Via “Matt Yglesias”:http://yglesias.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/10/102155/390, this quite repulsive comparison from “Max Boot”:http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-boot3aug03,0,3318247.column?coll=la-util-op-ed between the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in World War II and the war in Iraq.
bq. Oh, how times change. Today we can put “smart” bombs through the window of an office building. Along with greater accuracy has come a growing impatience with “collateral damage.” A bomb that goes astray and hits a foreign embassy or a wedding party now causes international outrage, whereas 60 years ago the destruction of an entire city was a frequent occurrence.
bq. Does this make us more enlightened than the “greatest generation”? Perhaps. We certainly have the luxury of being more discriminating in the application of violence. But even today, there is cause to doubt whether more precision is always better. During the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. was so sparing in its use of force that many Baathists never understood they were beaten. The butcher’s bill we dodged early on is now being paid with compound interest.
So the reason that we’re in trouble in Iraq is that we didn’t carpet-bomb the hell out of the country at the beginning of the campaign. Boot demurs that he “can’t claim to have worked out the moral calculus of bombing,” and is “troubled” by the deliberate targetting of civilians. Still, the direction of his argument is quite clear, and, as Matt says, rather revealing. There’s something deeply nasty about the disconnect (which is perhaps most clearly expressed in Charles Krauthammer’s dictum that the only way to win Arabs’ hearts and minds is to grab their balls and squeeze them hard) between neo-cons’ purported aims and methods. It would seem rather difficult to make the claim that you’re acting in the best interests of the Iraqi people gel with a claim that greater brutality and more indiscriminate use of force against said people was needed to protect said interests. But that’s what Boot seems to be trying to do.
{ 72 comments }
abb1 08.10.05 at 11:48 am
It would seem rather difficult to make the claim that you’re acting in the best interests of the Iraqi people gel with a claim that greater brutality and more indiscriminate use of force against said people was needed to protect said interests.
Not at all, the idea is simply to break their will.
Krauthammer&Co see Arabs as duplicitous and irrational group of people who only understand and respect strength. Half-devil and half-child – just the usual racist ‘white man’s burden’ crap.
Sam 08.10.05 at 11:56 am
“We certainly have the luxury of being more discriminating in the application of violence.”
Seems to me this is a responsibility, not a luxury. But, then again, I’m just one of those old fashioned folks who believe that killing innocents is wrong… But, wait, isn’t that why we hate terrorists? I get so confused with neos.
Brian Moore 08.10.05 at 12:04 pm
The interesting problem that results is that it’s obvious that precision bombing in Iraq is superior to saturation bombing of WW2 from a moral perspective — yet there are far more people who criticize the Iraq war on the basis of the innocent casualties.
The pro-war movement is then quite confused — not many people complained when millions of Germans and Japanese were firebombed off the face of the earth, so why is everyone so upset about a few thousand Iraqis? Why should Bush care? FDR, Lincoln and Truman are national heros. Targetting civilian centers never haunted their legacies.
And, if we ignore all moral components, he’s right — the reduction of major Iraqi cities to parking lots would indeed have avoided such sticky situations as we face today. It’s just, you know, completely against any form of human morality whatsoever. Details, I suppose.
dipnut 08.10.05 at 12:28 pm
Mark Steyn made exactly the same point recently:
If that’s true, then presumably there are terrorists in Iraq who are alive and killing civilians today, because we didn’t take the risk of killing civilians before. So that’s a drawback to “onerous rules of engagement”. Whether it’s a fatal drawback is debatable, as both Steyn and Boot admit.
abb1 08.10.05 at 12:36 pm
…they wouldn’t fire back just in case the building you were standing on hadn’t been completely evacuated…
Now, that’s just not true. Not only they will fire back, but they’ll call for air support and level the building. I watched a documentory where they did exactly that.
fifi 08.10.05 at 12:42 pm
The smarter the bombs the dumber the people dropping them. Nature ♥ balance.
dipnut 08.10.05 at 12:43 pm
…greater brutality and more indiscriminate use of force against said people…
That’s not exactly honest. What’s at issue is greater brutality and more indiscrimate use of force against said people’s oppressors, with the concomitant increased risk of killing some of said people. Abb1 should also take note; our war is not against Iraq as such.
