U.S. military leaders in Iraq humilitate themselves before Muslims and kiss Koran

Howard Sutherland writes:

One of the amazing things about being a Westerner these days is constantly seeing representatives of our failing civilization plumb new depths of fecklessness, inanity, and sheer stupidity.

Apparently an American soldier somewhere in Iraq used a copy of the Koran for target practice. While I’ll admit shooting at a Koran (the story doesn’t say whether the dim-bulb GI in question managed to hit it) in Iraq is a stupid thing to do, the extent of the groveling apologies by American generals to the putatively aggrieved locals makes me think our forces nominally occupying that delightful slice of Araby are in fact dhimmi already.

The incident was first reported by CNN, which broadcast a ceremony at which the top American commander in Baghdad apologized to tribal leaders in Radwaniyah. The military confirmed the details in an e- mailed response to a query.

“I come before you here seeking your forgiveness,” Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond [Commanding General, 4th Infantry Division] was quoted as saying. “In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers.”

The commander also read a letter of apology by the shooter, and another military official kissed a Quran and presented it to the tribal leaders, according to CNN.

The military statement called the incident “serious and deeply troubling” but stressed it was the result of one soldier’s actions and “not representative of the professionalism of our soldiers or the respect they have for all faiths.”

Of course, this Catholic most humbly looks into your eyes, figuratively speaking, and says please forgive us for the fact that the precedent for Christians kissing Korans was set by none other than Pope John Paul II himself. Still, that’s no excuse for an American soldier to do it anywhere. I’m glad I don’t have to follow MG Hammond into battle! Something tells me he’s not today’s George Patton. Well, today’s U.S. Army probably wouldn’t give a George Patton a commission in the first place, so never mind.

When Moslem true believers witness incidents like this (the abject groveling of the dhimmified infidel general, not the Koran-shooting), how can they not believe they are destined to subjugate the West in the end?

LA writes:

Now, first, obviously, a soldier stationed with the U.S. Army in a foreign country ought to respect the religion and customs of that country, and using the sacred book of that country as a target is wrong and there should be discipline and an apology and a clear statement that this does not reflect the views of the Army and will not be tolerated.

But the Army went way beyond that. To repeat from Mr. Sutherland’s post:

“I come before you here seeking your forgiveness,” Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond was quoted as saying. “In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers.”

The commander also read a letter of apology by the shooter, and another military official kissed a Quran and presented it to the tribal leaders, according to CNN.

“In the most humble manner I look into your eyes and say please forgive me and my soldiers”?

Hammond and his soldiers did nothing wrong. One soldier did something wrong. Hammond’s statement expresses a desire to abase his own country. It is contemptible. He should have been relieved of his command for it. Imagine how Patton would react if one if his generals indulged in such shameful truckling before foreigners.

As for the Koran-kissing, it passes belief.

The one who should be removed from Iraq is Gen. Hammond.

- end of initial entry -

Howard Sutherland continues:

Thanks for posting my comment on Koran-kissing U.S. officers. Reading that strange story made me wonder about Major General Jeffery (that is how he spells his first name, apparently) Hammond. So off I went a-googling, and learned a little about him. Hammond is a Southerner, sad to say, so anyone still thinking Southerners are less likely to succumb to the PC indoctrination that now permeates the armed forces may be disappointed.

Most interestingly, though, Jeffery Hammond appears to be a man who is very resistant to criticism, and an archetype of the Army leadership that has produced such poor results in Iraq. You may remember that a year ago an Army officer recently returned from Iraq, Lt. Colonel Paul Yingling, published an article in the Armed Forces Journal that was harshly critical of American generalship in Iraq. Indeed, his title was “A Failure in Generalship,” which makes pretty clear where LTC Yingling thought the responsibility for our operational failures in Mesopotamia lies. Not a great career move, to be sure, but gutsy. A Failure in Generalship got a lot of attention in the Army, in the other services, and even—briefly—in the national press.

As the Wall Street Journal reported, reactions among the Army officer corps varied widely, with many junior officers saying (anonymously, most of the time) that Yingling was on to something. Some generals did not agree, which is hardly surprising. The general who disagreed most may have been Jeffery Hammond, the same man now humbly begging the Moslems’ forgiveness. Hammond took the very unusual (and revealingly defensive, if you ask me) step of summoning the captains of his command—then, as today, the 4th Infantry Division, which was then at Fort Hood, Texas between deployments to Iraq—to a meeting:

At Fort Hood, Maj. Gen. Jeff Hammond, the top general at the sprawling base, summoned all of the captains to hear his response to Col. Yingling’s critique. About 200 officers in their mid- to late-20s, most of them Iraq veterans, filled the pews and lined the walls of the base chapel. “I believe in our generals. They are dedicated, selfless servants,” Gen. Hammond recalls saying. The 51-year-old officer told the young captains that Lt. Col. Yingling wasn’t competent to judge generals because he had never been one. “He has never worn the shoes of a general,” Gen. Hammond recalls saying.

The captains’ reactions highlighted the growing gap between some junior officers and the generals. “If we are not qualified to judge, who is?” says one Iraq veteran who was at the meeting. Another officer in attendance says that he and his colleagues didn’t want to hear a defense of the Army’s senior officers. “We want someone at higher levels to take accountability for what went wrong in Iraq,” he says.

If MG Hammond’s toxic combination of haughtily dismissing any criticism of Army performance in Iraq, simply because the critic isn’t a general himself, and ritually abasing himself before the hostile Other is the new norm for U.S. Army generals then we’re in even worse shape than I thought—and I have very little respect for the state of American flag and general officers today.

I keep saying bring the Army home from Iraq and Afghanistan and let our soldiers perform their constitutional mission and defend America by sealing the Mexican border. Now I realize just what wishful thinking that is. To be sure, I have always known it’s very unlikely Army units will be deployed to defend our borders in any meaningful way. But I had assumed that the troops and their commanders would be willing to take on the mission if assigned it. Now, looking at an Army that is filling its ranks with mestizo and other mercenaries and is led by multiculturalized eunuchs like Hammond, affirmative action ciphers like Ricardo Sanchez and smooth politicians like David Petraeus, I wonder if that Army would be institutionally able or—most importantly—willing to take on the real mission of defending America.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 19, 2008 12:16 PM | Send