Everyone's for Peace

[there buster]

The Washington DC Examiner Newspaper, The Examiner

Read more by The Washington DC Examiner Newspaper

Jan 29, 2007 3:00 AM (9 hrs ago)

Current rank: # 3 of 15,216 articles

WASHINGTON - Many participants in Saturday’s “peace” demonstration on the Mall — including mainstream media journalists covering it — noted the parallels with the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era. Thousands demanded American withdrawal from a nation under siege by totalitarians bent on enslaving millions. Hollywood celebrities and Democrat politicians stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the speaker’s platform. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was even a weekend presence, via television from Switzerland, again telling the world how terrible is his country. All that was needed to complete this reconstruction in time was new photos of Jane Fonda consorting with insurgents killing Americans in Iraq in 2007, as she did with the North Vietnamese killing Americans in 1972.

There is, however, one fundamental difference between 1972 and 2007. We know today what comes after the marchers have boarded their buses and headed home, the speeches have ended and the politicians have voted their resolutions. Once the enemy celebrates their victory, blood begins flowing across the killing fields. In Vietnam, millions of South Vietnamese were murdered within weeks of the North’s April 1975 triumph, millions more spent years in brutal “re-education camps” and yet more millions became boat people fleeing the slaughter. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge created a Hell on earth that killed millions more innocents. Eventually, millions of Afghanis died because the Soviets were emboldened by America’s defeat in Vietnam to send the Red Army streaming into Afghanistan.

If the “peace” movement succeeds in defeating America again, the blood will again flow across the killing fields, but this time it will create even more unimaginable horror and it will not all be in distant lands far removed from our comfortable neighborhoods here at home. The slaughter of Shia and Sunni in the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq will only be the beginning of the mass killing that will follow American defeat. With the Americans gone, al-Qaida will have a secure breeding ground from which to launch countless terrorists attacks against the U.S. and its allies around the world and here in America. Turkey will send troops into Northern Iraq and kill or otherwise eliminate all possibility of an independent Kurdistan. Jihadist radicals in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim world will foment massacres, bombings and assassinations aimed at overthrowing remaining moderate regimes.

Worse yet, Iran will be emboldened to advance its timetable for becoming the dominant power in the Middle East and millions of Jews in Israel will be incinerated, along with hundreds of thousands of neighboring Palestinians, when the world sees the bright flash of Ahmadinejab’s nuclear program consumated in a second Holocaust.

It is difficult to say what America winning in Iraq will look like other than that a stable democratic regime will be in place and al-Qaida will be denied a new sanctuary. There is no such difficulty, however, in saying what America losing in Iraq will look like — a bloodbath of incalculable horror. Are the demonstrators and their allies in Congress and the media prepared to carry that burden on their consciences? Here's the link.

[Clio]

I take this article with a grain of salt. I believe the Examiner is owned by the Rev. Sun Myung-Moon who claims to be the Messiah sent to correct what Jesus failed to do.

[there buster]

I think that's the Washington Times. I anticipated this remark. Whoever owns it, the history stated here is accurate.

That is what happened in the past.

[Bravus]

Yep, that's what happened in the past when America invaded a country where it had no business being. You'd think they might have learned something.

[Dr. Shane]

Did the US invade Vietnaum?

[there buster]

Yes, clearly we should have stayed away from the Coral Sea and New Guinea. New Guinea had never done anything to us.

I remember a political cartoon when I was a teenager. De Gualle had decided to pull France out of NATO, and demanded US troops leave.

The cartoon showed De Gualle standing among the graves of the American cemetery saying, "Take your troops home." If only we could.

Our sailors lie unmarked on the ocean floor all around Australia. How foolish they were. In 1942, nothing stood between a Japanese invasion of northern Australia except a few American sailors in carrier groups who--according to your dictum--should have been somewhere else. Maybe Pearl Harbor-- after all, THAT's where we had been attacked.

Invading New Guinea! Think of all the New Guineans we 'murdered,' in an effort to oust the Japanese. But the Japanese wouldn't have attacked us in New Guinea if we hadn't foolishly followed them there. It's all our fault. We disturbed the 'peace.'

If we could follow your advice retroactively, the entire world would have been ruled by the benevolent Hitler, Tojo, and Stalin. And there would be 'peace,' of the same sort that existed in Iraq under Sadaam.

