Is it weird that I tend to respond only to those political issues that find their way into the comics blogosphere? I think it’s weird.
Jim Henley and Jason Kimble are up in arms that the U.S. military has arrested the wife and daughter of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, one of Saddam Hussein’s seemingly countless right-hand men and the theoretical instigator of much of the ongoing insurgency/terrorist campaign. I think my difference of opinion with Jim and Jason can be summed up pretty neatly like thus: Jim (at least; don’t know enough about Jason) assumes that the army generally acts wrongly; I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt, believing that they’ve learned that the kind of brutal and stupid tactics employed during many 20th century wars not only look bad, but are militarily inefficient. But beyond that general difference in philosophy, why is it so inconceivable that al-Douri’s wife and daughter may have done something wrong themselves? Hell, in the U.S. itself, I think they should be throwing the ghoulish wife of ghoulish CEOs like Tyco’s Dennis Koslowski in prison right along with her hubby, as she is fully complicit in the looting he did. We don’t know the specifics of the al-Douri situation (again, perhaps this brings us back to the larger philosophical difference between Jim and myself) but at the very least his family can reasonably be suspected of knowing where he is, making them material witnesses; moreover, they are likely in possession of stolen goods and funds, and may well be implicated in some of his crimes as well. “Collective punishment” isn’t an applicable term if the people you’re punishing have actually done things deserving of punishment.