As for Dresden-style bombing, that’s not on the table, and it never was. Feel free to address real, not imagined, propositions.
dipnut 08.10.05 at 12:44 pm
Not only they will fire back, but they’ll call for air support and level the building. I watched a documentory where they did exactly that.
In Fallujah lately, perhaps. But during the initial invasion?
dipnut 08.10.05 at 12:53 pm
Sorry, Abb1, I should have put another parenthesis in the original quote, to establish context.
Barry 08.10.05 at 12:53 pm
Yes. There was a book written by a reporter who accompanied Marine Force Recon units, in front of the main body of the invasion. They called in lots of artillery and air strikes.
dipnut 08.10.05 at 1:02 pm
They called in lots of artillery and air strikes.
Of course they did, against troop formations, bridges and the like. That’s not inconsistent with Steyn’s assertion.
abb1 08.10.05 at 1:05 pm
Yes, it was a documentary of the initial war. Short tape: a platoon is going somewhere, they get shot at from a building, they take cover and call for air support. I don’t know, maybe it was obvious to them that the house was not occupied, but it wasn’t to me. I got an impression that it was a typical MO, why do you think the casualties were so low?
dipnut 08.10.05 at 1:15 pm
Look: I don’t know whether the bit about RPGs from the rooftops is true, from my personal experience. I trust Steyn (who, unlike anyone on this thread, actually went to Iraq immediately post-invasion), but you all do not, so I’ll give that up.
The major points still stand, and you don’t have to be quite insane with blood-lust to acknowledge them. Our rules of engagement in the invasion were onerous. They were made so, out of concern for civilians’ well-being. There is reason to doubt whether this was the best possible policy, even from the point of view of the civilian population in question.
dipnut 08.10.05 at 1:18 pm
why do you think the casualties were so low?
That cuts both ways.
P O'Neill 08.10.05 at 1:18 pm
It must be some kind of indictment of supposed smart conservative Boot that he’s coming relatively late to this point. Dipnut has the Steyn quote, and Jonah Goldberg was at it last month:
We were too careful, too “surgical,” in how we beat the Iraqi army. By destroying their conventional ability to fight we neglected killing as many Baathists as we otherwise might have, leaving large numbers with the willingness to fight. We were a bit like cowboys in a Western, simply shooting the gun out of the bad guy’s hand rather than killing the bad guy outright. There are reasonable moral and political arguments for such martial precision (particularly in a media age), but that doesn’t change the fact that winning only occurs when the other side really agrees that it’s lost.
Barry 08.10.05 at 1:22 pm
dipnut:
“Of course they did, against troop formations, bridges and the like. That’s not inconsistent with Steyn’s assertion.”
It was against collections of buildings or trees where they had taken fire from, or thought that they had.
As for Steyn, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
fifi 08.10.05 at 1:33 pm
It is not obvious smart wars are less destructive. It’s wasn’t Dresden but the cumulative collateral damage in Yugoslavia and Iraq was worse than the destruction inflicted in a typical WWII bombing campaign of the same or longer duration. Showing a maximum of restraint we destroy in a few days what took dumb bombs weeks to accomplish and I don’t think we should be congratulated for showing restraint when our own cities are safe from retaliation.
Brendan 08.10.05 at 1:35 pm
Vietnam flashback alert! Vietnam flashback alert! One in a seemingly endless series.
After ’68, again, the rhetoric of the pro-war posse changed. Instead of being ‘we have this all under control’ it went to ‘we could win this war in six months if we just didn’t have our hands tied behind our backs, if we went in there and really started fighting ‘.
This was closely allied to the ‘stab in the back theory’, popular amongst the extreme right in the 70s in the States (and in the Germany of the ’20s), which stated that the war ‘could have been won’ except yada yada yada.
Uncle Kvetch 08.10.05 at 1:36 pm
For those of you keeping score at home, our game of Vietnam Redux has now advanced to Level 5, a.k.a “We could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.”
