Mad Cows

UPDATE below.

Walking home tonight, I passed a car with a bumper sticker depicting an American flag, with text "The flag's not big enough to hide the murder of innocents." Other stickers said "Kerry for President," "No Blood for Oil," and "End Sanctions Now." Washington was unseasonably mild today, opening a window -- and therefore an opportunity -- for my gentle reminder that America already ended sanctions. And politely to advertise my blog by name. The light changed; exit liberal, stage. . .wait for it. . .left.

What causes this madness? Innocent Iraqis are being slaughtered--but not by coalition forces, says Youssef Ibrahim in the Middle East Times:

The latest reliable report confirms that on average 33 Iraqis die every day, executed by Iraqis and foreign jihadis and suicide bombers, not by US or British soldiers. In fact, fewer than ever US or British soldiers are dying since the invasion more than two years ago. Instead, we now watch on television hundreds of innocent Iraqis lying without limbs, bleeding in the streets dead or wounded for life.

And the killers in Iraq aren't a home-grown insurgency fighting an occupying army--they're terrorists imported from neighboring nations:

The vast majority of suicide attackers in Iraq are thought to be foreigners — mostly Saudis and other Gulf Arabs — and the trend has become more pronounced this year with North Africans also streaming in to carry out deadly missions, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

The bombers are recruited from Sunni communities, smuggled into Iraq from Syria after receiving religious indoctrination, and then quickly bundled into cars or strapped with explosive vests and sent to their deaths.

In fact, most Iraqis supported the invasion and our military's continued presence.

So why do terrorists flock to Iraq? They're against Iraqi democracy:

[A]n Arab government that rejected even some of the Koran's dictates would be an especial affront to the word of god. This heresy was sufficiently threatening to warrant murdering (inside a Mosque at a funeral) 47 fellow Muslims--apparently because they weren't terrorists.

By invading Iraq and toppling Saddam, Coalition forces shut down the mass graves filled with Shi'as, Kurds and Marsh Arabs. America and its allies closed Saddam's torture chambers, and Uday and Qusay's rape hotels. Terrorists, not Americans, decapitate unarmed innocents--on TV (caution: link contains graphic pictures). We ended sanctions, but lefties who blamed Bush were:

oblivious to deliberate Iraqi obfuscation on disarmament and to Saddam's domestic policies, designed to maintain his iron grip over the Iraqi people for as long as possible. It was our stubborn view that the regime had little or no ability to control or direct Iraq's destiny. We saw the U.S.-sponsored sanctions as the primary cause of violence in Iraq and so overlooked (or denied) Saddam's decades-long legacy of severe repression.

The invasion saved the lives of innocents as even hard leftist columnist Molly Ivins recently conceded:

This is a horror. In a column written June 28, I asserted that more Iraqis (civilians) had now been killed in this war than had been killed by Saddam Hussein over his 24-year rule. WRONG. Really, really wrong. . .

Ha! I could hardly have been more wrong, no matter how you count Saddam's killing of civilians. There have been estimates as high as 1 million civilians killed by Saddam, though most agree on the 300,000 to 400,000 range, making my comparison to 20,000 civilian dead in this war pathetically wrong.

Indeed, two years without Saddam spared, by one estimate, a further 120,000 Iraqis.

Terrorist murders of Iraqi innocents is anything but just, and provoked justifiable force in response, says Ibrahim:

[J]ihadis have been killing for a decade in the name of Islam. They killed innocent tourists and natives in Morocco and Egypt, in Africa, in Indonesia and in Yemen, all done in the name of Islam by Muslims who say that they are better than all other Muslims. They killed in India, in Thailand and are now talking of killing in Germany and Denmark and so on. There were attacks with bombs that killed scores inside Shia and Sunni mosques, inside churches and inside synagogues in Turkey and Tunisia, with Muslim preachers saying that it is okay to kill Jews and Christians - the so called infidels.

I fear those naïve Muslims who think that they are beating the West have now achieved their worst crime of all. The West is now going to war against not only Muslims, but also, sadly, Islam as a religion.

In this new cold and hot war, car bombs and suicide bombers here and there will be no match for the arsenal that those Westerners are putting together - an arsenal of laws, intelligence pooling, surveillance by satellites, armies of special forces and indeed, allies inside the Arab world who are tired of having their lives disrupted by demented so-called jihadis or those bearded preachers who, under the guise of preaching, do little to teach and much to ignite the fire, those who know little about Islam and nothing about humanity.

Same for their Western liberal supporters. Can their madness be cured? Not by puppetry, chanting, stripping (caution: even more graphic), tin-foil hats or idiotic bumper stickers. So long as they believe their country's a killer, there's no hope for the cows who papier-mâché, bray, peel, or wear or affix them.

(via LGF and Michelle Malkin)

More:

Newsweek tells the truth about the infrequency of Coalition-caused civilian casualties:

But how often, really? The answer: not very often, in fact. And not nearly often enough to make the 150,000 U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq the leading scourge of Iraq's civilians. That dishonor goes, hands down, to the insurgents. Even one incident is bad, of course, and there have been many. But civilian killings by U.S. troops are not nearly as common as the critics of the war in Iraq would like us to believe. It has become an article of faith among them that American troops have been slaughtering Iraqi civilians indiscriminately, and that one of the consequences of the war has been an unconscionable loss of life among the civilian population. It just isn't true.

(via Tran Sient's)