[Mb-civic] No remorse - Derrick Z. Jackson - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  No remorse

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  January 18, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

WHEN TEENAGERS show no remorse for mistakes, we call in the therapist. 
When killers show no remorse, we want life sentences or death row. When 
the United States makes deadly mistakes, remorse is unnecessary, 
because, of course, it is never our fault.

Thinking we could nail Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman 
al-Zawahri, our military launched an airstrike into a Pakistani town 
just over the border from Afghanistan. We smoked 18 people at a dinner 
that al-Zawahri was allegedly going to attend, but apparently skipped 
out on. The provincial government claims that four or five foreign 
militants were killed, but local witnesses said women and children were 
among the rest.

This is of small concern to the White House. President Bush has never 
apologized to the Iraqi people for the three years of carnage done in 
the name of weapons of mass destruction, weapons that were never found. 
Bush always dodges the need to show remorse on the premise that ''we are 
up against people who show no shame, no remorse, no hint of humanity."

He long ago maneuvered the self-absorbed American psyche to ignore our 
own inhumanity. Our bombs and bullets have now killed several times more 
innocents in Iraq than were killed during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 
11. But the rationale for a remorseless occupation continues to be, as 
one senior White House official told me and a small group of journalists 
in November of 2003, ''There will be some civilian deaths. It will be 
nothing like what Saddam Hussein did."

With three years of denial, the reaction to the latest mistake in 
Pakistan was predictably without feeling. Asked yesterday if regrets 
were forthcoming, White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to 
talk about the incident, saying only, ''I think you've heard our 
comments about matters of that nature in the past. If I have anything 
additional to add, I will." All McClellan said was, ''Al Qaeda continues 
to seek to do harm to the American people."

On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brushed off the airstrike 
by saying, ''The biggest threat to Pakistan, of course, is what Al Qaeda 
has done in trying to radicalize the country. . . These are not people 
who can be dealt with lightly."

The weekend talk shows had influential senators, both Republican and 
Democrat, issuing remorseless support of the mistake. Senator Evan Bayh 
of Indiana, a Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, 
basically blamed Pakistan for the mistake. ''It's a regrettable 
situation, but what else are we supposed to do?" he said. ''It's like 
the wild, wild west out there . . . the real problem here is that the 
Pakistani government does not control that part of their own country."

Mississippi Republican Trent Lott, who is on the intelligence committee 
despite a career of unintelligent comments on race and sexual 
orientation, justified the strike and targeted assassinations by saying, 
''There's no question that they're still causing the death of millions 
of -- or thousands of innocent people and directing operations in Iraq." 
Bayh seconded that by saying to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, ''I agree 
wholeheartedly, Wolf. These people killed 3,000 Americans. They have to 
be brought to justice."

But no one should dare attempt to bring America to justice. Senator John 
McCain of Arizona played the game on CBS's ''Face the Nation" of issuing 
an apology and then immediately qualifying it. At one juncture, he said, 
''It's terrible when innocent people are killed. We regret that. But we 
have to do what is necessary to take out Al Qaeda, particularly the top 
operatives."

At another juncture, McCain said, ''We apologize, but I can't tell you 
that we wouldn't do the same thing again."

The equivocation guarantees that it will happen again and again. The 
world is our wild west. When we miss the villain at high noon and the 
bullets fly past the saloon to kill mothers and children, we still flip 
the barrel to our lips, blow a triumphant puff, twirl the gun back into 
the holster and say, ''Darn sheriff should'a told everyone to stay inside."

McCain said, ''This war on terror has no boundaries. Clearly Al Qaeda 
does not respect those boundaries, but I don't want to equate our 
behavior with theirs."

The airstrike in Pakistan reaffirms how our behavior is plummeting in 
the direction of the evil we proclaim to fight. At home, we are appalled 
by drive-by shootings that take out innocent children. Abroad, the 
fly-by airstrike is the source of no remorse, with dead children and 
mothers taken very lightly.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/18/no_remorse/
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