Uncle Kvetch 08.10.05 at 1:37 pm
Wow, Brendan–you beat me to the punch by exactly one minute. I think they call that synchronicity, or something.
Dan Kervick 08.10.05 at 1:50 pm
Ah, down the slope we slide. The more total victory eludes the neocon grasp, the more brutal they become.
Perhaps Boot is just being coy; but surely he understands very well that many of the civilian bombing casualties on both sides in WWII were not collateral damage. They were deliberately targeted by bombing raids, particularly by the two final whoppers dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Call me a cynic, but I don’t think Boot is “troubled” at all by the deliberate targeting of civilians. He’s a spoiled little boy warrior who is troubled when he doesn’t get his way. And he’s perhaps slightly troubled by the opprobrium that attaches to publicly advocating the deliberate targeting of civilians. But I suspect Boot has wet dreams about bringing countries to their knees with extreme prejudice, in fine pulp suspense novel form, and delights in his public personna as the Baby-faced Butcher of the Bookstores – always willing to prove his ambivalent manhood and shock the cognoscenti by showing he is willing to go several steps further than the other sentimental weaklings in the pundit class.
Of course, who could doubt the gravity of our failure in not slaughtering the Baath when we had the chance. I mean, after they sank half our submarine and carrier fleet on that day of infamy back in … of wait .. never mind.
albert 08.10.05 at 2:16 pm
Maybe one reason why the deaths of civilians seemed more tolerable in both WWII spheres is that the Allies genuinely considered the future of their countries to be at risk. (admittedly this doesn’t cover Dresden, etc.) No serious person ever thought that about Iraq.
nick 08.10.05 at 2:36 pm
Max Boot: plainly from a country with no cultural memory of civilian bombardment.
nick 08.10.05 at 2:39 pm
Oh, and it’s notable that neocons have reached the ‘Exterminate all the brutes!’ stage already. The horror, the horror.
soru 08.10.05 at 2:49 pm
The only thing I’d question in this is the use of the word ‘neo-con’, as I don’t think Boot is speaking as a neo-con, but just expressing ‘conventional’ moderate american wisdom.
The sterotypical american way of making war is don’t join in until there is absolutle no alternative, but then fight total war until unconditional surrender. The neo-cons and the Chomskyite left are about the only two groups of US political thinkers who would differ from that, and I’m not sure about the Chomskyites.
soru
jet 08.10.05 at 2:52 pm
Nick,
So ungenerous. Is it not possible that Max Boot believes that there might be a possibility that if more Sunnis had died in the initial stages of the war that fewer civilians would have died overall? Killing fewer people and containing the killing to those who were more supporting of the insurgency would not have been a more moral stance?
soubzriquet 08.10.05 at 3:06 pm
soru: on the other hand, look at where waffling on the unconditional surrender doctrine got us with respect to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think, given a bit more distance, history will not view this kindly. I know this is an aside, but topical given the anniversary a few days ago.
Ray 08.10.05 at 3:41 pm
On the ‘onerous rules of engagement’, I remember an early incident in the war when a journalist was killed by US (or possibly UK?) troops, because he was on a roof, they were under fire (from somewhere else), and his camera lens was mistaken for a weapon. The talking point then was that it was the journalist’s fault, for not being embedded I suppose, and the under-fire troops were right to fire on suspicious equipment. No one defending the troops mentioned these rules of engagement then.
Just another reason not to take Steyn seriously…
BigMacAttack 08.10.05 at 3:56 pm
It isn’t racist and it isn’t necessarily stupid.
We cannot tell the Bathists from ordinary Iraqis now. We weren’t going to able to do it during the invasion. And Bathist were no more inclined to fight in the open during the invasion than they are now. Which would means we would have had to have created quite a bit of hamburger out of quite a few people.
A valid line of inquiry but in this case a dead end.
Just the knee jerk reaction of folks for whom the solution is almost always more force. As opposed to the knee jerk reaction of folks for whom the answer is almost always less force.
Fifi and Nick,
What a beautiful duet. You have it covered. No matter what Americans are brutes. Not to be congratulated for showing restraint from safety and cultural inclined to civilian brutality because they have historically been safe.(At least from someone else.) Abb1 should have you over for dinner.
