Sunday, January 09, 2005
Foreign fighters in Iraq
There's been a renewed focus on blaming "foreign fighters" for the insurgency in Iraq, with the U.S. government making sure to let the world know that they "could be transferred out of the country for indefinite detention elsewhere...as they have been deemed by the Justice Department not to be entitled to protections of the Geneva Conventions." Skipping over the obvious (that there are 150,000 unwelcome "foreign fighters" in Iraq - Americans, British, Italians, and more), I think it's time to repeat a reminder from back in September - "foreign fighters" - people with names like Lafayette, Pulaski, von Steuben, and Kosciusko - were instrumental in freeing the United States from foreign domination. Every one of them (click on their names) has even been honored with a postage stamp, so important are they to the history of the United States. Yet now, that same country wants the world to think that "foreign fighters" are somehow the lowest of the low, a category of humans totally outside of civilized behavior, unworthy of actually having rights. In truth, they join a long, very honorable tradition, from the men mentioned above, through the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the most famous "foreign fighter" of them all, Che Guevara.
