C&EI Goes Once More Over the Top!

Mark Shea is at it again.

In spite of his better judgement, he once again insists on posting about torture. This time, his wryful eye falls upon US-trained Iraqi police. Some of them--who happen to be Sh'ia--have instituted torture against Sunnis as policy:

NBC News spoke to an Iraqi policeman, Ahmed, a 22-year-old Shiite, who did not want to show his face, but agreed to speak candidly and coldly about how things are done in Baghdad.

Ahmed (translated): As soon as a person is brought in, he is severely beaten until there is a confession. Some confess without even committing a crime.

That can be just the beginning.

Ahmed (translated): The police I consider honorable kill the terrorists they capture. If we brought them back to the station, they might to bribe their way out.

That’s how journalist Kamal Samaraie, a Sunni, says he got out. He had been picked up after criticizing police conduct in a newspaper.

Kamal Samaraie: I was blindfolded and someone kicked me in my face and broke my teeth.

He says police hung him upside down and clubbed him with a metal pipe.

Kamal Samaraie: They whispered to me, there’s no freedom, you can’t write what you want.

The U.S. always wanted an aggressive police force in Iraq, and helped the interior ministry create a paramilitary wing last year to fight insurgents.

But officials say that changed when the Shiite interior minister who took over last April rapidly expanded the program, enlisting the militias.

At a police commando base, officers were adamant they respect human rights, but added they’re on the frontline of a war that can be messy.

For his imprudent witness to the Faith, he once again finds himself assailed in his comboxes by the more zealous of Right-Leaning Foolables. With outrageous rhetorical brutality, they demand charity from their host while they mix "what is torture?" queries with "how bad could it be?" hypotheticals and consequentialist worldviews that have no place in the Truth.

One is not an anti-war Sheehanite for noting that the fourth condition of a Just War stands:

the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

Similarly, one does not surrender to the charge of being a nay-saying pacificist when one observes that the Bush Administration may have dropped the ball regarding the 4th. Such a one is simply a person with good sense and a willingness to see things as they are.

I have said before that the US' causus belli, and certain policies in her jus en belli, left much to be desired. That said, I still say that the US must remain in Iraq and support the Iraqis until they can stand on their own. Fast-tracking police forces, and helping them form paramilitary militias that employ torture, will not give the Iraqis that support. It will simply sow the seeds of the next Husseinian State. We can and must do more to make certain the Iraqis maintain security and their own integrity as moral subjects. Otherwise, what will we have accomplished?

As for the current "facts on the ground," they remind me of this: A collegue of mine at work said that once the US left and they secured power, the Shia would exterminate the Sunnis. I had doubted his prediction then. Now, I shudder to think that he might be right.