Uncle Kvetch 08.10.05 at 4:06 pm
You have it covered. No matter what Americans are brutes. Not to be congratulated for showing restraint
I think “invading another country on false pretenses” pretty much precludes “showing restraint.” I can’t quite get my head around “Sure, we pissed all over the most basic notions of international law, but we did it with such care.” But that’s just me.
Then again, reading prowar comments on this site over the past week has taught me that no matter how many Iraqis die as a direct result of our government’s stupidity and hubris, a lot more could, theoretically, have died, so yeah, I guess Fifi and Nick (and me) should just shut up.
fifi 08.10.05 at 4:15 pm
No matter what Americans are brutes.
It’s much worse than that, they’re human.
abb1 08.10.05 at 4:21 pm
BigMac, it’s not about any Americans. It’s about some very powerful, greedy and arrogant people whose nationality, race and ethnicity are irrelevant. I am sorry you still don’t understand.
jane adams 08.10.05 at 5:05 pm
I have known a number of soldiers and several police officers who killed in the line of duty. Even when in retrospect they considered te act necessary and would do so again, even when they were militant about the need for force and accepted concepts such as “collatoral damage” most (not all, but most) of these individuals were haunted by the action they had taken, it was not uncommon for the faces to come in a dark room. I won’t say this haunting was crippling, but it was there.
I think it is in the nature of being human to be bothetred by such things. Many in the “greatest generation” were also bothered by Hiroshaima and Nagasaki and the spectre of nuclear war haunted the world.
To reduce this to a simle condemnation of the United States misses the complexity, but for people who feel these decisions were perhaps necessary and seemed even more so in the context of the time (as I do) to say no anguisj required is to betray the fundamental humanity. We can mourn for those we killed. Many humans have no choice if tey are forced to do the killings directly. For those who have never come near death to put on this tough guy persona is a sign of weakness, not the strengt they pretend.
I predict we will soon see their inner nature in the denial that many soldiers have cracked under their stress and their contempt of those for whom it can’t be hidden. It is no coincidence that they are the same ones who tried to cut veterans care by over a billion this year.
Brendan 08.10.05 at 5:26 pm
‘The sterotypical american way of making war is don’t join in until there is absolutle no alternative, but then fight total war until unconditional surrender.’
Or indeed join in when there is every alternative in the world, and then leave when you have…er…lost.
Remind me, whose was the unconditional surrender in Vietnam again?
nick 08.10.05 at 5:33 pm
What abb1 just said. Plus:
A bomb that goes astray and hits a foreign embassy or a wedding party now causes international outrage, whereas 60 years ago the destruction of an entire city was a frequent occurrence.
Actually, it wasn’t that frequent at all in the US 60 years ago. 140 years ago, perhaps, courtesy of W. T. Sherman. And we all know how today’s inhabitants of the southern US regard it as an unfortunate but necessary tactic to help their forebears understand that they were beaten. No bitterness at all.
So I revise my first comment: while there’s no living memory of American cities being bombed by a foreign power, which might give Boot a moment’s pause, there’s a cultural inheritance that he manages to overlook.
nick 08.10.05 at 5:37 pm
“In the angle between hunter Street, commencing at the City hall, running east, and McDonough Street, running southern, all houses were destroyed. The jail and calaboose were burned. All business houses, except those on Alabama Street, commencing with the Gate City Hotel, running east to Loyd Street, were burned. All the hotels, except the Gate City were burned. By referring to my map, you will find about 400 houses standing. The scale of the map is 400 feet to one inch. Taking the car-shed for the center, describe a circle, the diameter of which is twelve inches, and you will perceive that the circle contains about 300 squares. Then, at a low estimate, allow three houses to every 400 feet, and we will have 3600 houses in the circle. Subtract the number of houses indicated on the map, as standing, and you will see by this estimate, the enemy have destroyed 3200 houses. Refer to the exterior of the circle, and you will discover that it is more than half a mile to the city limits, in every direction, which was thickly populated, say nothing of the houses beyond, and you will see that the enemy have destroyed from four to five thousand houses. Two-thirds of the shade trees in the Park and city, and of the timber in the suburbs have been destroyed. The suburbs present to the eye one vast, naked, ruined, deserted camp. The Masonic Hall is not burned, though the corner-stone is badly scarred by some thief, who would have robbed it of its treasure, but for the timely interference of some mystic brother.”
