Yesterday on NPR I heard this discussion of the now-infamous video of some civilians, including two journalists, being killed by Apache helicopters in Iraq three years ago. What distinguished the conversation is that it involved people who actually knew what they were talking about, along these lines:
Mr. GALLAGHER: I have. You know, at first glance, it looks terrible. The fact that WikiLeaks labeled it collateral murder certainly doesn’t help. But being there, having been in Iraq as an armored cavalry officer on the ground I wasn’t a pilot but still, the video begs the question of context. You know, why were the pilots flying in that area? They were clearly looking for something. What were the current rules of engagement on the ground?You know, Wikileaks does a great jobs of marking the two journalists, but they don’t point out the fact that they’re down – the insurgent with an AK-47 or the one with an RPG launcher.
You know, those are the questions that I have the benefit of looking for, given my experience, but an average civilian doesn’t. You know, they just see the video itself.
CONAN: And as you say, it looks terrible. Somebody, well, I got an email from somebody: How could people do that?
Mr. GALLAGHER: That yes, and in by itself, in that vacuum, it is, but unfortunately, you know, war, terrible things occur in war. That doesn’t necessarily make it a war crime. And, you know, I’m not going to personally, I’m not going to rush to judgment until the entire report is given the context that it deserves.
Several calls were taken, and most of what I heard was in the same vein, displaying a reluctance to condemn the shooters. And it made perfect sense. The Wikileaks clip shows a horrific incident in which men died needlessly. But as propaganda it is rendered much more powerful by foreknowledge of who was about to be killed, and convenient labelling. I suppose the viewer is supposed to think, or rather feel, “OhmyGod, how could those awful American soldiers open fire on those men who are so clearly marked as being innocent journalists?” And because what happened is so gut-wrenching, as irrational as that is, it is precisely the feeling induced by watching.
As I said, the NPR discussion goes a long way toward pulling the conversation back in the direction of considering what it’s like to be behind those gunsights in a combat situation.
But being an honest and open discussion, and being open to callers, it did lead to a call that showed just what can happen to a man when he goes far enough into the heart of darkness. This statement by a caller made perfect sense, helped us sympathize with the combat infantry soldier, right up until the end of the comment when it goes over the edge into the indefensible:
DAN (Caller): Yeah. I’d like to add something. I was captain in Vietnam, and I think it’s quite oxymoronic to say that we have rules of engagement. I hear some of the other men at combat. When you are there and they’re shooting at you, mortars are dropping all over the place, nobody’s thinking. You’re just thinking of your buddy or your chance to survive. If we’re walking forward and we see a group of people, if we hesitate for a second, we were going to be dead. It is absolutely absurd to talk about rules of engagement.
I don’t know where they ever came from. You put men in the hell of a situation killing other men, and then on top of that you try to put rules onto it to – what? Legitimize it? (technical difficulties) into born killers, you’re giving us the authority to kill, and then you’re telling us we have to obey certain rules. I’ve watched men die obeying those rules. I think it’s absurd. This conversation is absurd.
You put men in harm’s way. Their job is to get out of it. My job was to bring those men home. I brought them home. I didn’t give a damn about rules of engagement. I brought my men home safely. I did what I had to do, whether I was throwing napalm on a village or not. My men were coming home. They were Americans.
To engage in war, even the most just of wars, is to wander in a universe of moral ambiguity, in which extremes of honor and horror and courage and atrocity overlap and interweave, and it’s very easy for even the best of men to get lost in it.
Some react to this reality by being against war, all wars. I don’t. But don’t think I ever lose sight of the moral ambiguity, the slippery slope into horror. It can’t be denied; and moreover one shouldn’t try to deny it.
At the same time, I can’t admire the folks with WikiLeaks who congratulate themselves so heartily for rubbing our faces in this. Without the context of a discussion such as that which I heard on NPR, and with the inflammatory commentary and arrows and labels imposing a false sense of clarity upon the fog of war, the cause of truth is in fact ill-served.
I heard part of that show, and one of the commenters was saying how he resented being “Monday-morning quarterbacked”-the moderator then commented to the effect that most people had their job performance evaluated, and that especially where people ended up dead, that might be appropriate.
I think one of the huge problems in our society–if not any society, is the unwillingness to just say “I screwed up. I’m truly sorry, especially for the harm I caused. I’ll try harder not to do it again.Here are some concrete steps I’ve taken to improve.” Instead, for example, we have the Catholic Church pointing fingers at everyone except the perpetrators of abuse, and so on.
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2010/04/12/catholic_church_priest_molestation_slide_show/index.html
and soldiers (in our volunteer forces) saying, “Hey, gimme a break. Like, it’s tough out there.”
If you think it’s tough being behind a lethal weapon, try being on the other side.
No trouble with what I witnessed in the video. War zone, hot area, two reporters decide to go out for a walk with some armed locals. Hmmm, I wonder what could go wrong? Lesson learned, do not go for a walk in a war zone with a group of locals if someone in the group decides he needs to bring his RPG. The gunships had clearance to shoot, no known friendly troops in the area. Everything on the military side was done by the book.
Actually, Kathryn, on your last point I’m going to have to disagree with you. This may seem a digression, but bear with me…
I’ve always thought it a misconception that the greatest sacrifice that we ask of soldiers is to die for their country. We ask them to do something much more difficult — to kill for their country. You die, that’s it — you’re an honored hero. You kill, and it eats away at you forever.
