David Brooks loves war crimes

The Americans are still detaining family members of wanted Iraqis in order to put pressure on those Iraqis to surrender. This is still a violation of international law. I still haven't heard even an acknowledgement from the Americans that they destroyed date palms and citrus trees owned by civilian farmers, and I still haven't heard anything about compensation for the damage done. The Americans are still dropping bombs on civilians in Iraq, and they don't even have the flimsy excuse that there is a war on. Robert Fisk refers to an article in the New York Times by David Brooks, who writes:

"It's not that we can't accept casualties. History shows that Americans are willing to make sacrifices. The real doubts come when we see ourselves inflicting them. What will happen to the national mood when the news programs start broadcasting images of the brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt? Inevitably, there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause. They will be tempted to have us retreat into the paradise of our own innocence."

The atrocities are already being committed. In fact, they started on the first day of the attack and have continued every day since. There is no American innocence, let alone a paradise of innocence, and never has been. Americans can't accept casualties, which is why the Pentagon bends over backwards to hide them, dead American soldiers are buried in secret as if they've committed some shameful crime and Bush wouldn't be caught dead at a funeral, and the Pentagon went into conniptions when deaths analogous to the American deaths in Somalia were accidentally reported by the disgusting American media. The disgusting American media won't broadcast images of American brutality, because to do so would interfere with the profit-making of the military contractors who own the disgusting American media. Brooks is advocating unspeakable crimes against humanity because he likes the cheap thrill of being the one 'brave' enough to bring up the issue. The extraordinary moral stupidity of people like Brooks is why war crimes and crimes against humanity can occur while the country that commits these crimes can simultaneously pat itself on the back for its extreme moral goodness. Brooks calls the freedom fighters in Iraq the "scum of the earth". The rest of the world knows who the real scum are.