W.P. Howard, December 7th 1864
soru 08.10.05 at 5:43 pm
Remind me, whose was the unconditional surrender in Vietnam again?
Quite. It’s wrong to say the Vietnam war was unwinnable, plenty of countries could have won it.
It was just that america was not one of them.
soru
roger 08.10.05 at 6:05 pm
One of the truly touching things about the American rules of engagement is that, apparently, the military decided it would be unfair to guard or destroy the weapons dumps. Allowing the enemy to carry away whatever weapons they needed was above and behond the call of duty, but Commander Rumsfeld is a gentelman before all things. I think the American Department of War is to be commended on its chivalry. More than that — if the rightwingers are right and Saddam was mainlining hyellowcake, we even let that be distributed across the Middle East to all those struggling paramilitary groups.
Of course, everything can’t go off without a hitch. You have to throw a little meat to the Steyn crowd, thus the war crime of raping Fallujah, the bombing of cities the Americans occupy, and the cute habit of defining a terrorist as: anyone the Amrican military kills. But the weapons dump trick was magical, in a very special sense.
MQ 08.10.05 at 7:52 pm
If you want to see the actual American rules of engagement, read the book “Generation Kill”. We most definitely did call in artillery and airstrikes on civilian areas from which we were taking fire. Steyn is full of it, as usual. Perhaps Boot is talking about is terror bombing of the urban civilian population; “Shock and Awe” apparently did not cause enough casualties. We’ve killed many tens of thousands of civilians, we should have killed hundreds of thousands I suppose.
I actually wouldn’t mind seeing some terror bombing if Boot, Steyn, and that whole crowd could be made to live in the cities targeted. Be entertaining to watch them cower in the basement, might make them a little less macho with other peoples’ lives.
BigMacAttack 08.10.05 at 8:17 pm
Nick,
Only Southerners are more inclined to support the war. Your cultural inheritance bunk is just that bunk. A pathetic tatter of pop psychology and pseudo anthropology with which you are attempting to cover your naked anti-Americanism.
Fifi,
Realizing that we are all beasts/sinners can help us to be humble and charitable. It can help us to forgive those who trespass against us.
Observing good deeds and casually surmising less than noble intentions or casually proposing that circumstances mitigate the nobleness of those good deeds is neither an act of humility or charity. And those who do this are not asserting that we are all human. Rather they asserting that those they disagree with are less human than their holy selves.
Abb1,
I do get it. It is about a very revealing pattern of inflation/deflation and an ever moving set of goal posts.
Uncle Kvetch 08.10.05 at 8:33 pm
And those who do this are not asserting that we are all human. Rather they asserting that those they disagree with are less human than their holy selves.
Right. And when Colin Powell said the number of civilian casualties directly caused by the invasion wasn’t “a number I’m particularly interested in,” he wasn’t asserting that those Iraqis were “less human” than he was–he was simply pointing out that he didn’t give a shit. Which is ever so much nobler.
fifi 08.10.05 at 9:12 pm
I agree and am pleased the Decent Right has forgiven Saddam.
fifi 08.10.05 at 10:12 pm
Sorry I shouldn’t have hit and run like that. I’m sure you believe the invasion was an acceptable price to pay to demonstrate the moral superiority of your intentions. I respect your intentions and didn’t raise our humanity to make the original point the road to hell is paved with them. (It’s true that’s what they say, but they say lots of things.) On the contrary I don’t think your intentions are better than those of Saddam who also meant to good as knew it. He failed. But so are the liberators failing in similar ways and I would guess for like underlying reasons. I think it would be interesting to learn those reasons and to that end suggest we discount the moral rhetoric completely.
soru 08.11.05 at 3:00 am
Saddam who also meant to good as knew it.
