I don’t know about what a lot of you out there may think of this but I say, “damned good for him.” Yes, I know some are going to say it’s a publicity stunt, it’s this, it’s that, it’s some other damned thing. It doesn’t matter. For either of you that haven’t heard yet, HRH Prince Henry of Wales (aka Prince Harry) is going to Iraq.

As His Highness puts it:

“There’s no way I’m going to put myself through Sandhurst and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country.”

Well said, if I do say so myself…

I cracked my Freeps this morning and whaddaya know? News, both good and annoying. The annoying part is the my city is currently harbouring Michigan’s Matt David Lowell, a Yank deserter who has chosen to tuck tail and scurry north of the border rather than do the duty that he swore to do. The good part is that this little bugger has just gotten the word from the Immigration and Refugee Board on how his application for refugee status went.

Refugee from the United States. From arguably the freest country in the world; a place where you can go from baggage handler to billionaire; where nobody ever starves, anybody can vote (and “anybody can become president; that’s one of the risks you take” 🙂 ) and political dissidents have a habit of not disappearing. In different circumstances, I could probably laugh my balls off at that idea.

But these aren’t different circumstances. This is my country and this gutless prick is trying to pass himself off as a refugee. The Immigration and Refugee Board issued their decision in typical bureaucratic style, taking eight damn pages to say one lousy word:

Fuggeddaboudit.

But the recent immigration board decision likely means Lowell could be shipped back to the U.S. within the next year.

His punishment for desertion, the board’s decision reads, wouldn’t “amount to persecution or . . . cruel and unusual punishment” — factors that can lead to successful refugee claims in Canada.

Gee whiz, the damn bureaucrats got something right for a change. I just have one question left: what the hell’s with that “shipped back to the U.S. within the next year” bullshit? What’s the God damned holdup? I haven’t been able to confirm it, but I’m pretty friggin’ sure that this bastard probably has a warrant for his arrest south of the border.

In other words, he’s a wanted criminal. Canada and the US have an extradition treaty, remember? That means that if somebody commits a crime in Canada and then screws off to the States, they ship his sorry ass right back to us. That treaty works both ways.

Remember what happened the last time some American scumbag tried to hang his hat on this side of the border? Everybody totally flipped their wigs. Some even suggested that he should be stuffed in a trunk and dropped on the American side of the border, and not necessarily on dry land. So why the deafening silence over Lowell’s presence in my home and native land?

Oh yeah, I forgot; Lowell’s not a scumbag. He’s not some gutless waste of skin who VOLUNTEERED for military service in time of war only to — when the time came to actually DO his duty — tuck tail and run, leaving the other men in his unit to pick up the slack. No, no, boys and girls. The high an’ mighty Matty Davey Lowell is that Holiest Of The Holies of the anti-military nutjob cult: a Conscientious Objector.

What utter bullshit. This asshole wasn’t drafted, he volunteered, just like every other soldier in the American Armed Forces. It’s not like he didn’t know what he was getting into; he signed up after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. There is no way in hell that he couldn’t have known that he was going to get sent into combat. Say what you want to about the US military’s admittance standards when it comes to intelligence, but they aren’t THAT damned low. Now, he pukes up the most relentlessly recycled of the trendy antiwar pap right on cue to anyone that will listen: “I wanted to go to Afghanistan, not Iraq!”

More bullshit. This shithead wants us to think that it’s been soldiers’ God-given right down through the ages to pick and choose what orders they follow and what ones they don’t. Any idiot knows without even joining the army that, especially in wartime, soldiers exist for three reasons and ONLY three reasons: killing, dying, and doing as we’re told. Pretty it up and dump whatever euphemisms you want on it but those three are what it all boils down to, because that’s how you win a war. Period.

So spare me the song and dance about how this chickenshit’s supposed morals. He’s a coward, plain and simple.  People with principles don’t run for the hills, they take a stand.
Finally, while we’re blowing wind out our asses about conscientious objectors, bear this in mind: Fred Topham was a conscientious objector. Because of his faith, he refused to carry a weapon but he sure as hell didn’t run away, either. For those of you not familiar with “Toppy’s” story:

On 24th March 1945, Corporal Topham, a medical orderly, parachuted with his Battalion on to a strongly defended area east of the Rhine. At about 11:00 hours, whilst treating casualties sustained in the drop, a cry for help came from a wounded man in the open. Two medical orderlies from a field ambulance went out to this man in succession but both were killed as they knelt beside the casualty. Without hesitation and on his own initiative, Corporal Toham went forward through intense fire to replace the orderlies who had been killed before his eyes. As he worked on the wounded man, he was himself shot in the face. In spite of severe bleeding and intense pain, he never faltered in his task.

