IDIOTS

I've exhausted every metaphor, every nice phrase, every word I can use to describe the peaceniks, so the simple yet descriptive "idiots" will have to do. "Hypochrites" might also work, given this story about the ongoing tussle around a 9-11 memorial in La Hambra, CA. It's been rebuilt after some idiots destroyed it, decrying its warlike use of American flags and flowers and such. But one idiot decided that defacing the memorial wasn't enough--so she, a peace protestor who doesn't believe in war, assaulted Tracey Chandler, the memorial's creator.

Police early Wednesday arrested a 19-year-old woman who witnesses said showed up at the memorial late Tuesday, claimed responsibility for burning some of the flags and pushed Chandler while saying the memorial endorsed the looming war in Iraq.

Jennifer Quintana, whom police identified only as an Orange County resident, was booked on suspicion of misdemeanor assault and released.

Quintana, who identified herself as a Fullerton College student, argued over the memorial with a crowd of about 25 people when she showed up at the site.

"It's an American flag, obviously it has everything to do with the war," she told the crowd. "There should be no war, just peace and togetherness."

"I assault you in the name of peace and togetherness. If you don't immediately become peaceful and accept everything I say as inarguable fact, I will assault you again." Sheesh. I think just about everyone agrees that there should be no war in a abstract sort of way, but any realistic appraisal of human nature shows that sometimes war is necessary. Humans can be foul creatures, and sometimes good people have to rise up and put the whoop on bad people before the bad people get out of hand. War is just pushing people who don't agree with you, albeit pushing with a little more sternness. Miss Quintana obviously believes violence does solve some things, she just wants to be the one to decide for everyone else which things get the violent treatment.

Meanwhile, half a world away the former human shields are explaining why they beat a hasty retreat from Iraq. Saddam's government didn't play nice. Well, duh. The guy's a dictator. He's not used to taking stock of anyone's opinion but his own. It would come as no surprise to anyone with a clue that, if one submits to entering his country for any reason, one must play by his rules. For some reason, the idiots who went off to Iraq to get in the way of the war didn't see any of this coming:

They had chosen locations "essential to the civilian population," such as food storage warehouses and water and electricity facilities, said Ken O'Keefe, of Haleiwa, Hawaii.

But the Iraqi government wanted the shields in more sensitive locations, he said. He did not elaborate, but some earlier activists have also left Iraq, reportedly after being told they would be posted at potentially strategic targets, such as oil refineries and power plants.

"They removed us from the sites we had chosen because we were critical of the integrity and the autonomy of the Iraqi authorities," said O'Keefe, 33. "I was escorted by Iraqi intelligence officers to the border, because I say what I believe and the Iraqi government wants submissive easy robots."

The other four deported with O'Keefe were American John Ross, Eva Mern from Slovenia, Gordan Sloan from Australia, and Tolga Temugi from Turkey.

"The Iraqi government was acting absolutely very stupid," O'Keefe said, dressed in a long Arabic dishdasha robes while talking to The Associated Press at a small hotel in downtown Amman. "If they had only cooperated and let us do part of what we wanted to do, we could have worked with them also to protect these sites and we would have brought in more people to stay."

Does this guy have more than a couple of brain cells online? The integrity and autonomy of Iraqi officials? In a police state? When Saddam rose to power in 1979, he infamously and immediately purged his Ba'ath Party of anyone he suspected wasn't 100% loyal to him personally. A couple of scores of Iraqi government officials were rounded up and shot while Saddam laughed and smoked a big (probably Cuban) cigar. He forced some to prove their loyalty by commanding them to shoot their best friends dead. To expect that after more than 20 years of maintaining his rule with yet more blood that Saddam would listen to a bunch of western weasels is beyond reason, to say the very least. How stupid must one be to not expect Saddam to dictate what kind of sites the human shields would shield? Apparently, pretty stupid:

"I certainly have no great admiration for Saddam Hussein, I was only going to help the people," he said, blaming the plight of the Iraqis on the previous American governments that supported Saddam.

If you want to help the people in the long term, suppor the war, since it's the fastest way to get rid of Saddam and give them something better. And isn't it interesting whom O'Keefe blames for the plight of the Iraqi people? Not the French, who did more to arm Saddam than anyone else, nor the Germans who run a close second in that department, not the Soviets or Cubans who occassionally lent him a helping hand, not the Chinese who arm him today, and not even Saddam himself. It's America's fault. Tell me how that doesn't represent blatant anti-Americanism. These idiots get mad when you challenge their patriotism, and get mad when you connect them to Communists, and get mad when you say they're anti-American. Yet, objectively, by their own statements they prove that they are anti-American and that they therefore aren't patriots by any reasonable definition of the term. And some of them are actual Communists to boot.

Anyway, I won't go around calling them names, other than "idiots." It'll do.