Comments on: Followup on Tal Afar

By: abb1

abb1 — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 16:11:43 +0000

Well, if you read my comments again, you’ll see that I specifically – starting from the very first comment (IIRC) – specifically admitted that in respect of ‘split-second life-or-death decisions on a daily basis’ I have absolutely no problem here. Moreover, I even accept a choice of participating in a war you are completely opposed to vs. going to jail. But participating in a war you are completely opposed to for 100,000 bucks worth of education (even as a partial reason) I don’t accept, sorry, whether you do have to make split-second decisions and risk your life every day or not. No absolution from me, sorry. OK, I feel much sillier than usual writing this stuff. And it’s all your fault, Dan.

By: beowulf888

beowulf888 — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 15:23:51 +0000

Abb1: Sorry, I don’t think you have a point. Yes, this soldier’s statement may have been poorly worded. And, yes, his motives for serving in the military may or may not be construed as selfish. But you fail to give this soldier the benefit of a doubt under circumstances that are very trying. He’s on the front line—where suicide bombers look like civilians—heck, they are civilians. No matter how unjust and FUBARed this Iraq debacle is, you are criticizing his motives, when he is the one who has to make split-second life-or-death decisions on a daily basis. I think you need to look within yourself at your own moral compass if you can’t find compassion for both the soldiers AND the victims in this incident.

By: jet

jet — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 13:15:27 +0000

Dan Hardie, Ease up Cap, he’s just a little tyke. You keep on like that and your like to permanently injury him.

By: abb1

abb1 — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 13:13:14 +0000

Well, the way I see it, I am criticizing a motive/rationalization expressed in the letter and you are defending an imaginary person against my criticism by attacking me and without addressing the substance of my criticism. So, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I am indeed an arrogant SOB. So what? Do I have a point or not?

By: dan hardie

dan hardie — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 12:44:57 +0000

Abb1: ‘we don’t know if he’s ‘behaving bravely and honourably’ Soldier in Iraq:’At every chance I get I wave people off the rode at wait till the last minute to even fire a warning shot (although I must admit this happens quite often), and unless it is under the most dire circumstances will I fire upon another human being (which I have not yet done).’ So I’d say he was behaving bravely and honourably. Oh, what’s that you say? Having posted half a dozen comments reproving him for this that and the other you don’t think he exists? If anybody has a spare straw, Abb1 would like to clutch it.

By: Darren

Darren — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 11:56:02 +0000

A chap called John Allen Paulos in his book Once Upon A Number makes the throw away comment: "freedom of expression should not be measured by how likely the average person is to be silenced but, by how likely someone with something to say is." If this is the case, isn't the story at the beginning of this thread just a distraction?

By: abb1

abb1 — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 11:12:33 +0000

No, Dan, I don’t feel superior and I don’t think criticizing a soldier for citing one of the reasons for participating in a war he’s completely opposed to as enjoying the benfits of a decent education – I don’t think by criticizing him I’m holding him to such a high standard. I think it’s a quite reasonable standard. I am sorry you feel this way. Also, we don’t know if he’s ‘behaving bravely and honourably’ or even if this person exists at all; this is just a letter someone wrote. So, maybe you should just stop fantasizing and cool off a bit.

By: dan hardie

dan hardie — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 10:14:06 +0000

Shorter Donald Johnson: The Lancet study does indeed prove that US troops may have killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians, so long as one entirely ignores what the authors of the study actually said about Fallujah and attributes to them the desire to reach entirely false conclusions. Shorter Abb1: Did I insult a young man in Iraq who is behaving bravely and honourably? Not a big deal, forget it. If I feel so morally superior to everyone, it’s because I hold myself to such high standards.

By: abb1

abb1 — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 08:39:53 +0000

And arguments which demonize a soldier [...] follow the same structure as those which demonize inner-city criminals, drug addicts, prostitutes, etc. I have never seen anyone glamorizing inner-city criminals, drug addicts or prostitutes. Never heard anyone calling hookers brave, honorable, admirable and so on. If everyone around me started calling them that, I might’ve switched to doing a little demonizing myself.

By: BadTux

BadTux — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 07:31:32 +0000

First, to the people who whine that this soldier shouldn’t be in Iraq: It wasn’t his choice. It was your choice. Now I hear you saying, “But I didn’t send him to Iraq!”. Yes you did. Yes you did. You did, and I did, and your neighbor did, all of us did. We are pathetic, overfed, lazy, jerks who pound on keyboards and think that means something, but not a single one of us has the guts to put our bodies on the line to end this war. We could end this war, all of us, if we had the guts. If 2,000,000 people descended on Washington D.C., and stood in the streets around the White House, just stood there, day after day, week after week, month after month, if after each person gets beat down by a cop gets replaced by another person, this war would end. This war would end. The people of America will not hold for Americans being shot down in cold blood in the streets by soldiers in tanks. But we don’t have the courage. We don’t have the courage of Ukrainians who stood out in the streets in cold and snow to protest a stolen election. We don’t have the courage of the Serbians who braved death every day to protest the Butcher of the Balkans until the day he was forced to leave. We’re a bunch of apathetic fools who make brave sounds but are, in the end, a bunch of gutless cowards, afraid to risk all for what we know is right. And we get the nation we deserve. If you are going to look for the person responsible for atrocities in Iraq, look in the mirror. But you won’t. I know you won’t. Because other than a few moments of utter honesty, I don’t either. So we blame the victims. So we blame the victims. We are truly pathetic. – Badtux the Irate Penguin