Dickens' has Marley say, "Mankind was my business." Guess that doesn't apply to the thousands murdered monthly by Sadaam Hussein, or the Kuwaitis raped and murdered. But there would be 'peace.'

And while we were at it, we should have deported the scores of thousands of Vietnamese that risked drowning to flee the government we opposed when we 'invaded' Vietnam -- they were none of our business either.

At least we'd have 'peace.'

[Clio]

Is it the Times? Hmmmm you are probably right. Although I still take the article with a grain of salt.

Not because I don't agree, but because I have a tendency to agree too much and the truth may be more in the middle of where I find my emotions leading.

[there buster]

The owner is Philip Anschutz, Austrian who is involved with Walden Media, producers of The Chronicles of Narnia films.

But the historical facts are facts, whoever owns the paper.

[Bravus]

On the Second World War in the Pacific, two points: America had been attacked directly, and Japan was an imperial, invading power that was expanding. Neither of those things apply to Iraq, and only the second, with a big enough hammer, might apply in Vietnam. I would not have and do not say that every American war is wrong or that America had no business there - very far from it. And Australians have a long history of fighting wars in other places for freedom and against oppression. My comment was specific to two wars that America has participated in, and in the Iraq case started, far from home, and with dubious justification.

As to:

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Guess that doesn't apply to the thousands murdered monthly by Sadaam Hussein, or the Kuwaitis raped and murdered. But there would be 'peace.'

Tell me the truth: were more Iraqis dying daily under Saddam than now? Averaged over whatever period you like? No - far more Iraqis have died as a result of this misbegotten war than ever died under Saddam. Did the Iraqis (apart from Chalabi, who thought he had a lock on the spoils) ask the Americans to come in and destroy their country and its infrastructure and turn it into a battleground?

The obscene logic of 'we must now send more soldiers to validate the sacrifice of those who have already died' just beggars belief: compound the error in blood.

[David Koot]

Neither of those things apply to Iraq, and only the second, with a big enough hammer, might apply in Vietnam.

I must confess that I have not followed the whole fracas over the goings on in Iraq as closely as I might have. Still, I would like to comment on one huge difference between the Iraq 'police action' or whatever it may be called. (BTW was there a formal declaration of war? Under the U.S. Constitution, the House must declare a state of war, I believe.)

At any rate, HOW we got embroiled in Iraq represents a sea change in American foreign policy--as in tide coming in vs. tide going out. This is the first PREEMPTIVE WAR. Since the days of Geo. Washington, U.S. policy purported to focus on defense, rather than wars of aggression. (the contrived Tonkin Bay incident was still presented under the auspices of defending U.S. ships, etc.) Even the Second War was entered by the U.S. in response to Japanese aggression.

HOWEVER, under the Bush doctrine, America now claims justification for STARTING wars! I think Geo. Wash. and company would turn over in their graves, if they knew.

Dave

[Dr. Shane]

When did the Iraq war start? Was it the 2003 invasion of Iraq or the 1991 invasion of Kuwait? The motive for invading Iraq seems to clearly be pre-emptive. However the legal justifiaction was the invation of Kuwait and the numerous ceaase-fire violations that ended that conflict.

Saddam was an aggressive power. He started a war with Iran and invaded Kuwait. He was contained temporarily but was working to get sanctions removed through the UN's corrupt oil-for-food program. If we would have known then what we knew now, I am sure things would have been done differently.

I think an honest assessment would admit that Iraq was better off under Saddam than it is now. Hopefully it will be better off in the future than it was under Saddam. I don't think the world or the middle east was better off with Saddam in power.

What was done was done. The question before us now is how to procede. That is a much more difficult question to answer. How do we get Iran and Sryia to the peace table and what role does Israel play?

[there buster]

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America had been attacked directly, and Japan was an imperial, invading power that was expanding.

Not only 9/11, but twelve years of treaty violations including attacks on American aircraft in the no-fly zones. Terrorists lived and trained in Iraq, and they were expanding their operations. The terrorists recognize that Iraq is ground zero in the war against Islamic fascism, even if 'useful idiots' (to use KGB term) in the West do not.

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Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq. Human Rights Watch reports that in one operation alone, the Anfal, Saddam killed 100,000 Kurdish Iraqis. Another 500,000 are estimated to have died in Saddam's needless war with Iran.

That only takes into account two of Saddams active campaigns. None of that counts the continual detentions, tortures, and executions. So much for peace.

