ms. Holschuh lends her support to these despicable human beings. That is absolutely disgusting, disgraceful and treasonous.
There seems to be clouded judgment on the part of many people on this campus lately on the far left and the far right. Let me start with the far left. Just last week, author David Griffin came to speak at the UW about how he believes George W. Bush and the administration may have pre-planned 9/11, despite all the contradictory evidence of the independent 9/11 Commission’s reports. He says American Airlines flight 77, which flew into the Pentagon, didn’t actually fly into the Pentagon at all, and it must have been a much smaller plane.
Really, then where did the 64 passengers on flight 77 go? Did aliens abduct them? Unbelievably, Griffin’s speech drew 450 naíve, ill-informed and conspiracy-crazy UW students, who gave Griffin a standing ovation for his outrageous theories.
The far right can be equally as bad as the far left. Many of them continue to tout the black-and-white rhetoric, “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.” Nonsense. It’s very possible to have been against the Iraq invasion, which I was, and still happy to see success in Iraq and root against the insurgents in favor of our troops. The Iraq war is a very complicated situation. Both sides need to stop being simpletons.
All Americans should be hoping and praying for democracy and success in Iraq. We need to stop viewing the Iraqi conflict in such simplistic terms and vilifying people we disagree with. The far left is so entrenched in their ideology they will oppose any and all action of the U.S. military and George W. Bush. Our presence in Iraq is nothing like the Nazi occupation of France and Poland, which some of these bomb throwers would like you to believe. The far right is so entrenched in their ideology they blindly follow anything the administration does as the word of God and quickly condemn anyone who speaks out against it.
It was this type of rhetoric after Waco that was dangerous because it vilified our government as cold-blooded killers, when the situation was much more complicated than that. Timothy McVeigh was a crazed killer who took the irresponsible rhetoric of so many people who hate the government into his own hands in the Oklahoma City bombing. And Waco and Oklahoma City should be especially fresh in our minds today as we took annual occasion to reflect on their respective anniversaries last week, both having occurred on April 19.
Thirty-five years ago, Carleton Armstrong did the same thing by bombing Sterling Hall on this campus during the Vietnam War protests, which resulted in the death of a UW employee. That’s the problem with irrational and dangerous rhetoric. It can inspire mentally unstable people to act upon what they’ve been spoon-fed. In order to have real success at home and abroad, it’s going to take the rational thought of those who see things in terms of right and wrong, not left and right.
Casey Hoff ([email protected]) is a UW student and the host of “New Ground with Casey Hoff,” live Monday through Friday, 9-11 a.m., on Talk Radio 1670 WTDY.