That’s certainly an interesting theory, although not one in particularly close accord with the facts of the matter.
soru
nick 08.11.05 at 3:41 am
A pathetic tatter of pop psychology and pseudo anthropology…
Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise you were just a gasbag with comprehension skills. Now carry on failing to read.
ckrisz 08.11.05 at 5:12 am
Indeed. Imagine if Saddam had not used chemical weapons on the Kurds, or massacres on the Shia. Imagine an Iraq torn apart by ongoing, grinding rebellions — how many Iraqis on all sides would have died then? The lives Saddam took must be measured against the lives Saddam saved by crushing those rebellions in the manner he did. After all, Iraqis didn’t hear a peep out of those Shia religious fanatics after 1992, did they?
– Max Boot, if he’d been born in Tikrit.
No Preference 08.11.05 at 6:50 am
It would seem rather difficult to make the claim that you’re acting in the best interests of the Iraqi people gel with a claim that greater brutality and more indiscriminate use of force against said people was needed to protect said interests.
We should have been suspicious of the fact that the people who organized (Doug Feith) and promoted (Boot, Steyn) this great humanitarian invasion for the benefit of Iraq are a bunch of Arab haters. It is no surprise that it has turned out so badly. What did we expect?
Slocum 08.11.05 at 8:05 am
There is a problem here that Boot has identified (however clumsily) — the problem is that the effort to rebuild Iraq is being hampered by the fact that the insurgents and supporters are not very afraid…that is, not very afraid of what will happen if they are caught providing support for the insurgency. Take a look at this Michael Yon piece (amazing stuff, BTW):
http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/2005/08/jungle-law_10.html
They’ve captured an insurgent preparing to set off an IED. The guy first tells them how to operate his radio transmitter and then tells them where he lives (is he afraid of what the U.S. troops will do to him or his family? Obviously not). So they all go there:
He lived with his mother. She was the only one home when we arrived. It was as if she knew we were coming. Many people saw us capture him; someone must have called on a cell phone to warn her that trouble was brewing. We searched every where.
She smiled the whole time, as if to say, That’s my boy! The translator heard her say to her son, “Don’t worry. You will be released soon.†She smiled at me.
The most serious terrorists do not fear prison here. Captain Jeff VanAntwerp, who commands Alpha Company, recently told me that Iraqis joke among themselves that they would pay 5,000 Dinar per night to stay at Abu Ghraib prison. It’s air conditioned, the showers are good, the food is good, and the water is good. The mother seemed to know this and it curled in contempt behind her smile.
Obviously the solution is not Gestapo (or Saddam) style tactics of indiscriminate killing of suspected insurgent supporters. But the fact that these supporters do not fear being found out as such means that other Iraqis will continue to die every day in car bombings and assasinations and ambushes on police.
I don’t pretend to have a solution at hand, but there’s no benefit in refusing to recognize the problem.
ckrisz 08.11.05 at 9:11 am
“The Chief wanted the prisoner. ‘Please leave him with me.’
During lunch, the Chief persisted in his entreaties to LTC Kurilla, saying his police would find all the bombs, break the cell, and give the prisoner back tomorrow at the latest. And they could. The Iraqi Police could break the cell because they can break the man.”
Don’t think the police chief is talking about playing tickle. That such methods ARE in use by the Iraqi police but apparently not doing much to defeat the insurgency points to a broader problem than what Slocum is talking about.
ckrisz 08.11.05 at 9:14 am
“The Chief wanted the prisoner. ‘Please leave him with me.’
During lunch, the Chief persisted in his entreaties to LTC Kurilla, saying his police would find all the bombs, break the cell, and give the prisoner back tomorrow at the latest. And they could. The Iraqi Police could break the cell because they can break the man.”
Obviously the police chief is talking about torture. That such methods are in apparent widespread use by the Iraqi police yet do not appear to be making much headway towards defeating the insurgency points to an even broader problem than the one Slocum indicates.
BigMacAttack 08.11.05 at 9:17 am
Fifi,
Try and learn from your mistakes. That is the key. When you describe an ink blot you are really describing something else. When you casually trash the good intentions of others you really aren’t revealing anything about them.
I didn’t particularly oppose or support the invasion of Iraq. So when you lather on about my intentions and goals regarding my imaginary support for the invasion you are really …… fill in the blank.