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Did the Iraqis . . . . ask the Americans to come in

What a foolish question in a regime where laughing at the wrong joke could get you killed.

One cannot take such a question seriously.

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destroy their country

Actually, we've restored much that Saddam destroyed, such as the famous marshes that he destroyed out of pique. He took the water for his palaces and destroyed valuable wetlands and the culture that had lived on them for millennia

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and its infrastructure

Another misleading mistatement. Electricity and potable water were intermittent under Saddam. We've been steadily improving it, while the terrorists have been blowing it up.

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and turn it into a battleground?

Breathtaking! Saddam gassed his own people. He butchered them from helicopter gunships after the Gulf War. HIs followers and Al Qaeda terrorists are doing their best to destroy everything in sight, yet we turned it into a battle ground.

That's so ridiculous, it's easily disprovable. If WE turned it into a battleground, then all that would be necessary is for us to leave, and all would be PEACE.

Oh, eventually, after the bloodbath from the Islamofascists, there would be the kind of peace. The kind of peace where anyone who opposes the regime is dead, imprisoned, or cowed in terror.

Perhaps that's the kind of peace that's desired. For other people.

Germany never attacked the U.S. in WWII. German citizens died by scores of thousands as a result of American and Allied fighting in Europe. But the German people did not ask us to "destroy their country and its infrastructure and turn it into a battleground."

Unquestionably, more Germans died under US attack than from Nazi death squads.

OF course, such calculations are morally vapid.

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The obscene logic of 'we must now send more soldiers to validate the sacrifice of those who have already died' just beggars belief: compound the error in blood.

yeah, here's an example of such thinking:

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it is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain

wonder what war-monger said that.

just beggars belief, all right!

ANd then there's equating the accidental deaths that take place in the process of getting rid of oppressors with the intentional deaths inflicted by those who were responsible for their safet-- as head of state, Saddam Hussein was

just beggars belief, all right!

[Bravus]

Still didn't answer my question: are more Iraqis dying now because of the war than would have died had Saddam been left in place. It's a simple yes or no question.

[Dr. Shane]

I think more are dying now. But I think it wrong to lay that at the US' feet. It is not as if the terrorists don't play a role. The terrorists are killing more Iraqis than the US soldiers are.

If the US were to practice the same tactics as Saddam did, we could achieve the same kind of peace as Saddam did. Is that what we want to do?

[Bravus]

If I do something, and because I did it, there are consequences that would not otherwise have happened, I consider myself responsible for those consequences.

The 'terrorists' were largely not there before. Many have come and many have been created.

If the war ended tomorrow with a permanent, non-genocidal peace and great freedom, maybe it could be argued that it was worthwhile. But given the tensions in the region and within the country and given America's refusal to get serious about working diplomatically with the players in the region, that's not going to happen.

The war might be argued to have been worthwhile if it led to peace, but there was never any prospect that it would, and I said so before the war started. It was folly to start it, of the highest order, and nothing can redeem it now.

Nonetheless we have to go forward from here. In terms of solutions, probably the one with the greatest probability of working and of preventing as much bloodshed as possible is partitioning Iraq into three areas, allowing time for those living in the 'wrong' area to move to avoid ethnic cleansing, then moving out.

I'm not calling for an immediate US withdrawal, but neither is escalation any sort of solution. This problem is simply not one that can be solved with military force, no matter how overwhelming. The more insurgents killed, the more imported or created.

[Dr. Shane]

Again,

If the US were to practice the same tactics as Saddam did, we could achieve the same kind of peace as Saddam did. Is that what we want to do?

[there buster]

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It's a simple yes or no question.

It's simply the wrong question.

More Dutch, Danes, French, Belgians, and Germans died in 1943-46 than would have died if Hitler had been left in charge.

More Southerners, including slaves, died in 1862-65 than would have died had the South been left to secede.

On the other hand, far more Vietnamese died in 1975-79 than during the war. Far more Cambodians died under Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge. How many Serbs died during NATO's bombing? How manay Kosovars?

If the standard is how many citizens die during a certain period, then WWII and the American Civil War were not justified, and the Vietnam war was justified. Yet somehow I doubt that's the outcome you seek. Perhaps we should denounce the Second Coming as well. Lots more folks of all nations will die then.

You seek a moral answer from a quantitative question.

This little exercise demonstrates that your question is not relevant to any serious conclusion. When we ask the wrong questions, we get misleading answers.