And given that, the LAST thing you need is civilians who’ve never been there talking about how awful the thing you did was. It’s salt ground unmercifully into a wound that never closes.
Oh, also, about the church — don’t suppose you can teach the church anything about saying you’re sorry, and meaning it. We have a whole sacrament built around that. But a critical element of the ritual is that it is completely confidential. The process of confession and reconciliation takes place in complete confidentiality.
It is precisely the opposite of what the secular world is demanding of the church, which is public mea culpas. Maybe we should bring back public self-flagellation. Just made for TV.
Fog of war — this particular aerial ambush wasn’t justifiable, but it is understandable. And it’s hard, given the outcome, to appreciate the surgical nature of it. Even just a few years ago, the entire neighborhood might have been carpet-bombed.
Every time I do one of these Pearl Harbor documentaries, the interviewers always ask me the “real lesson” of Pearl Harbor, and I always give an answer they can’t use, but it’s the truest — Shit Happens.
By which you refer to the fact that so much of our fleet was devastated, or the fact that, after all that planning and effort, the Japanese still didn’t catch our carriers in port, thereby rendering a devastating tactical victory a strategic failure?
I’m going to agree with Burl (as a sudden cold shiver runs up my back). We’re pinpointing groups of targets within a 10 yard area, getting real-time clearance from those running the show to fire and then finally pulling the trigger. Prior to this aircrews were given a target on a map and told to drop as close as they could get and hoped they didn’t hit the local school or hospital. The intelligence the military had was there were no “friendlies” in the area so any armed person had a bulls-eye on his chest. Didn’t their mothers tell them, that nothing good happens when you walk down the street with an RPG.
If anyone is to blame, I blame the idiots with cameras walking around with armed citizens in a war zone. One thing worse than bringing a knife to a gun fight is bringing a camera to a gun fight.
While our soldiers are dying gallantly for our country, their soldiers are dying just a gallantly for theirs. We may demonize their soldiers for defending their countries/political and/or religious views, while lionizing our troops for defending our country/political and/or religious views (i.e. our “way of life”), but the rest of the world does not see it that way, especially during a war as morally and politically ambiguous as Iraq. I honor our soldiers a lot more than the politicians who put them in harm’s way for such questionable purposes, and left them there without a clear exit.
Personal confession is just that, personal. But leaving one of your professional staff whom you know to be a child predator in a position to continue to prey upon children is a reprehensible administrative failure, in addition to personal sin. I think what most people want is for the institutional church to adopt a set of ethics at least as strong as it would impose upon its individual congregants. I also see where a church prelate is blaming child molestation on homosexuality rather than celibacy. I don’t see either having to do with taking sexual advantage of a child.
Karen, what you just said is highly objectionable. One, those are not soldiers. If they were, it would be infinitely easier to distinguish them from the civilian population.
Second, they’re not fighting for “their country,” unless there’s some nationalistic motivation I haven’t heard about. They’re fighting for their faction, their tribe, for some advantage for some group they belong to. Or, in some cases, for martyrdom as an end in itself.
Third, our soldiers aren’t fighting for their country, either, in the traditional sense of protecting hearth and home. They’re fighting in their countries INTEREST and in the cause of furthering its VALUES, but if they’re fighting FOR a country, then that country is Iraq. We’re struggling to protect it from terrorist jerks who run around with RPGs and AK-47s and setting off bombs DELIBERATELY aimed at killing the civilian population. We’re about the only country that regularly does that sort of thing, so a lot of the world lacks a vocabulary for understanding it (added to the fact that a lot of the world doesn’t WANT to understand it, but wants to project absurd fantasies about imperialism that are as relevant to this conflict as buggy whips are to modern transportation).
Oh, and also — whatever those people are doing, they’re not doing it “gallantly.” They’re skulking about looking for a chance to hit without anyone having a chance to hit back; they’re not standing up to a fight. That’s a cultural complaint on my part as much as anything else, the complaint of someone from a Clausewitzian culture complaining about a culture that takes the Sun-Tzu approach…
Common sense. One doesn’t stand too near armed bandits when there are people in the sky with itchy trigger fingers.
Yeah, shit happens. No matter how much one prepares, real life and unforeseen circumstance sneaks up on you.
I realize the Catholic Church makes up its own rules, but the one of the 12 steps about making amends to those who one has harmed is widely mirrored in other ethical traditions.
If the Catholic Church through its duly appointed agents would just say nothing, at least, instead of making a lot of sorry analogies and finger-pointing.
and of course, the Catholic Church is hardly the only institution with pedophiles and coverups. It’s just making the biggest hash of dealing with it. Blaming the Jews?!?!?
and sure, it’s hard to be a soldier. It’s great that we no longer force people to do it. Volunteers (especially paid ones) are still held to a reasonable standard of care.
Exactly, Brad. I have been very blessed not to have been placed in that position. My brother-in-law just finally received a full military pension, after applying for it for years, for post-traumatic stress syndrome as an infantryman in Vietnam. Face to face with 12-year old Viet Cong boys, he couldn’t shoot. But that night he was wounded by shrapnel from his own grenade that killed some of those same kids. And most of his platoon never came home. (Some of those same Vietcong may have hit some his buddies later on.