Having completed immediate first aid, he carried the wounded man steadily and slowly back through continuous fire to the shelter of a wood. During the next two hours Corporal Topham refused all offers of medical help for his own wounds. He worked most devotedly throughout this period to bring in wounded, showing complete disregard for the heavy and accurate enemy fire.

On his way back to his company he came across a carrier which had received a direct hit. Enemy mortar bombs were still dropping around, and the carrier itself was burning fiercely and its own mortar ammunition was exploding. An experienced officer on the spot had warned all not to approach the carrier. Corporal Topham, however, immediately went out alone in spite of the blasting ammunition and enemy fire, and rescued the three occupants of the carrier. He brought these men back across the open and although one died almost immediately afterwards, he arranged for the evacuation of the other two, who undoubtedly owe their lives to him.

This N.C.O. showed sustained gallantry of the highest order. For six hours, most of the time in great pain, he performed a series of acts of outstanding bravery and his magnificent and selfless courage inspired all those who witnessed it.

London Gazette, 3 August 1945

For his valour and courage under fire, Frederick George Topham was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award on the British Commonwealth for the recognition of valour in the face of the enemy. The next time you want to call some chickenshit like Matt Lowell a “conscientious objector,” take a second to consider what yardstick you should be using to define that.

As for Lowell, the bottom of the Freeps article has this little tidbit:

IF YOU GO

What: Public meeting for those interested in resisting the Iraq war and offering support to military resisters.

When: Thursday, 7 p.m.

Where: Tolpuddle housing co-operative, common room, 380 Adelaide St., at King Street, in London.

Who: Speakers, including a local war resister.

“Local war resister.” Gee, I wonder who that could possible be? So it looks like little Matty’s going to try to cash in his Andy Warhol minutes. Feel free to turn our and make your opinions known as well.

Hey, Matty…
You say that you’re “so sick of running” and “don’t want to have to look over [your] shoulder every day, wondering if this is the day somebody comes to [you] and says, ‘What you did was wrong’…?”  The solution is simple: get your worthless little chickenshit ass the hell back to Fort Lewis, stand in front of that Court Martial and face the consequences of your choice.

You say you’re no coward; I say prove it.

Yeesh. File this one under “why can I never be making this crap up,” if you will. Hat’s off to DMB, by the way, since that’s where I stumbled over this in the first place. What we have here is Sheik Abdullah Aal Mahmud, in a televised lecture given on the Bahrain boob toob, explaining the Religion-of-Perpetual-Outrage-approved method of slapping your missus around if she gets out of line. Because, after all, beating on women is all fine and dandy as long as it’s done the Islamic way, right?

Assholes.

There’s been a lot of handwringing lately on behalf of the late Iraqi tyrant, Saddam Hussein. Letters have been written to editors, Europeans — never ones to pass up an opportunity to wag their fingers at the US — tut-tutted over it (even the British, if you can believe it, had some criticisms), the usual suspects have blabbed off, and the Vatican has repeated the Church’s stance on all capital punishments, not just Saddam’s.

While my own opinions on capital punishment are neither secret (I’m Catholic and oppose it) nor absolute, it seems to me that there are being just a few too many croc tears splashing about on behalf of someone who was, after all, a murdering sonofabitch in every sense of the word. This is the guy who:

• Used chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war
• Gassed over 5,000 civilians in Halabja
• Killed between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds in the “Anfal campaigns”
• Invaded Kuwait
• Killed somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000 Iraqis, most of them civilians, while suppressing the 1991 uprisings
• Cleansed ethnic “Persians” from Iraq to Iran
• Instituted a terror campaign of kidnappings, murders, torture and rape against political opponents or anyone else he found inconvenient

And these are just the ones that I can think of off the top of my head. So, before we go and twist ourselves up too much over the death of this dictator, take a moment to think of just what he did. Try and get our brains around just why some people feel this is a good thing.

Ottawa Sun columnist Earl McRae managed to find one Iraqi expatriate who has no such difficulties concerning Saddam’s fate:

“You cannot understand unless you are an Iraqi father, mother, brother, sister, and child who lived in the hell he created. If Canada went through what we did, maybe you would understand. If Canada had a dictator who tortured and murdered his own Canadian people because he was Catholic and they were Protestant, you would understand.

