The Explosive Ambulance

The diploblog New Sisyphus asks why the sighted are blind.

We've just received word that Al-Jazeera ... has aired a videotape showing a suicide bomber ... driving a bomb-laden ambulance into a U.S. checkpoint in Iraq. Reuters is also reporting: "The videotape shows the person ... while preparing the booby trapped vehicle camouflaged as an ambulance with a number of explosive devices ... before ramming into a US checkpoint near the Iraqi-Syrian border."  The 47-second video can be viewed at Al-Jazeera's website.

So many on the Left seem to think that the enemy is a figment of a crazed-right-wing-maniac's authoritarian imagination. But, perhaps--just perhaps--the real problem lies in the Left's inability to see an enemy even when the enemy appears on television, explains that he wants to kill us and then proceeds to commit a war crime, all on tape.

First of all, New Sisyphus is wrong: the men shown on tape are not any sort of 'enemy'; they are brave militants and freedom fighters. A European court held that individuals charged with fighting US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are guerilla fighters resisting enemy occupation.

According to the magistrate, Clementina Forleo of Milan, even if it was proved that there were contacts between the accused and a paramilitary group nevertheless one could say at most that they were supporters of the guerrilla war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that this did not signify that they were terrorists because there was an enormous difference between guerrilla action and terrorism. ... She makes an appeal to the United Nation's Global Convention on Terrorism of 1999 and affirms: "Violent or guerrilla activity taking place in the context of an armed conflict, even if conducted by armed forces different from institutional ones cannot be persecuted not even at the level of international law, unless international humanitarian law is violated."

What about the ambulance you say? Well what about it. A search on news at Google for 'checkpoint bomb ambulance' yields 4 hits, none of which relate to the incident, but a search on the keywords 'US torture' yields 10,400 hits. Except for the videotape the incident doesn't exist; it's gone, down the memory hole. And the sighted are blind.

Testimony Before Congress 2 described how intelligence estimates showed the War on Terror still expanding; that it was primarily an ideological war, a war of ideas. On that ideological battlefield, the Left is the most powerful ally of Sunni Jihadism, the fascism of our times. In that post I observed that "those being the stakes, it necessarily follows that the War ... will if it does not result in the triumph of Islam, mean the ruin of Sunni jihadism and its Leftist allies." One commenter called the observation a load of hooey and that is understandable; the Left has escaped the consequences of its words and actions for so long it scarce remembers they exist. Witness Lynne Stewart. The "Left's inability to see" -- is the product of their unshakeable belief in the immutability of their world whose safety is guaranteed by the very system they hate the most. In that make-believe garden, academic tenure, human-rights lawyers, newspaper articles and political correctness will always protect them. They are dimly aware of, but do not really believe in the existence an outside world governed by what Tom Friedman called Hama Rules, of which the explosive laden ambulance is a part.

When Syria's Baath regime feels its back up against the wall, it always resorts to "Hama Rules." Hama Rules is a term I coined after the Syrian army leveled — and I mean leveled — a portion of its own city, Hama, to put down a rebellion by Sunni Muslim fundamentalists there in 1982. Some 10,000 to 20,000 Syrians were buried in the rubble. Monday's murder of Hariri, a self-made billionaire who devoted his money and energy to rebuilding Lebanon after its civil war, had all the hallmarks of Hama Rules — beginning with 650 pounds of dynamite to incinerate an armor-plated motorcade.

Message from the Syrian regime to Washington, Paris and Lebanon's opposition: "You want to play here, you'd better be ready to play by Hama Rules — and Hama Rules are no rules at all. You want to squeeze us with Iraq on one side and the Lebanese opposition on the other, you'd better be able to put more than U.N. resolutions on the table. You'd better be ready to go all the way — because we will. But you Americans are exhausted by Iraq, and you Lebanese don't have the guts to stand up to us, and you French make a mean croissant but you've got no Hama Rules in your arsenal. So remember, we blow up prime ministers here. We shoot journalists. We fire on the Red Cross. We leveled one of our own cities. You want to play by Hama Rules, let's see what you've got. Otherwise, hasta la vista, baby."

The Left will wake up one day, on the morning it is led down a dark corridor to a cell floored with rubber mats, sloping curiously down to a corner where a single drain waits to carry fluid away. The walls will be bare but for a banner with the words 'Allah is Great' opposite a video camera whose tripod legs are protected with a drop cloth. On a table will be a single knife. And then they will know. Then they will see.

Note to readers: I cannot find collateral confirmation of this incident described in The Explosive Ambulance reported in either Al Jazeera or Reuters. Moreover, there are no reports in DOD News Releases of casualties involved in an incident fitting the description of an attack by explosive ambulance. The New Sisyphus says it will post a link soon. Until then, the ambulance report is unconfirmed.