I am not sure we should or can separate morality out from any discussion about the events in Iraq. But please, if the subject comes up again, feel free to refrain from moral rhetoric and if I direct a comment your way, I will try and do the same.
abb1 08.11.05 at 9:22 am
She smiled the whole time, as if to say, That’s my boy! The translator heard her say to her son, “Don’t worry. You will be released soon.†She smiled at me.
The most serious terrorists do not fear prison here. Captain Jeff VanAntwerp, who commands Alpha Company, recently told me that Iraqis joke among themselves that they would pay 5,000 Dinar per night to stay at Abu Ghraib prison. It’s air conditioned, the showers are good, the food is good, and the water is good. The mother seemed to know this and it curled in contempt behind her smile.
Yup. this does it for me, I’m convinced now. It’s like a Denmark prison.
Barry 08.11.05 at 10:05 am
After ‘bomb them harder’, we see the next line: ‘more torture’.
Jack 08.11.05 at 10:27 am
Are we talking about the rules of engagement that allow this sort of thing?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4328579.stm
The liberation of Iraq is not really like the war against Germany and the war against Germany is not an example of moral perfection.
Nicholas Mycroft 08.11.05 at 11:38 am
a bunch of people (Boot to start out with) are completely off the reservation here. how exactly does more brutality/ bombing/ intimidation during “major combat operations” contribute to a peaceful occupation and smooth transition to a U.S.-friendly democracy?
soru–in a sense you are absolutely right about your “U.S goes in full-tilt and doesn’t stop until it has won” comment. In terms of our own military and civilian casualties vs. enemy civilians killed, I believe that we have produced by far the most lopsided ratio in the history of the world. Just a few examples:
WWII 413k vs. (?) 1.5 million
Vietnam 55k vs. (?) 3 million
Gulf War I 378 vs. (?) 2,500 + (?) depleted uranium victims
Gulf War II 1.8k vs. (?) 50,000
I am not particularly proud of this ratio. In my opinion, two wars in U.S. history deserved the “total war” approach: Civil and WWII. One of the many things Cheney and the other reptiles forgot when trying to intimidate “the terrorists” with a display of U.S. power in Iraq is that we had already established a well-earned reputation for fearsome and deadly military action. We look a lot less fearsome now, don’t we?
Slocum 08.11.05 at 12:00 pm
Obviously the police chief is talking about torture. That such methods are in apparent widespread use by the Iraqi police yet do not appear to be making much headway towards defeating the insurgency points to an even broader problem than the one Slocum indicates.
As to making headway — there was a time when Iraqi police stations were routinely overrun, the staff killed, the weapons stolen, any prisoners freed, etc — that does not seem to have happened for a quite some time, so I don’t think it would be fair to say the police have made no headway. They are still being abushed and killed, but no longer routed.
But I do think it is clear, that if coalition forces begin to withdraw and Iraqi security forces take on more of the day-to-day counter-insurgency, the methods of the ISF will probably be less restrained.
Omri 08.11.05 at 4:22 pm
Do you people not recall your geography? The brunt of the fighting and collateral damage in the war took place in the Shi’a south of the country. The Sunni triangle was relatively unscathed, at first. So regardless of how much fire a platoon would take before calling in air strikes, the Sunni region saw little of it, and unsurprisingly, was where the insurgency has been the most persistent.
bad Jim 08.12.05 at 5:28 am
F: Nun gut wer bist du denn?
M: Ein Teil von jener Kraft,
die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft.
F: Was ist mit diesem Rätselwort gemeint?
M: Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht, denn alles, was ensteht,
ist wert, daß es zugrunde geht!
jet 08.12.05 at 8:32 am
Bemannen Sie alle zu leicht wächst locker und mildert, wählt er bald Ruhe zu jedem möglichem Preis und also mag ich ihn mit einem Gefährten zusammenpassen, um die Zwei zu spielen, sich zu rühren und zu verleiten.
Barry 08.12.05 at 8:33 am
Posted by Omri:
“Do you people not recall your geography? The brunt of the fighting and collateral damage in the war took place in the Shi’a south of the country.”
