Topical Take - Depravity
A MOMENT OF DEPRAVITY
By Mark Steyn

Awful news from Iraq. As CNN   reports:

Suspected insurgents killed four American civilian contractors in a grenade attack Wednesday in central Iraq, U.S. officials said.

Cheering residents in Fallujah pulled charred bodies from burning vehicles and hung them from a Euphrates River bridge.
Crowds gathered around the vehicles and dragged at least one of the bodies through the streets, witnesses said.

Residents pulled another body from one of the cars and beat it with sticks.

Also in the Fallujah region, five American soldiers died in a roadside bombing near Habbaniya, the U.S. military said.

The disgusting display in Fallujah is reminiscent of a grim incident in Northern Ireland a few years ago, when two soldiers were dragged from a taxi and torn to pieces by a mob with their blood up. It also reminds me of something I wrote a year ago:

There will be terrible acts of suicide-bomber depravity in the months ahead, but no widespread resentment at or resistance of the Western military presence.

This is one of those terrible acts. They’re getting more depraved precisely because they have no strategic value. That doesn’t mean the coalition authorities shouldn’t respond. When I think back to my travels round the Sunni Triangle last year, I remember the words of this Iraqi:

"Americans only in the sky," one man told me, grinning as a chopper rumbled overhead. "No problem."

The hands off approach is all very well. But Arabs respect strength and a touch of the “strong horse” in these still lightly policed Sunni towns wouldn’t go amiss. The important thing to remember is that the “insurgents” in this thin sliver of Iraq aren’t a threat to Americans so much as they are to Shi’ites and Kurds and anyone else who wants a functioning state. If the coalition doesn’t clobber these dead-enders, the Shi’ites will figure they’ll have to.

Finally, on this day, spare a thought for both the five fallen soldiers and for the four dead in Fallujah, civilian workers helping to reconstruct Iraq - in other words, the “war profiteers” damned by John Edwards, John Kerry and other fatuous twerps pandering to their deranged base for the last year. Maybe they even worked for – boo, hiss – Halliburton. These private companies are doing an incredible job in Iraq and they deserve better than to be demonized by Democrats for a cheap laugh at campaign rallies. In September last year I wrote in The Irish Times:

In the last few weeks, almost all the big NGOs – Non-Governmental Organizations – have pulled out of the country, either partially or totally: Oxfam, the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders… Is it dangerous? Maybe. When I was in Iraq earlier this year, I detected a good deal of resentment at the NGO bigshots swanking around like colonial grandees in their gleaming Cherokees and Suburbans. But Iraq’s a good deal less dangerous than, say, Liberia, where drugged-up gangs roam the streets killing at random, and the humanitarian lobby – Big Consciences – is happy to stay on.

What’s different is the political agenda. The humanitarian touring circuit is now the oldest established permanent floating crap game. Regions such as West Africa, where there’s no pretence anything will ever get better, or the Balkans, which are maintained by the UN as the global equivalent of a slum housing project, suit the aid agencies perfectly: there’s never not a need for them. But in Iraq they’ve decided they’re not interested in staying to see the electric grid back up to capacity and the water system improved if it’s an American administration at the helm. The Big Consciences have made a political decision: that it’s not in their interest for the Bush crowd to succeed, and that calculation outweighs any concern they might have for the Iraqi people.

Heigh-ho. For six months, their Chicken Little predictions of humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq have failed to emerge. If the country gets by perfectly fine without them, that may be a very useful lesson.

Meanwhile, who’s staying on? The private sector: Bechtel and Halliburton and all the other supposed Bush cronies invited to help re-build post-war Iraq. According to the conspirazoids, Dick Cheney planned 9/11 so that he’d have an excuse to topple Saddam and his old company Halliburton could make a killing. Fine. Let’s take that as read. The fact is, right now, Oxfam and the other do-gooders have fled, and the only folks standing shoulder to shoulder with the Iraqi people are the wicked capitalists…

The international humanitarians have decided the Iraqis can go screw themselves, I say:

let’s hear it for the private sector.

Amen.