“It makes me sick to hear Canadians say it was cruel to hang him. There were letters in newspapers from people feeling sorry for him because the executioners insulted him to his face just before he hanged and danced around his body.”

Johnny stands up and paces. “Hanging that bastard was too kind. He should have been slowly tortured to death. They should have done to him what he did to people, they should have put him in a box with poison gas. All the people of Iraq should have been invited to watch him die. Saddam Hussein should have been executed in public like Mussolini was.”

Not everything is so black and white as some would have us think. Perhaps this really was the lesser evil. I simply don’t know. What I do know is that he was tried and he was convicted. He was sentenced to be removed from his place of confinement on the 30th day of December in the year 2006, from there to be taken to a suitable place of execution and be hanged by the neck until he were dead. This has been done. This was no innocent man.

As a Catholic, I deeply believe in the grace of God, redemption and the forgiveness of sins.

I also know that Hell is not an empty place.

As we sit here in our nice comfortable and safe nation, complaining about what some bozo judge did to a Christmas tree, or about Christmas concerts in school getting renamed “winter festivals,” or people saying “happy holidays,” or any of the other gripes and groans that surface at this time of year, perhaps we should take just a minute or two to think about just how good we have it. There are plenty of people in the world who have one hell of a worse time of it than we do.

The Winterpeg Sun’s John Gleeson relates one such story today as he describes the plight of the oldest sect in Christendom, the one million Assyrian Christians currently living in Iraq:

Christians thrown to the lions in Iraq

By JOHN GLEESON

While Canada’s self-appointed guardians of Christmas dig up new evidence of persecution — a tree moved down the hall, a greeting without “merry” dutifully attached — real persecution against Christians is going on daily and is being largely ignored.

Nowhere is the situation as grave as in Iraq.

Since the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq’s one million Assyrian Christians — the oldest sect in Christendom — have been the target of a campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing at the hands of Islamic extremists and Kurdish nationalists. Tens of thousands have fled the country for Syria, Jordan or Turkey.

This year has been the worst since the invasion. Church bombings, car bombings, kidnappings and killings have become commonplace.

In August, 13 Assyrian women in Baghdad were kidnapped and murdered. In October, a 14-year-old boy in Albasra was crucified and stabbed in the stomach in mockery of the death of Christ. Another 14-year-old boy in Baquba was decapitated in his workplace by veiled Muslims chanting “Allahu, Akbar! Allahu, Akbar!” Also that month, a priest was kidnapped, tortured and beheaded, supposedly over the Pope’s comments critical of Islam.

Indeed, in the wake of Benedict XVI’s September speech, extremists threatened to kill all Christians in Iraq unless the Pope apologized.

Except for a few Christian relief agencies and the Assyrians’ own news service, the bloodletting has been virtually unreported — lost in the sea of carnage that is today’s Iraq.

Assyrians themselves are calling on the western world to create a “safe zone” for Christians on the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq (the Canadian-based Council of Assyrian Research and Development has posted a petition at www.cardonline.org). The European Parliament passed a resolution to that effect in April, but so far nothing has been done.

Meanwhile, Christmas has understandably gone underground in Iraq.

Due to “the grave security situation in the country,” Iraq’s Chaldean patriarch Emmanuel Delly has “appealed on safety grounds to Christians … to refrain from any public celebrations for Christmas.”

Christians hide in their homes and pray in secret. Priests are afraid to appear in public in their clerical robes, lest they be indiscriminately attacked. Schoolgirls have been warned by Muslim extremists to wear the hijab, and boys to dress in a “sombre manner,” or face the consequences under sharia law.

Truly a sad fate for a Christian community that traces its foundation back to 33 AD and St. Thomas and where most of the people still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus and the Apostles.

It’s ironic, but not really surprising, that the American-led occupation under President George W. Bush would usher in an era of atrocities against Iraq’s Christian minority. They were an easy revenge target for the majority Muslims, who have only been emboldened by the U.S. government’s apparent disregard for the Assyrians’ plight.

With more important geopolitical alliances to forge with the warring Muslim factions and the Kurds, you could say the Americans have thrown the Christians to the lions.

And remember, the same calamity could befall Pakistan’s three million Christians, already a persecuted minority, if things were to get really ugly in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Persecution? We don’t know the half of it.

So the Donkeys of the far left are once again braying about getting the hell out of Dodge Iraq, PDQ. They say that pulling out will save the lives of innocent civilians. It makes one wonder: just how far up your backside does your head need to be before guys that sit around drawing cartoons all the time have figured out the lessons of history better than you have?

Just wondering, of course.