By: andrew

andrew — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 06:24:59 +0000

Location, people, location. Smug assessments of this soldier’s stance on the war would be comparable to a Swedish citizen’s assessment of an American’s stance on capitalism or the world order. ‘You’re an American citizen and you say you’re a progressive?! Ha! What nonsense! Who says you have to live in the most imperialistic, war-mongering state in the world?’ The question, always, is how ethical can one afford to be in a given time and place. The posters on this thread who have chosen to ignore this fact have demonstrated a profound arrogance. And arguments which demonize a soldier – especially one who is thoughtful, articulate, and critical of the war machinery which he’s but the tiniest of cogs in – follow the same structure as those which demonize inner-city criminals, drug addicts, prostitutes, etc. The liberals on this thread who (would) call this young man a monster demonstrate perfectly the way in which American liberalism and American conservatism are two sides of the same dirty coin (ie, the capitalist myth of individualism); little separates the two and each is reinforced by the other.

By: robbo

robbo — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 01:24:50 +0000

The soldier who wrote the letter seems to be an extremely diligent, competent, humane, and respectable human being. I’m not questioning any of that. I believe that most soldiers are, in fact, very good people. But I don’t support the fact that my country now spends about $421 billion a year, plus whatever this war costs on top of that, to turn these fine people into the type of casualty described by Joel Turnipseed. http://tinyurl.com/636wh Joel wrote: it takes generosity to understand how much any act of war destroys the actor as well as those acted upon. Sorry if it’s not clear, but this is precisely what I try to understand. It’s what I find incredibly frustrating about our country’s insistence that the Soldier represents the unquestionable epitome of manhood, decency, and the American way. Yes, we need a military, but will anyone who’s arguing against me agree that the American military has grown far beyond the level that every other country spends to defend themselves against outside aggression? Last I checked, our military spending amounts to about what the rest of the world spends, combined. That’s quite simply out of control. Yes, I know people whose best choice in life has been to enter the military. My father, for example. The thing is, he went to great lengths to disabuse me of the all-pervading notion that becoming a soldier is the most fine and noble thing a young person can do. And now as a middle-aged person, I firmly believe he was right. That’s right, he was a soldier, and in American society nobody questions a soldier, right? I’ll hold my viewpoint in the face of people like “jet” who think my “kung-fu is weak.” Whatever you say, my friend. Just keep ridiculing all voices of dissent and keep encouraging those young people to “be all that they can be” and join the “Army of One.” They are the sacred cows of American society whose motives and actions must never be questioned. It will be so romantic and noble when they give it all up to become the next “destroyed actor.”

By: Donald Johnson

Donald Johnson — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 00:27:52 +0000

Okay, I wasn’t going to object to Jet’s comment on the Lancet piece—it gives an estimate of 100,000 excess deaths (taking the mid-range value) and you really can’t use the data in the study to come up with a precise breakdown on who is doing the killing. But then Dan Hardie jumps in and says it is complete BS to say 100,000 deaths at the hands of US soldiers. Well, sorry, but that’s a possibility. Taking the Lancet mid-range number (which excluded the Fallujah sample), you have 100,000 deaths, 60,000 from violence and a large fraction of those from Americans. Now include the Fallujah sample. You can’t say for certain what that represents, except that in a sample of 32 neighborhoods there was one where around 20 percent of the civilians died. So it is possible that the death toll is well over 100,000 and possible that the majority were caused by Americans. And careful targeting by Americans, my rear end. Pentagon officials were quoted in the NYT some months back saying that there was a bright side to collateral damage. There’s virtually no American coverage of what our bombs are doing—Seymour Hersh said the bombing rates went up every month from June or July to November last year, but who or what are they hitting? God knows. So anyway, the Lancet study did say that the death toll in Iraq might be well above 100,000, and that many of these deaths were women and children and it it is entirely possible that the vast majority were from American bombs. Whether that is correct or not is another question. As for the debate about the soldier, I don’t feel like I can judge him. That’s not to say that he might not be wrong—I just don’t think I’d be any better in his shoes. Quite possibly worse, in fact—I might shoot up cars on less provocation if I was scared enough. or perhaps more likely, just freeze up or fall over in a dead faint. It doesn’t sound like he’s done enough to oppose the war, but with more advantages, neither have I.

By: abb1

abb1 — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 19:44:33 +0000

OK, Joel, whatever. He didn’t have to mention the benefits of a decent education as a reason, and that’s the only line I have a problem with. Not a big deal, forget it.

By: abb1

abb1 — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 19:36:57 +0000

OK, Dan, fair enough. Instead of ‘atrocities’ I should’ve called it ‘the terrible shooting in Tal Afar‘, because Tal Afar is exactly what this letter is defending/explaining. Now, I don’t want to type too much here and I already said a few times that individual soldiers certainly should defend themselves as they see fit; however, please consider that invading a country and then killing people there (even in self-defense) is still an atrocity on the great scale of things. And these soldiers who kill people in self-defense do participate in these atrocities. Yes, it’s not their fault to the extent that they are forced to be there, but it certainly is their fault if they understand it but still are staying there for the money. That’s all there is to it.