Except for aerial bombardment, but how bad could that be?
“The Sunni triangle was relatively unscathed, at first. ”
Except for aerial bombardment, but how bad could that be?
Barry 08.12.05 at 8:40 am
Omri, a memory popped into my head after posting – do you remember the TV footage of the first night of the war? “Shock and Awe”? The many, many explosions over Badghdad? (all of which, I’m sure, were precision-guided missiles with precision blast and shapnel which only killed Evildoers)
jet 08.12.05 at 9:52 am
Barry,
“The brunt of…”
It appears you need to reference a dictionary.
Unless you are claiming that the Sunni area received a comparable amount of conflict as the Shi’ite? If that’s the case then your comment doubly reflects upon you ;)
abb1 08.12.05 at 10:15 am
This is silly; clearly the Sunni areas: Fallujah, Samarra, Tikrit, suffered much more US-inflicted damage and violence over the past couple of years.
And if it’s only the first few weeks of the conflict that count, then it’s too late anyway; can’t rewind to 2003 and bomb and kill more of them back then. So, sounds like it’s hopeless now.
Barry 08.12.05 at 11:44 am
Jet, do you understand that aerial bombs are quite destructive, down there on the ground? They might look like cool video game effects, but they are actually quite dangerous.
jet 08.12.05 at 12:51 pm
Barry,
Yes, I think everyone over the age of 2 understands that 500lb’s to 2000lb’s of metal casing filled with material more explosive than C-4 is quite dangerous. The point was that most of the fighting, destruction, and dieing was done in Southern Iraq. No one is arguing that the rest of Iraq didn’t see fighting, only that it was to a much lesser scale.
Abb1,
There is a point to this debate. Boot thinks that if the Sunnis had seen more Shock and Awe in the initial stages they would have been shaken and quickly conceded. This is a valid supposition which is worthy of debate since it proposes that if a choice of more violence would have been selected, fewer overall people would have died, which is a moral choice. But given that it was the Sunnis doing most of the fighting in the Iraq-Iran war, Boot is obviously overestimating their susceptibility to intimidation, even though he might have a point that more violence during the invasion may have sped the Sunnis through the insurgency and into diplomacy. This is highly unlikely though, and not probable enough to kill civilians for in my own humble opinion ;)
abb1 08.12.05 at 1:11 pm
I don’t understand why Shock-and-Awes in the subsequent stages don’t count.
jet 08.12.05 at 2:05 pm
Abb1,
A legion shows up all organized and shiny and the painted people are scared and ready to surrender. Once a few Romans are lieing dead on the ground they’re not so scary and the painted people stop thinking about surrender.
But that’s only a guess, I’m far from an expert. I just think that is what Boot and others are proposing.
abb1 08.12.05 at 2:56 pm
Ah, yes, savages to tame. The ‘half-devil and half-child’ thing again.
soru 08.12.05 at 6:38 pm
Ah, yes, savages to tame. The ‘half-devil and half-child’ thing again.
Thoughts like that are awfully close to the surface of your mind, aren’t they?
soru
jet 08.12.05 at 9:24 pm
Abb1,
That was obviously not what I meant you jackass, so yeah, what Soru said.
And here I was thinking you were becoming reasonable and interesting.
abb1 08.13.05 at 4:45 am
First you describe them as savages and then that’s not what you meant and I am a jackass. Make up your mind, buddy.
Btw, I don’t ascribe this to you necessarily but to Boot and other neocons, you just expressed the spirit of it quite well, so what’s the problem?
jet 08.13.05 at 3:22 pm
Abb1,
It has nothing to do with savages. Everyone is afraid of the unknown. As an example of fear of the unknown a little closer to home, how long did it take for Americans to start flying in the same numbers after 9/11 as before 9/11? How long before they realized that Al Qaeda wasn’t capable of striking anywhere anytime? How long did it take the Iraqis to realize that the US military wasn’t capable of crushing any insurgency at anytime?
Boot’s point is that if the Sunnis would have seen a little more destruction it would have taken them long enough that a working government could have been put in place. I think that’s wrong, but still worth a thought.
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