Moral Cowardice Prevents Winning the War
Dec 23, 2005

IRVINE, CA--The blame for the murder of 19 Americans in Mosul yesterday lies not only with the insurgents who initiated the attack, but also with the Bush Administration's suicidal policies, said Dr. Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute. "The insurgency would have been crushed long ago, and yesterday's attack averted, were it not for America's altruistic policy of placing the lives of Iraqi civilians above its own self-defense.

"America must destroy the insurgency if we are to implement a non-threatening government in Iraq," said Dr. Brook. "This can be done, but to do so we must make the insurgency's complicit civilian population--those who harbor and support the insurgents--pay for the violence that they abet. We must enforce their complete surrender to our presence. Thanks to such a policy, during the occupation of Japan zero soldiers were killed by insurgents and the threat posed by the country was ended.

"Shamefully, the Bush Administration has been unwilling to make hostile Iraqi civilians pay for their crimes," said Dr. Brook. "Time and again, it has treated Iraqi lives as sacrosanct and American security and soldiers as dispensable. It is in the name of sparing civilians that our soldiers have been ordered to follow crippling rules of engagement that have cost hundreds of their lives. It was in the name of sparing civilians that we withdrew from Fallujah in April, and in November allowed thousands of insurgents to flee to places like Mosul. Such capitulations have preserved and emboldened the insurgents, while giving hope to Islamic terrorists worldwide.

"To win this war," concluded Dr. Brook, "we need a fundamental shift in our moral priorities. We need to see the military place the lives of Americans--including American soldiers--above the lives of Iraqi civilians. To those who insist that we continue to sacrifice for the sake of Iraqi civilians, I say that the death of 19 Americans yesterday, and the many more to come, are on your heads."

###   ###   ###

Dr. Yaron Brook is available for interviews. To interview Dr. Brook or book him for your show, please e-mail media@aynrandcenter.org

For more articles by Yaron Brook, and his bio, click here.