Andrew Sullivan is freaking out about a video that shows Iraqi forces beating up suspected insurgents. He even calls these poor Sunni detainees “civilians.” This is a mistake and the root of his confusion. The insurgency is not a law enforcement problem. This is a war. Unlawful, un-uniformed combatants are civilians in name only; they lose the protection of the civilian (i.e., noncombatant) status the minute they take up arms. We should hardly be concerned if they are treated the same way police treat suspects in most countries.

His confusion stems from a real confusion about “hearts and minds.” It is not about giving away candy canes and book bags and being nice to everybody; it’s about making people respect and follow and assist the government as opposed to the insurgents. As the new Counterinsurgency Manual puts it:

Once the unit settles into the AO, its next task is to build trusted networks. This is the true meaning of the phrase “hearts and minds,” which comprises two separate components. “Hearts” means persuading people that their best interests are served by COIN success. “Minds” means convincing them that the force can protect them and that resisting it is pointless. Note that neither concerns whether people like Soldiers and Marines. Calculated self-interest, not emotion, is what counts.

I’ve written about this before. Capturing, humiliating, and ultimately executing insurgents and their supporters is the key to restoring law and order in Iraq. The problem is not that these Shia Iraqi Army troops are beating up Sunnis; it’s that they not beating up and killing Shia insurgents as well.

Sullivan is a truly strange being. He once was hawkish beyond belief, supporting intervention in Iraq and elsewhere for explicit neoconservative reasons: helping Israel and spreading democracy. In 2002, he was calling Bush his Man of the Year. But, once the war began, he has criticized every decision our troops and allies have made, even though some of these alleged failings are normal incidents of war. He overemphasizes human rights abuses, demands more troops, worries about our lack of commitment, and then criticizes the decision to add more troops. He is the worst kind of arm-chair critics who lacks all sympathy with the need of leaders to make hard decisions under conditions of uncertainty. He also does not understand the inherent nature of war as a violent and brutal thing. He lacks the integrity to admit his own mistaken reasoning and the changes of his own position. Instead, he denies his own limited responsibility for the consequences of policies that he has supported, whether it is the molestation of children from the infestation of gays in the Catholic clergy or the need for “dirty work” in dealing with the predictable Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

It is notable that Sullivan’s energies have not even been employed to discuss the truly innocent civilians that have been killed by US forces and justly prosecuted by the US military. Instead, he’s worried about rough treatment of the insurgents themselves and sensationalistic, photo-driven stories like Abu Ghraib. This mistaken focus on these abuses are the ranting of a guy who hedges himself on everything so he never has to take any moral responsibility for the necessary consequences of his positions. He wants to always retreat to his pure intentions and thereby to ignore the predictable consequences of those same positions. In this respect, he exhibits the typical liberal mindset of his early career at The New Republic.