Noted in passing at the Washington Post:
On any given day, one isn’t likely to find common cause with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He’s a dangerous, lying, Holocaust– denying, Jew-hating cutthroat thug — not to put too fine a point on it.
That’s WaPo writer Kathleen Parker. She’s usually a good read. This is no exception.
Yes, well, Allow me to zig off her course for just a moment…. It would appear, if we take the claims being offered by the Democrats, that it took the likes of Nancy Pelosi to make Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appear to be taking the high ground. Amazes me just how far the Democrats have fallen, lately. That said;
But he was dead-on when he wondered why a once-great power such as Britain sends mothers of toddlers to fight its battles.
Ahmadinejad characterized as a gift to Britain the release of 15 British sailors and marines, including one woman, seized at sea last month. In reality, the hostages were the West’s gift to Ahmadinejad.
When a pretender to sanity such as Ahmadinejad gets to lecture the West about how it treats its women, we’ve effectively handed him a free pass to the end zone and made the world his cheerleaders.
Not only does the Iranian president get to look magnanimous in releasing the hostages, but he gets to look wise. And we in the West get to look humiliated, foolish and weak.
Just because we may not “feel” humiliated doesn’t mean we’re not. In the eyes of Iran and other Muslim nations, we’re wimps. While the West puts mothers in boats with rough men, Muslim men “rescue” women and drape them in floral hijabs.
We can debate whether they’re right until all our boys wear aprons, but it won’t change the way we’re perceived. The propaganda value Iran gained from its lone female hostage, the mother of a 3-year-old, was incalculable.
And that, my friends, is precisely why those hostages were taken, and why he did what he did.
Of course, there is the point being made here that battle was not envisioned in the situation these people were on. Which, would seem to mesh with the standing order that was mentioned in the press conference the other day, about fighting not being an option. They were not equipped for it, because they didn’t anticipate it. They were there simply as intelligence gatherers, after all.
It does seem rather clearly a fallacy though, particularly in light of events, that Intel missions are inherently less dangerous than are battle assignments.
Kathleen Parker goes on at some length to rail against the politically correct “wisdom” of women in combat roles. There is much to commend her thought process on this.
But in this particular situation, I find myself taking greater import from just whom it is we’re being scolded by on the point.
The question of whether or not such arrangements are a weakness would seem to have been answered in the affirmative in this case. But I wonder, if the democrats, particularly Nancy Pelosi, who have demonstrated an overt willingness to kiss Iranian backside on everything else, will agree.
Tags: BitsBlog, Social Issues