He became a psychologist and helped a lot of vets, and he’s made it his life’s calling to visit all of the families of his buddies.
It would really be good if any president who orders 19 year old boys into those kind of situations would have been there himself. I realize that isn’t realistic, but it still would be the ideal.
I’m reading another JFK biography–Kalleck, I think, is the author (the book is downstairs, and I’m to lazy to go look!). It looks like JFK would have steered that whole conflict a lot differently in the end. The difference might have been that JFK knew what combat meant, while LBJ didn’t.
I’m waiting for the first time that American forces kill civilians by mistake and admit it right away. The standard procedure is to deny, deny, deny, deny for as long as possible before finally months or years later saying, “oops… my bad!”
I have also read that part of the problem with our current forces is the “video game” mentality that is pervasive in the troops. Spend all day playing “Call Of Duty” on Xbox and when you’re faced with real battle, the impulse is ingrained to shoot first and ask questions later.
We kill people. They kill people. We’re no better than they are. Wrapping yourself in the flag and trying to claim you’re killing in the name of American freedom is delusional.
We’re the largest military power in the world and our economy depends on there being a constant war (or invented threat of war) to keep the money flowing.
We could cut our military budget in half and be no less safe than we are now.
Brad,
How many of the terrorist “jerks” from Iraq have been near American soil? How many of them do you think there are?
Evey civilian we kill results in a tenfold or more increase in the number of people who hate us.
Actually, Doug, you have it backwards. Which is not the same as saying you have it wrong.
One reason to have soldiers play “first-person shooter” games is to instill the shoot-to-kill instinct — something our military goes to a lot of trouble to do.
You should read On Killing by Dave Grossman. He traces the history. It was discovered by military researchers that for most of the history of firearms, not only did relatively few soldiers discharge their weapons in combat, but most of those who DID fire didn’t fire directly at the enemy. The fire-to-kill ratios were remarkable in that regard.
So after WWII, we started training soldiers a different way. The idea was to train them to aim and fire, effectively, at a target without thinking — to condition them to lethal shooting. A target pops up and BAM! the soldier blows it apart, as a reflex. This effort has been remarkably effective. In a stand-up fight, our troops are the deadliest in history, and certainly in the world today. Everyone remembers that on Oct. 3, 1993, 18 Americans were killed in Mogadishu. Everyone forgets that the Americans killed about 1,000 Somalis. That was an extreme case of the difference between a disciplined military force trained to shoot with deadly effectiveness versus untrained militia that had a lot of really deadly AK-47s, but didn’t know how to put effective fire on a target.
Anyway, back to the history lesson: The U.S. soldier in Vietnam was WAY more likely to hit an enemy when he fired his weapon than his predecessor in WWII, thanks to that conditioning.
But then, after the shooting was over, when he had time to reflect — he was more likely to suffer PTSD.
According to Grossman, the reason that soldiers for centuries seldom shot to kill was for the most obvious of reasons: They thought first, and what they thought was, “I don’t want to kill another human being.”
Now, with the quick-fire conditioning we do, there’s no time for the soldier to have those thoughts until AFTER the action. The emotional, spiritual cost can be horrific.
So what you have is a military that is, man for man, the most effective in the world at killing the enemy. But you have a tremendous human cost after the shooting is over.
So basically, Doug, you were making the right point, but confusing cause and effect.
Which is not to say that the video games are not a problem. Grossman has crusaded for years against the way they condition children to — if they ever find a weapon in their hands — shoot to kill.
Doug, I don’t understand your last question (we seem to have crossed comments). They’re not here, they’re THERE… which is why our soldiers are there. Or perhaps I should say WERE there, since this action took place before the Surge dramatically improved the situation.
And of course, strategically, we want to keep them there.
Actually, Brad, I made the point I wanted to make. The recruits who are entering the military arrive already desensitized to the killing after years of Grand Theft Auto, Call Of Duty, etc. Combine that with a pop culture full of torture porn (prime example: “Saw” movies), MMA fighting, Youtube videos of any form of violence you want; then throw in the large number of teens who are “ADD” and on medication; then consider the lower standards that the military has enacted in order to get anyone to enlist;
What we end up with is something far from the “best of the best”.
Brad,
“They” are wherever “they” want to be. “They” have the luxury of moving any place, any time.
Brad,
I read the summary of Grossman’s book that came out, I think in USNews & WR a few years ago. What I can’t figure out is why, if this is the case, we had, what was it?, 850,000 killed in the American Civil War, if all those muskets were aimed up in the air? Somebody was shooting to kill . . . .
OK, I know that they were using 18th century tactics with 19th century weapons, and the knowledge of germs and medicine, etc., would have been way more ahead 20 years later.
But even so, not all of those rifles were aimed wrong.
My brother-in-law commented on Saving Private Ryan,, “no officer worth his spit orders his men to move into machine gun fire.” So who ordered this unload onto Omaha and Utah Beach (not to speak of Sword and few others)? What was who thinking? Or was this the only way to do it?