[there buster]

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'terrorists' were largely not there before.

Yeah, that's because they called the people who fed others into the mechanical chippers 'police.'

And, because their torture chambers were soundproofed, they had 'peace.'

Yes, you're right. If the neighbors abuse their children, it's all right as long as they do it quietly. Wouldn't want to disrupt their lives.

[Bravus]

Agreed, the death toll in itself is not enough information on which to make a decision about the justness of the war. It is the 'cost' side in the cost-benefit analysis. So my other point, which I made above, is that to make such a cost worthwhile bearing, the expected benefit must be proportional. In each of the cases you have mentioned, the benefit was there: stopping Hitler's genocide and expansion, stopping slavery and so on.

What are the expected benefits from this war? For Iraqis, I mean. How will their lives be better, on balance, for the majority of people? Under any realistic scenario from here. Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part that I am having trouble coming up with a plausible future that justifies the invasion. Say you got the best outcome you seek, what does Iraq look like for a Sunni, a Shiite and a Kurd in 5-10 years?

Can you describe what your envisaged endpoint, if the 'defeatocrats' don't drag the US out too early, is? presumably enough American troops on the ground to get the job done? You just haven't said much about the victory conditions.

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This little exercise demonstrates that your question is not relevant to any serious conclusion. When we ask the wrong questions, we get misleading answers.

Or possibly your response shows that responding to only half of a whole syllogism leads to flawed conclusions? Anyway, you now have my full argument: I do not see the benefits that justify the costs in this war, whereas I do see them in World War 2.

[D. Allan]

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HOWEVER, under the Bush doctrine, America now claims justification for STARTING wars! I think Geo. Wash. and company would turn over in their graves, if they knew.

Dave

Now that's something I can agree on with you, Dave!

[Dr. Shane]

Just for the record, al-qaida terrorists, who were connected with 9/11, had fled Afghanistan and found safe haven in Iraq.

[there buster]

Quote:

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This little exercise demonstrates that your question is not relevant to any serious conclusion. When we ask the wrong questions, we get misleading answers.

Or possibly your response shows that responding to only half of a whole syllogism leads to flawed conclusions?

No, it's simply impossible to get a moral imperative from a quantity.

[Bravus]

I am arguing that the moral imperative is 'if you are going to invade someone's country, you should make sure that on balance it is to their benefit, not their detriment'. The quantity question merely works toward that judgement. Do you accept that as a fair statement of a moral imperative? Kind of a military Hippocratic Oath.

[there buster]

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I am arguing that the moral imperative is 'if you are going to invade someone's country, you should make sure that on balance it is to their benefit, not their detriment'. The quantity question merely works toward that judgement. Do you accept that as a fair statement of a moral imperative?

No, for several reasons.

1) It is unworkably vague. On what basis is benefit determined? Economic? Liberty? Social order? Total deaths? And who makes the determination?

2) It fails the test of history. Germans elected Hitler. Their country was nearly demolished, their population decimated, their infrastructure destroyed. It's difficult to see how the German people were benefitted by any quantitative analysis.

3) As demonstrated, quantitative measures cannot yield moral imperatives. If I take a gun to my neighbor's house and only kill one person, the law still considers it murder. On the other hand, if a gang of twenty thugs attacks me, and in the melee I kill most or all of them, that's justifiable homicide. If bystanders are killed in the process, even by stray bullets from my gun, their deaths are accounted to my attackers.

The world is obviously more complex than those scenarios. But that only makes the whole process more difficult, and numbers even less reliable.

The problem is that numbers simply do not carry moral significance. When Christ comes, millions will die. After the millennium, billions will. Numbers simply cannot yield moral significance.

We have an instructive episode of attempting to make a moral decision based on comparative casualties:

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John 11:47Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.

"What are we accomplishing?" they asked. "Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. 48If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place[c] and our nation."

49Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, "You know nothing at all! 50You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish."

I am not comparing you to the Pharisees. I am saying that's where the effort to make a moral case based on quantitative grounds must eventually lead.

[Bravus]

OK, I can't completely agree, but I do take those points and understand them.

In that case, what are adequate, relevant grounds for choosing whether or not to go to war?

And, on those grounds, why Iraq and not North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan,...?

Your claim seems to be that there are moral criteria that justify war in some cases. You've rejected the possible criterion I offered: I'd be very interested in the alternative set of criteria you advocate.