Tuesday - January 13, 2004
More of Iraqi Irony
I was watching Ted Koppel tonight, as he
accompanied some of the 82nd Airborne on some raids in Iraq. I wish that we
were treated so well as the Iraqis have been.
How many times have you watched "Cops" or some
other video footage of the police searching a house in the United States?
Typically they are searching for some type of powder or vegetable matter that
has been (quite unconstitutionally) been declared contriband. What's the
typical behavior you see? Cops dressed like Ninjas, battering down a door,
shooting at people, screaming, and terrorizing. If they get the wrong house,
they have been known to execute the confused homeowner who is simply defending
himself from unknown screamers with guns. They often have a farce of knocking
on the door and charging in without delay, without giving the occupant time to
wake up or even understand who is coming in. They then do a "search" of the
premises that is little more than random destruction. If the owner wasn't home,
they usually drop a simple note on the floor saying that they were there, they
don't bother to clean up the the results of their pillaging, and the victim has
no recourse to be compesated so far as I
know.
And that's all for just a bit of
mind altering powder that affects no one except those who voluntarily use it,
and by all accounts it's usually a pleasing
effect.
What a dramatic difference it
was to watch the US raiding a couple homes in Iraq. They used a saw to cut away
a lock, but then they used bull horns announce to the occupants to obey their
instructions and that they would enter the home in a number of minutes. They
then went inside after their promised delay, and carefully searched the home.
They left very careful instructions on how the occupants can be compensated for
any damage that may have occurred, and they spoke gently and politely to
everyone there.
These soldiers aren't
looking for contraband recreational material, they're looking for deadly weapons
and ruthless guerrillas. And although you might say that they were on their
best behavior because they were being filmed by a television crew, the same is
true of the cops on the weekly television show, "Cops." Why aren't those
jackboots concerned about the cameras as they enter a house with weapons blazing
and screaming as loud as they can? The truth is that these wanna be macho fat
boys like the new paramilitary reputation that they have. It makes them feel
like they're tough.
I've said it
before and I'll say it again. The military exists to protect the people, the
police exist to control them.
From the
contrast of these two search techniques, I can conclude that the Iraqis seem to
have more rights recognized than we do. Unlike the US military towards the
Iraqis, the police in this country aren't concerned with winning our hearts and
minds. They already control us like mice, so they are unconcerned with our
reaction to brutal, no-knock searches. They have little compunction against
doing military-style assaults on a church in
Waco.
Note that these Iraqis don't even
pay taxes right now because they don't have a
government.
Let's see. They are
allowed to have a fully automatic rifle with 30 rounds in each home. They are
treated politely by the US military. They don't pay taxes. They do have to
submit to searches without a warrant though. And they have thugs threatening
them if they cooperate with Americans. So it's not all good for them, but it's
something.
Generally the Iraqis are
well-educated. If they can't make something good out of this situation, they
don't deserve the freedom that we're preparing for
them.
Don't mistake my purpose here. I
don't want to be an Iraqi. They have it very bad economically, and they have to
live in a shattered country. But they are starting with a lot of advantages
that I wish that our "free" country still had. Let's hope that they can lose
the culture that they've had and create a new and prosperous culture of
freedom.
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