Brad, I understand what you’re saying, but I cannot completely agree. I understand that most ‘soldiers’ wear uniforms, but I suspect that Gen. Cornwallis would have applauded your sentiments during the revolutionary war. And killing people to free them ranks right up there with burning them to save their souls, in that the intentions may have been pure, but the results were lousy. In Iraq, we seem to be fighting to impose our political views and lifetyle on other people. Do I think our system does a better job for its people than theirs? You betcha! Do I think that waging war in the other people’s country is the way to demonstrate that and/or to win hearts? No. I have no problems with searching out and finding terrorists here, and bringing them to trial. But, in our zeal to carry the fight to them, especially in Iraq, we have insured that every innocent person we kill there results in more in more of their patriots rising in defense of their country (tribes/homes/families). Our different understandings here seem to be arising from a basic difference. To me, you seem to be determined to ascribe to our troops and our leaders only the most noble of motivations, while attributing only baser motives to the others. We have raised our own terrorists; we have our own strange and violent sects. These ills seem to be universal. I read that in a parochial school in Ireland the sisters had put up a sign the jist of which was ‘If you had been raised as they [the protestant children] had been raised, and taught what they had been taught, you would believe what they believe.’ Until we realize that we all have our share in humanity, and that we are all neighbors, I don’t think we’ll be able to really ease world conflict.
I agree with Doug and Karen. The latter is not unusual, but the former is comment worthy.
I think we have sanitized some of the killing experience–the Gulf War was an example, in part, of that.
Brad–what is a possible end-game here? (where is chess master bud?)
We are not making any progress–we are making lots of enemies.
Who is killing people to free them? The point is to kill the ones with the guns who are a threat to the people without.
And when did I ascribe to our troops only the noblest of motives? I see the ambiguities, the human failings, and I call attention to them.
Also, as to the Gen. Cornwallis comparison…
As one who studied that period fairly closely in college on my way to a second major in history, I’ve always been troubled by the minutemen — and it troubles me that I’m troubled. My patriotism is important to me (and perhaps that’s what you’re detecting with that noblest motives thing), and I don’t like to think of myself as a Tory, or one who would have been a Tory. But the rule of law is important to me. And I have a big problem with self-appointed militia ambushing soldiers in the course of conducting their perfectly legal search for unlawful weapons. To hide behind a tree and shoot at a poor draftee from Liverpool in a red coat in the service of an abstract wish to bear arms, or not be taxed without representation, does not seem to me a lawful act. Nor should we want it to be, in a lawful society.
AFTER the declaration, fine. This people had acted through elected representatives to sever their relationship with the crown. But before that, to shoot at representatives of the lawful government in the course of performing their duty is very troubling to me.
This is one reason I like John Adams so. He persuades me that I could have been a Patriot — but I’d have been HIS kind of Patriot, not the kind that his cousin Samuel was. When soldiers were charged with murder in the Boston Massacre, he defended them, and got them off, because he believed them innocent of an unlawful act. But once he decided that the country must declare independence, he worked for it harder than anyone.
So when you compare terrorists in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan to our own colonial soldiers, you lose points on two counts with me. One, those long-ago revolutionaries were far more honorable than the kinds of insurgencies we are up against over there. They WERE motivated by a love of freedom, and they would never have blown up women and children in a crowded square. Secondly, I have qualms about the legitimacy of their violent acts (except of course when acting in self defense or defense of others), before the Declaration.
Moral ambiguity again. History is just as complicated as the present day. In the end, my study of history leads me to prefer the American way. But it doesn’t blind me to the problems.
Maybe the discussion is getting off message and too complicated for a simple answer. Military people view themselves as serving their country. If they are misused, it is because of politics. By and large we are a “free” people because of our armed forces, press, and laws that is in our culture to generally obey. I would never want to second guess a decision made in combat. We could compare our 2009 military losses with our 2009 traffic fatalities, or gunshot victims, etc. U.S. soldiers are doing the job they signed up to do, going where they are told to go, implementing their training the way they are taught. Politicians are the ones who are accountable for where they send the troops, and we are accountable for who we elect to office. This is not to say that crimes are not committed during a war. Those who commit crimes should be held accountable. But it is despicable to put weapons in the hands of men and women who are doing a job that we don’t want to do and then say if you make any mistake, we will crucify you. Say “I’m sorry”? Say “I made a mistake?” How can they possibly do that when they know they are likely to be thrown in the brigg to take the heat off some politician? So they stuff it and eats away at them for the rest of their lives.
And this conversation doesn’t even relate to pedophiles and abuse of the trust we place in our clergy.
Heart of Darkness? – that occurs when one has no boundaries, no one sees what they do, and they are not held accountable for years, and years, and years. That is the problem of the Catholic scandal.
Contrast with the military with the embedded press, satellite technology, and so many witnesses that nothing can keep quiet.
