The Enemy Within

"Oh, you think so, monsieur?" the colonel objected. "I can see you've never done much fighting. In war the real enemy is always behind the lines. Never in front of you, never among you. Always at your back. That's something every soldier knows. In every army, since the world began."

- Jean Raspail, The Camp of the Saints

On Saturday evening while reading John Ringo and Tom Kratman's Yellow Eyes, I came across this quote. Instantly, two items came to mind: first, the prosecution (or is it persecution?) of the Haditha Marines, six of eight of whom have been found innocent, and second, the Supreme Court's recent decision granting detainees at Guantánamo Bay access to American civilian courts.

Raspail's book is often described as an anti-immigration tome, but when one reads the book (as I did two years ago) it becomes evident that there is much more to his story. Above all, Raspail criticizes not only his native France, but the entire Western world, for developing a troubling lack of fortitude to stand up against hostile forces, both within and outside, that would prefer to see Western civilization crumble in favor of an earthly utopia where a vaguely-defined type of equality would be enforced at the point of a gun (or the legal system) – the enforcers-in-question exempted, of course.

Since September 11, 2001, our country's executive branch and military have led a successful campaign to protect Americans from further acts of domestic terrorism by Islamic radicals and have succeeded in overthrowing the Islamist-friendly regimes of Afghanistan and Iraq, replacing them with functioning (if imperfect) democratic governments. One could argue that during the past seven years, the greatest threats to the security of the United States have come from our putative allies abroad (particularly those entwined with the bureaucratic oligarchy known as the European Union) and a federal judiciary stacked with judges hostile to the current administration – both of whom see the Global War on Terror not as a struggle to be won, but a means by which the current administration and/or the global strength of the United States can and should be subverted.

The undermining of our national security by way of bureaucratic and legalistic nonsense has not gone unnoticed by our troops in the field. In a recent interview on The Glenn Beck Program, former Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell – author of Lone Survivor – noted how the Taliban have taken to using our own "rules of engagement" to their advantage. On a mission with three other SEALS, Luttrell came across some innocent-looking Afghani goat-herders who were likely in league with the Taliban. Luttrell recalls:

LUTTRELL: Basically we were telling them that we were Americans and that they were in danger and asking if they had any -- any -- or knew of anywhere about his of any Taliban sites or cache sites or just basically what their general business was up there, and they weren't answering anything.

GLENN: Now, did you get the feeling at the time it was because they were a part of the Taliban, or friendly, or they were just afraid of you, or why --

LUTTRELL: My -- my feeling after dealing with a lot -- most of -- every operation we had been on, just you can tell when someone doesn't really care for you. And when you look at someone's eyes, whether they -- you know, they like you or they don't. And on top of which they weren't answering any of our questions. And even though the dialect might be a little different in certain areas, still -- you could still understand what we were saying, they weren't having anything to do with us. They were talking among themselves, obviously. We couldn't under -- we couldn't pick it up totally. So the decision was they weren't brandishing firearms, they were, you know, no immediate threat to us except for the fact that if we turned them loose, that, you know, they could obviously go get reinforcements to come back on top of us. We talked about, you know, tying them up and leaving them there, but again that would be just like killing them as well. They had all the goats with them and stuff like that. It's just -- that would have brought more people into our position, and like I said, our job, we were set in for 72 hours to overwatch this target, and with a compromise like that, we were just in a difficult situation. Also dealing with the terrain, there wasn't too many places that we could relocate and evaluate our target so the decision was made to turn 'em loose.

GLENN: Okay, so --

LUTTRELL: I mean we couldn't -- we couldn't --

GLENN: How far --

LUTTRELL: Because of the ROEs, rules of engagement, we have to -- placed upon us and stuff like that, you know, if we would have executed them, you know, we'd have wound up in prison. And it wasn't -- I'd rather -- you know, we'd rather take our -- the decision was to take our chances with -- in a gunfight than take our chances in the court system.

GLENN: And the reason why -- I mean the Taliban, they are actually now carrying mule packhorses and mules loaded with explosives, but our guys cannot stop them or can't shoot them because if they're not carrying a weapon, you can't shoot them, right?

LUTTRELL: Well, you can't even shoot them -- rules of engagement for conventional forces you're not even allowed to shoot 'em if they have a weapon on them. They have to be actively engaging you.

GLENN: Okay. So you guys talked about it and you decided we gotta let 'em go. And was it mainly because of the rules of engagement?

LUTTRELL: Yes, sir.

GLENN: Okay.

LUTTRELL: And, you know, exactly. They -- like I said, they weren't carrying any firearms, and we couldn't keep 'em, you know?

GLENN: Right. And so you guys knew you'd go to prison, why? Because the bodies would be found and then --

LUTTRELL: Eventually the bodies would be found and their IO campaign is a lot better than ours. They support –

GLENN: The IO campaign, what is --

LUTTRELL: Their media campaign.

The goat-herders were let go and within forty-five minutes Luttrell and his men were surrounded by about two hundred Taliban. Luttrell eventually escaped, but his three SEAL team-members were not so fortunate, having been killed in the ensuing firefight.

There are many more stories like this one, from Afghanistan, Iraq, and even Guantánamo Bay where numerous prison guards have been attacked and maimed by the supposedly put-upon detainees.

I wonder if the Supreme Court justices who issued their ridiculous ruling gave any thought to those servicemen who risk life and limb on a daily basis to protect their very existence. How many more Americans will have to die in order to assuage the guilty consciences of those who can't bear the thought that American troops might have to actually fight when out in the field?

After the decision was issued, President George W. Bush said that the government would abide by the ruling. I would rather that he had said something along the lines of what President Andrew Jackson is alleged to have said to the Supreme Court in 1832: "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!"

Contrary to what many believe, the Constitution does not grant the Supreme Court the right of judicial review – judicial review is something the Supreme Court granted itself in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison. Considering the abusive, anti-democratic way in which the Supreme Court has used judicial review since the 1960s, I say it's high time the legislative and executive branches reclaimed that authority for themselves.