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What are Their Motives?

112403202738-Rochester NY

You’ve seen it on TV already.

A group of insurgents swarm around the vehicle in traffic, preventing it from moving. They attack the driver with the weapons they’ve brought.

They pull him from the vehicle. They proceed to punch and kick him, to the point where he’s senseless, and utterly helpless. They celebrate their victory, dancing around.

Then, not satisfied, they start tossing cement blocks at his head as he lies helpless and bleeding on the ground. Still not satisfied, they commence looting the truck they dragged him out of.

Does this scene cause you to wonder why we are in this area at all? Perhaps this causes you to think that these natives are reacting to aggression on the part of the one they are attacking? Perhaps you think this an indication we should withdraw from the area and let these angry people solve their own problems, since we are unable to solve them- that they don’t want our help?

In defense of our actions in the area in question, it should be pointed out that a vast, if undocumented, majority of the natives in the area support our government’s actions towards them, and find these attacks and their perpetrators abhorrent. This will do little, I suppose, to change the minds of some. Nor will it change the reality that we are there and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

I suppose that there are some area warlords who delight in the kind of attacks I have described. I suppose further that they consider such attacks justified, for reasons only known to them. Yet, clearly, this is neither the view or the will of the majority in the area.

In poll after poll, the large majority of people living in the area support the actions of the government against those making these attacks.

At the same time, the people saying they are against these attacks seem fearful about actually doing anything for fear such attacks will be aimed at them for simply speaking out.

Oh, I see. You thought that I was describing Mosel or perhaps Tickrit. I guess I can understand your confusion: I rather designed it that way.

But, no. The frightful scene I have just described took place in East Los Angeles. The person being attacked is Reginald Denny.

The point I am making of course is that the two situations can get confused, one for the other, at all.

The obvious question becomes one of different responses in each situation. I have seen no calls for us to withdraw from East LA.

Indeed, the left has suggested more armed agents of our government be placed there, along with the added investment of government dollars.

I am by no means suggesting that the two situations are wholly analogous.

Indeed, I am not suprised at all that the backers of our actions in the war on terrorism have not used this juxtaposition to argue their case… The parallels are less than firmly drawn.

Yet, there are similarities which are hard to deny, and questions about our responses to each situation, that also arise from those similarities… Questions that I don’t claim to have all the answers to…but ones that will certainly make the leftists uncomfortable with not only President Bush’s position on Iraq, but their own as well, I expect.

By no means are leftists going to call for a reduced commitment to the the people of East LA because of these attacks, as they are Iraq. To do so would at the least, incur the wrath of the East LA voters… Voters who have a long history of voting left of center.

We will doubtless be led to think that pouring tax dollars into East LA is some sort of humanitarian gesture… That it is humanitarianism which motivates them.

You have to wonder, though, how they can make such claims when these same people have suggested that our reaction in Iraq was over-blown…and some even suggesting the Iraqi people were better off under Saddam, than they are under the freedom we’ve provided them.

When the leftists object to the war on terror, are kindness and humanitarianism their motives?

Or is it rather simply political power the left is after?

Just something to think about as you watch the political posturing going on.