Brad, Taxation without representation comes down to a desire to keep one’s own money. And once again, I don’t have any reason to think that our troops who were in that helicopter set out to kill civilians, but they did. For goodness sake, friendly fire has killed many of our own. What you (to me) don’t seem to get is that most of these people believe that their motives are just, and that their reasons for killing are the ‘ok’ reasons. As for “noblest motives”–“They’re fighting in their countries INTEREST and in the cause of furthering its VALUES, but if they’re fighting FOR a country, then that country is Iraq. We’re struggling to protect it from terrorist jerks who run around with RPGs and AK-47s and setting off bombs DELIBERATELY aimed at killing the civilian population.” Those people weren’t doing that until we got there and removed the legal government of that country (ie. Hussein–and no, I didn’t like him either). Meanwhile, deliberately or not, we’re killing innocent people. Also, we’re fighting for our interests, not theirs. We were told it was to protect us from WMD’s remember? You also say, “Oh, and also — whatever those people are doing, they’re not doing it “gallantly.” They’re skulking about looking for a chance to hit without anyone having a chance to hit back; they’re not standing up to a fight.” And we’re “standing up to a fight” by sending in predator drones to bomb areas? And again, no, I don’t mean that we should unnecessarily subject our soldiers to danger. One of strategies of war is to kill them without having so many of your own killed. Brad, look at what you’ve said and implied with your wording. I of course frequently do the same, but you are ascribing very base motivation to them, while claiming ours is very noble. While I may prefer our country and its values, I can understand that they might prefer theirs. And we are there. It wasn’t Iraqis who masterminded 9/11, or carried it out, or sheltered Al-Qaida in the immediate aftermath. And yet we’re there, with gunships, with bombs. With deadly force.
Those aviators did exactly what they were trained to do. Their comments during the video are disturbing unless you understand how aviators are trained. We were told from the very beginning that we “college pukes” were not being trained to be airline pilots; we were being trained, even desensitized, to killing people. Including “collateral damage,” women and children. But believe me, as a group military aviators are not deranged, killing machines. We accept a difficult job and do our best to fulfill the mission.
I feel for these aviators; believe me, they will always regret killing some innocents. It was so much easier to just fire bomb or nuke the enemy; precision sucks . . .
Thanks, Bob. And Karen… sigh… I’ve been here so many times before, and never make progress, arguing with well-meaning peace-lovers who simply use an entire vocabulary that exists on a different plane from the points I’m trying to make.
For instance — that business about comparing terrorists to American revolutionaries. Look how many words it took me to explain, even partially (and I’m sure inadequately) why that is a red herring. Totally aside from the fact that it is outrageous to compare terrorists (and yes, Karen, we CAN distinguish a terrorist from a soldier, there is no moral equivalence here), I made the point (at great risk of being misunderstood) about the imperfection of the minutemen’s virtue.
But I would have to argue at equal length to deal with such things as … I don’t know … your assertion about not “liking” Hussein, as if that were the point (I don’t LIKE Prince Charles, but I don’t propose to invade Britain). Just to deal with that, I’d have to go through the entire 12-year period during which Saddam repeatedly violated the terms of the cessation of hostilities from 1991, thereby making military action against him defensible at any time, and on and on…
And “it wasn’t Iraqis who masterminded 9/11″… I’m looking around here to find the person who suggested they DID, and not finding him. What of it? As I’ve explained over and over in entire columns in the past, what 9/11 did was underline the danger in protecting the status quo at all costs. (Pre-9/11, our policy toward that region was to avoid disturbing the status quo, to tolerate all sorts of intolerable things, in order to keep the oil flowing.) It showed that we needed to deal with a lot of things in the world that posed security threats, from the utter collapse of civil order in Somalia (creating a vacuum to be filled by extremism) to the rise of Taliban influence in Pakistan (not to mention the Taliban control of Afghanistan that I THINK everyone now agrees was intolerable); from the support of our Saudi friends of Islamist extremism to the poisonous alliance between Syria and Iran, from the Iranian quest for nuclear arms (paired with their wish to see Israel disappear) to the rise of violent jihadism in far-flung places like the Philippines…
We had to wake up and act to start changing the status quo. Acting against Saddam, who had been shooting at the planes enforcing the no-fly zone whenever he got the chance, was just a painfully obvious place to act, because between that and his refusal to cooperate with UN inspectors, he was practically inviting us to take him out.
I’ve set out these arguments so many times before, and I’ve never gained ground, because people always want to talk about other things. And then the whole thing got bollixed up by Bush Administration incompetence. There was a brief moment, right after we went into Iraq, when the balance was tilting in the right direction — improvement in Lebanon, Qaddafi backing away from seeking WMD — but then the Bush administration let the insurgency get out of hand, and we were on the defensive thereafter. The Surge pulled us out of the fire in Iraq, but by then we had fought so hard politically over that that all political capital needed to try to reshape the landscape in all those troubled spots (through everything we have — diplomatic, economic, humanitarian AND military) had pretty much blown away. Our national conversation became not about what should we do next, but “How soon can we bring the troops home?”
Now we’re even setting timetables for leaving Afghanistan when we are SO far from a tipping point that would make such talk advisable, at a time when the outcome there and in Pakistan remains in doubt.
But I digress. And I fear that I’m just talking to myself here, as I so often seem to do when we get on this subject.
How come we can’t discuss rules of engagement in a specific instance without rehashing Iraq? It’s so distracting, because no one ever has their minds changed…
Doug’s point about desensitizing the trigger fingers was well illustrated in “Generation Kill.”
Let me be first in line to nominate Bush and Cheney as major-league azzholes for the hustle they perpetrated in Iraq. On the other hand, anyone who didn’t believe that the US would react militarily after 9/11 was fooling themselves. ONE OF THE GOALS OF TERRORISM is to get the “other side” to overreact. We did what they wanted. Much better to be surgical, in the Israeli style.
