The Hands-Off Approach

I’ve spent a lot of time in the last 6 years trying to keep American military actions in perspective, especially when conversing with my friends and family, most of whom are far quicker to blame America for the world’s ills than I am. In fact, I still firmly believe that the American model, if not the American practice, is a benefit to mankind in the temporal and secular sense.

When we fight wars, however, the standards tighten. I have been totally opposed to the Iraq War since it began. In the proper historical sense, this war began in 1990, but that’s another blog. The 2003 invasion was illegal in every sense of the word, and the manner in which it was executed totally disregarded the needs of the Iraqi people.

The fatal flaw of the American enterprise in Iraq, since day one, is that the military’s primary mission has been to protect itself at all costs. This priority manifests itself in high-altitude bombing, assumption of hostility from all civilians, and indiscriminate arrest.

Despite this incompetence and disregard, I tell myself that we are qualitatively better than our enemy in terms of our rules. This conviction is still held, but rapidly eroding.

The host horrific attacks in Iraq are those that target large crowds of civilians. I can say with total confidence that Americans would absolutely not, as a matter of policy, aim to kill scores of women and children at a market. And that, I tell myself, is evidence of our admittedly tenuous moral superiority.

But it’s been getting cloudy recently.

We have many enemies in Iraq, and al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia is only a minor member of the club. The media highlights their attacks because they are barbaric and because they justify the government’s rationale for the war.

“We’re fighting them in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here.” “We’re in Iraq because al-Qaeda is in Iraq.” We’ve heard it all. Skipping past the fact that the American invasion created al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, there are two focal points here.

Firstly, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia is a sliver of the anti-American insurgency. Secondly, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia has absolutely nothing to do with the al-Qaeda infrastructure that attacked us on 9/11.

Despite all that, I can still say that we are morally better than al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. But can I really? Or is it just a function of the American hands-off approach?

Fear Up Harsh is a seminal book by an Iraq vet who tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib and Mosul. It reads as a microcosm of the process by which America assures itself of its moral superiority.

This soldier made prisoners squat in a baseball catcher’s position in freezing temperatures in the open air desert night. For 8 hours. Everyone who went through this process, and there were hundreds, and ninety percent of them were found totally innocent, never walked without pain for the rest of their lives. That’s torture.

But, see, it’s American torture. The soldier never touched the prisoner. He tortured him without touching him. Is that not what we do on a large scale when we go to war?


American has invaded Iraq twice since 1990. The deadliest period, however, was between invasions, when 500,000 children died of dysentery due to the American-led embargo on water purification technology. The rationale was that the pieces could be used to manufacture chemical weapons.

So, the United States sponsored, directed, and enforced an embargo that Secretary of State Albright acknowledged led to the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. “We think the price is worth it”, she said.

So when I see a terrorist blow up a nursery school, I am revolted. But maybe my ultimate revulsion comes from the fact that, deep down, I know damn well that my country has done the exact same thing. But we took the hands-off approach.