AP Photos

I am looking at a Providence newspaper, published on May 7, 1945, which was V-E day. Among the headlines are
Nazi Armies Surrender
and
Nazis Fighting in Czechoslovakia Will Be Subject to Execution As Outlaw Guerrillas.

I am old, and I remember those days. They were rough times, and we were far less tolerant of opponents than we are today.

Today we do not seem to execute outlaw guerrillas. The right to execute nowadays is reserved for use by the outlaws.

Now we have earnest representatives of the Associated Press telling us that the outlaw guerrillas, who they call insurgents, want to get in their views. As Belmont Club quotes:

Jack Stokes, the Associated Press director of media relations explained how that photographer was recruited.

Insurgents want their stories told as much as other people and some are willing to let Iraqi photographers take their pictures. It's important to note, though, that the photographers are not "embedded" with the insurgents. They do not have to swear allegiance or otherwise join up philosophically with them just to take their pictures.

I have to wonder what reaction the Associated Press would have gotten in 1944 if it had heroic photographers working with SS Divisions to help them inform the American people of their stories.

The German people, at least most males, fought hard for the Nazis, and did things that make even Sadaam and even the ghoulish murderers of election workers look small time.

And we didn't treat the Germans with kid gloves in 1945 and thereafter.

Just for example, the entire German population of Czechoslovakia, three million strong, was expelled from that country, mostly in 1946 and 1947. In the Eastern part of Czechoslovakia, I have read that all German women of all ages were raped by Russian soldiers, though that is a bit hard to believe.

And as we now know, the Second World War was started by a conspiracy of Hitler and Stalin who agreed to invade Poland together, with the Russian invasion delayed a few days for appearance sake. Yet at Nurnburg Soviet judges, among others, sat in judgment on prominent Nazis for the war crime of starting the war! (among other things)

Yet we somehow managed to create a democracy in Western Germany which has lasted now almost 60 years, and German belligerence has almost completely disappeared.

I learned of death camps and gas chambers as a child, in 1943 or 1944, and it was not a happy experience. It has affected all of my life. But it was reality, and shielding us from reality is not the answer.

Learning about those things left me keenly aware that there really is evil in this world, and that I must fight it.

I feel disgust at the behavior of the Associated Press, which acts as an accessory to murder, for the lofty goal of allowing the murderers to tell their story, as well as the perhaps more mundane purposes of furthering careers, getting newsworthy film, making a living, or influencing the American people to oppose our efforts in Iraq.

But we should realize that they badly misjudge the American people. We are angered by disgusting murderers not cowed by them. This will not win the monsters new American friends. If this, their brutal murder of election workers, is their story, we understand it well. The behavior of these monsters suggests we are too lenient with the Sunni Arabs of Iraq.

Why, for example, should we rush to rebuild Fallujah? Why not let its ruins be memento of what happens to those who embrace evil. In 1945 almost every city in Germany and in Japan as well was in ruins. And this somehow had a salutary effect on the local populations. They turned to pacifism!

Might we merely permit the people of Fallujah rebuild themselves? Perhaps the Sunni leaders in Mosul should be taken on a tour of Fallujah and told to expect the same for their portion of their city if they do not control their monsters, and turn them in. Might we urge them to start turning them in or start evacuating?

I suppose that expelling the Sunni Arabs of Iraq to their brethren in Baathist Syria would be going too far, but, look, such things worked out well in Germany in the 1940's.

We should learn to look at the bright side of things. The violence in Iraq is keeping the United Nations outside. In Ruanda and in Bosnia, the United Nations forces actually helped the monsters in their disgusting murders. They seem to intervene mainly to protect monsters from revenge, or to set up sex networks.

We should do nothing whatsoever to interfere with the natural course of the coming elections. If the Sunni Arabs take part, well and good. If they choose not to we should continue to create an Iraqi army mainly of Kurds and Shias, and leave the fate of the Sunni Arabs entirely in its hands. Our only role should be to protect the elected government from external enemies, and not to judge it.

I can imagine a day when the Sunni Arabs will be begging us to stay in Iraq to protect them from the revenge of the rest of the population.