Terrorists vs. patriots. Sure there’s a difference. Patriots defend their home, terrorists take the fight elsewhere. On the other hand, Timothy McVeigh was a decorated soldier who served his country overseas before he murdered civilians within it. And that’s another difference. Soldiers kill civilians by accident; terrorists kill them on purpose.
Brad, when you get to the Okinawa section in “The Pacific,” you’ll see a classic, no-win, civilians in a shooting zone conflict. The stuff PTSD nightmares are made of.
Without rules of engagement, warfare is goal-less except for the slaughter.
I believe the US was indeed surgicacl in the military defeat of Iraq. But President Bush decided to take the advice of Cheney and Rumsfiled rather than of Gen. Colin Powell. You’ll recall Powell saying if you break it, you must fix it. We were prepared to win the war but not prepared to invest in repairing the damages.
I believe that will be the lesson historians will discuss. We invested a great deal of time and resources to help rebuild Japan and Germany, now our allies. Why didn’t the Bush administration understand that need? Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it (Santayana).
@Bob, and others–I don’t think we are demonizing the military personnel personally–they may well be doing what they were trained to do, although “I was only following orders” lost its moral authority a few years back, no?
The issue is that agents of OUR government, thus agents of me and you, are not embodying the values we say we endorse.
The Vietnam vets were personally attacked, and that was wrong. Some people, [cough-Brad] seem to think our military can do no wrong. They can and they do, and we need to stop excusing it. Either change the rules or drum out the rulebreakers, as the case may be.
I served in the military and I agree with Doug’s comments.
As I said, we’re getting nowhere. If Kathryn can read my comments on the conditioning of U.S. troops to kill without thinking, and my digression on the problem with our hallowed minutemen, and still say I “seem to think our military can do no wrong,” then there’s little point in continuing this particular discussion.
And yes, Burl, “Generation Kill” was excellent. Did you read the book? Everyone who wants to understand the nature of modern war should, although its definitely not for the squeamish (and folks who are reflexively antiwar would probably just come away from it with all their prejudices confirmed). I found it in hardbound on the bargain table at Barnes & Noble several years ago. I’m glad they made the HBO series to rescue it, somewhat from obscurity.
Oh, excuse me, Brad. You simply want to talk about rules of engagement? There’s nothing here to talk about that I can see. The Apache helicopter was in a war zone. They saw weapons, and they weren’t ours. The reporters should have been more careful. I’m not about to blame the people in that helicopter, at this point.
However, you brought these points up.
1)”And when did I ascribe to our troops only the noblest of motives?” I quoted ‘when’ in my last post. You consistently used only positive terms for our folks, and negative ones for “the insurgents.” If you define “the insurgents as being, “terrorist jerks who run around with RPGs and AK-47s and setting off bombs DELIBERATELY aimed at killing the civilian population” then, of course, they’re the bad guys; but they weren’t operating in Iraq until we toppled the government. Hussein killed plenty of civilians, but he was at least after those he considered a threat to his rule. And that was ‘against the law’ there. And not all the people fighting us are killing civilian populations. Some are, in an effort to force their point of view on others. That society, after all, has had little if any experience with less violent ways of settling political quarrels. Some aren’t; they just don’t like us.
2)”One, those long-ago revolutionaries were far more honorable than the kinds of insurgencies we are up against over there. They WERE motivated by a love of freedom, and they would never have blown up women and children in a crowded square. Secondly, I have qualms about the legitimacy of their violent acts (except of course when acting in self defense or defense of others), before the Declaration.”
I, too, don’t recall any times when revolutionaries ‘blew up women and children in a crowded square’ but I do believe there were some acts of terrorism, albeit not as violent, against Tory civilian populations. But the Iraqis could not act according to the laws of their government because we toppled their government. They are suspicious of the current government, in part because we support it. Nor does that area have in its history the evolution of the concept of “law” that we inherited from the English, starting with the Magna Carta if not before. To expect them to adhere to such a law when the basic concept and ideals are foreign to their culture is not reasonable. Furthermore, using force to make one group do what another wants is very much in their history, as are the only 2 responses they know–violent resistance or complete surrender while a desire for revenge simmers just below the visible level waiting for opportunity. Desire for revenge was there when Hussein was ruling. We gave it the opportunity to explode when we toppled his regime without having put thought into dealing with the results. (And, thankyou, Bob. If we must go to war, following the “Powell Doctrine” is the only one that makes sense. And it’s precisely because we didn’t do so that’s causing most of the problems now).
3) “We had to wake up and act to start changing the status quo. Acting against Saddam, who had been shooting at the planes enforcing the no-fly zone whenever he got the chance, was just a painfully obvious place to act, because between that and his refusal to cooperate with UN inspectors, he was practically inviting us to take him out.” Oh, really? We in fact had Hussein contained. Yeah, he was kicking up dust, but we had neutralized his ability to do anything. That, and world opinion after 9/11 had as much as anything to do with things starting to change. We were showing restraint, containing Hussein, and attacking only the country that harbored those who attacked us. But then came Iraq. Look at the results. Iran no longer has any balance and is trying hard to develop nuclear capacity. We’ve lost the moral high ground that we occupied when we were simply in Afganistan. And I believe, we have lent credence to those countries who see us as an overlarge bully. Are they afraid? Yes. Are they collecting stones for their slings? Yes.
4. “Now we’re even setting timetables for leaving Afghanistan when we are SO far from a tipping point that would make such talk advisable, at a time when the outcome there and in Pakistan remains in doubt.” I could wish that this administration could have found another way to step back from the ‘big bully’ position, although those timetables are so full of caveats as to make them at best “nice thoughts” or “positive energies.” But at least we’re doing something toward reducing so much of the world’s perception of us as a large country that could attack at any time.
But I digress; we were only talking about rules of engagement….
The stronger we get, the more enemies we accumulate. History tells us that it is an unsustainable path.
And when we continue to pour money into war mongering against a trumped up enemy, don’t be surprised when our own citizens wonder why we don’t have any money left to feed, educate, and create real jobs for ourselves.
“Trumped-up enemy?” Say WHAT?
To which trumped-up enemy do you refer — al Qaeda, or the Taliban? You are aware that that’s where we’re “pouring money” these days — Afghanistan — right?
Here I agree with you, Brad, with one caveat. Al Qaeda is the enemy ok (the Taliban never had the strength to bother us–they were just fool enuf to shelter Al Qaeda, which is not to say they weren’t making a fine mess of Afganistan). All I hope, is that from now on we use resources to figure out what’s attractive about the folks we’re up against, and what’s the best way to destroy them. All to often we’ve attracted more to their side than we’ve killed or led to defect.
They’re all trumped up. Our modern Pearl Harbor was 20 guys with box cutters who were able to overwhelm an unlocked door. And no matter how many hundreds of billions we spend or how many people we kill, the threat will never be diminished (and in fact increases with every civilian killed).
We’re still scrambling fighter jets when a guy smokes a pipe on a plane. How much did that cost?
And I didn’t realize that we have no more troops in Iraq. When did that happen? Did they close the Green Zone too? That’s great news! I also missed the news about our base closings in Germany and Japan. More money for education and feeding the hungry! Hip hip hooray!
Oh, yeah, I forgot — we’re supposed to pull in all our troops from Iraq, Germany, North Korea, the Balkans and such, put our blue-water Navy in mothballs (which means closing Pearl Harbor, which makes SURE we never get attacked there again), and put all our remaining troops on the border with Mexico, since THAT’S the big threat.
And Karen — the Taliban IS bothering us plenty these days. Bothering the Afghan government and Pakistan a lot, too…
I hope you’re not going to say that’s OUR fault for picking on them.
Brad,
Please provide us with an estimated count of the number of Taliban and al Qaeda forces we are currently engaged with. If you could also estimate the number that existed prior to the Gulf War, that would be helpful as well. I don’t know what the answer is but I bet there are more now than there were then. I would also bet it is a small fraction of our forces.
We have the technological capability to repel any large scale offensive against our borders. We will never have enough resources to stop terrorists.
I believe we can neutralize the Taliban by outbidding the poppy cartels.
As Doug said so well, “The stronger we get, the more enemies we accumulate. History tells us that it is an unsustainable path.”
The Taliban draw strength and support from our engagement with them on their turf.
As Doug said, “We have the technological capability to repel any large scale offensive against our borders. We will never have enough resources to stop terrorists.”
Exactly.
“
Not about to say any such thing, Brad. Will say instead that altho we may need to be over there, the only reason they can bother us is because we walked into their reach. Now, if we can just wage the Afgan war intelligently enuf to avoid giving either the Taliban or Al-Qaeda too many more recruits (there will always be some, because there are narcissistic, fanatical, political and/or religious jerks in every culture that I know of.
Whoa, Kathryn — you, too, an isolationist?
So that whole 20th century, with the United States finding itself with tremendous responsibility for collective security from about 1945 on, just didn’t happen. Looks like we’re back to Charles Lindbergh and the America Firsters.
Just pull the security blanket over our heads and let the rest of the world take a flying leap, huh?
It’s hard for me to imagine a policy assertion with which I would disagree more.
And you find yourself in agreement with the Pat Buchanans of the world. (And the bin Ladens — they share the belief that America should get out of everybody else’s business, it being none of America’s.)
Unless I’m misunderstanding…
Looks like Obama’s vision of what America should be militarily is shared by all with the lone exception of Brad.
“Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.” Barack Obama.
This time the apology was made in front of 43 leaders of other nations.
Any country, business, organization, sports team that grows stronger also increases enemies and yes, history does prove the path is unsustainable. But, considering the history of the world, there has never been another nation as powerful as the United States who has been as benevolent as we have, protected neighbors and allies like we have and contributed so much to the security of the world as we have. So, what is your point? Do we disband our military? Do we withdraw from every country where we have bases? Do we refuse to send troops for U.N. military actions?
If not us, then who?
I think there’s a huge difference between using military might to intervene into the internal affairs of another *country* THAT NEVER ATTACKED US and being an isolationist.
Terrorists are not a country.
Diplomacy is a great tool, not exercised terribly effectively during the regime of that other great Tool, GWB.
“as powerful as the United States who has been as benevolent as we have”
Except for what we did to Native Americans, blacks, Japanese during WWII, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, napalm dropped on Vietnam, civilians killed in recent “wars”…
I guess benevolence is all relative.
Peace thru death. Should put that on all our coins.
Abso-freaking-lutely, Doug. We are the ONLY great power in history to wring its hands about our failings — as you just did — contemporaneously with our days of power. The Brits may wring their hands about what they did in their days of Empire NOW, but they didn’t do it then, when they were blithely bringing civilization to those they termed the “wogs.”
And it’s ironic that you should mention Hiroshima, because it reinforces a point I was about to make to Kathryn…
She speaks of attacking a “country.” This is a fave point of my dear, sweet peacenik friends — “We attacked a COUNTRY that was just minding its own innocent business…”
Kathryn, this country has never attacked a COUNTRY in your or my lifetime. If we had, that country would be a cinder now.
You want to know what it looks like when this country attacked another country, actually making war upon another people? Get some photos of the aftermaths of the firebombings of Dresden, or Tokyo. Or for that matter Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
We don’t do that anymore. We don’t even come close to doing that anymore. We don’t want to, and therefore haven’t even tried to. We shrink from what that would entail, and good for us for shrinking…
Just because we didn’t drop the big one doesn’t mean that we didn’t invade Iraq and Afghanistan and remove their governments. Call it what you will, but I believe there is a lot more rubble lying about now than before.
I’m well aware of the Dresden, Hiroshima, etc. damage. I grew up with a daddy who worked at the Savannah River bomb plant, in the shadow of supposed Cuban missiles and Jeane Dixon’s frequent predictions of our imminent demise. Just because we didn’t level the country doesn’t mean we didn’t attack it.
“We don’t do that anymore. We don’t even come close to doing that anymore.”
But we could if we wanted to. And we use that threat to try and keep other countries in line.
And I’m sure our defense department has all sorts of weapons in place or in development that could wipe out hundreds of thousands of people in minutes. If we aren’t the type of country “now” that would use those weapons, why do we need them?
We aren’t Switzerland. We aren’t North Korea. We’re somewhere in between with a history of killing people to demonstrate our benevolence. We have the most firepower on the planet and we have a military industrial complex that demands that we use it in order to keep the money flowing. Even if they have to create an enemy to fight.
Brad, we did a pretty thorough job of bombing the heck out of Bagdad’s (and much of Iraq’s infrastructure. They’re still putting it back together.
Doug, of course we can’t stop terrorism. We grow our own for goodness sake. We also can’t stop murder, rape, or any other violent crime. Does that mean we should give up trying to find the persons who did these crimes, and just leave the same ones to do it over and over again?
See, the problem with Iraq was that we didn’t take along the kind of force you’d take if you were attacking a country. We took what was necessary for toppling a regime, and nowhere NEAR what would have been necessary to occupy it, and keep things peaceful while a new government got on its feet.
That was the Bush administration’s great foolishness — thinking that toppling was enough. Everybody knows you take down a totalitarian system and you get all sorts of problems, long suppressed, in its wake (see: Yugoslavia, where the Pax Tito collapsed along with the Berlin Wall). You have to have enough MPs, at the very least, to keep order. We didn’t. One of the really painful things about “Generation Kill” is the part when, their job done, the Marines sat there in Baghdad watching things fall apart, with no orders to do anything about it.
We should have done the job on Saddam in 91, when we had sufficient force in theater. But in those days, we were about protecting the oil-pumping status quo — push Saddam back out of Kuwait, make the region safe for law-abiding despots again — rather than knocking over barrels. (“Wouldn’t be PRUDENT,” as Bush pere would have said, and probably did say in this very context.)
There are plenty of more precise ways to locate and neutralize terrorists than by rolling in with tanks, or whatever they call them these days.
That’s right Doug. We are a damn sorry excuse for a nation, aren’t we? So, all of the good this nation has done and all of the accomplishments achieved through out our history is irrelevant because we made mistakes – and learned from them? Still learning, still growing.
When we know we did wrong, at least we try to correct our mistakes and try to avoid repetition. Considering all governments and nations are comprised of imperfect humans, I still prefer us to the alternates. I still believe we get it right more often than not.
Bart,
I’ll go back to one of my original comments. I’m waiting for the first time our military admits a mistake right away without denying it for a long period of time or outright lying about it. Honesty shouldn’t require a time delay.
Pat Tillman, Abu Graib, dead civilians… same m.o. every time. Deny, deny, lie, lie, then finally when the evidence is overwhelming “oops… my bad”
I agree with Bob that Cheney and Rumsfeld were responsible for the Irag turn of events. If Colin Powell’s advice had been taken or had been in charge, things could have very well have been a lot different. Quite frankly every thing that was done under Cheney and Rumsfeld is questionable.
Obama took the war to where it should have been in the first place: Afghanistan. But, as they say, it is a day late, and a dollar short. The world wouldn’t have batted an eye if we had done that in 2001/2002, because Afghanistan was where bin Laden has been the whole time.
Another issue, military personnel must take an oath they will obey a lawful order, the key word being lawful. They do have an out if it comes to that. Further, I don’t think our military as individuals are any less moral or more trigger crazed than the rest of our society (heard of any drive-bys lately?). These days a large percentage of those on active duty are reservists – our neighbors, church friends, and co-workers.
At the end of the day, I believe we are in the middle of a moral crisis in our country that has affected our leadership both at home and abroad, but I also see signs that we are struggling to right ourselves. I hope for the very best for President Obama and I hope great statesmen/women will rise in Washington and in Columbia.