A
Anonymous
Guest
The thread called "Where were you 5 years ago?" spurred me to write a little rant about the current state of the planet, mostly considering the terrible -- and often unjustified -- actions of some countries or movements. This is in no case an apology of terrorism, but a criticism stemming from my disgust at the waste of so many lives.
What we see of the current situation in the Middle-East and the American as well as Israeli attacks to "punish" or "prevent" terrorism may allow us to draw a fairly simple conclusion: massive military operations, with their inevitable failure to hit "cleanly" the designed targets, do not achieve the goals originally established for their existence. After three years or so, the military campaign led by the USA in Iraq -- starting with a heavy show of power and continuing with the occupation of the incriminated territories -- has completely failed to achieve what it was intended to do, that is bringing peace and stability to a country that used to be held in its dictator's iron fist. You all may have noticed that Iraq seems to be still a long way away from being a stable and peaceful democracy. Likewise, the military intervention of Israel in Lebanon has done nothing to achieve the protection of the Israeli people but, on the contrary, has simply flared up the hatred and outrage of the inhabitants of many Arab nations.
For those of you who like to read or watch old films, I'd recommend that you get hold of The War Lover, a brilliant novel by John Hersey that was made into a film with Steve McQueen in 1962. It relates the story of a B-17 bomber pilot during WWII who loves to go over Germany and "drop his load", while bragging about his success with women back at the airfield. The thing is… he's impotent! This is what I thought of when I saw those glorified pictures of George W. Bush on CNN, parading in a flight jacket on an aircraft carrier and claiming that the US were victorious in Iraq. Pretty much like the bomber pilot of the novel/film, President Bush is bragging a lot, but his wonderful army is quite impotent.
All the wars waged after WWII have shown that massive military operations were actually quite useless and ineffective. Both the USA and the USSR, huge military powers as they are (or were in the case of the USSR), were powerless to tackle efficiently the resistance of the people in countries that didn’t have even half of their military might -- like Vietnam for the USA, or Afghanistan for the Soviet Union -- and eventually had to give up. Besides, the two blocks arising from WWII, the USA and USSR, were not in full control of the countries they thought were "under their thumbs", so to speak: Latin America for the United States, and Eastern Europe in the case of the Soviet Union. Similarly, the so-called "victories" do not last long either. A good example is that of the attack and subsequent invasion of Afghanistan by the US troops, followed by the announcement that the Taliban had been defeated. Now, over four years after the initial attacks, the country is still riddled with violence and the Taliban are still around to wreak havoc wherever they feel like it.
What is more important is that that modern warfare uses all too often disproportionate force and causes the unnecessary deaths of vast numbers of innocent people. In other -- maybe rather blunt -- terms, war has become some sort of terrorism in itself, hence the contradiction of the expression "war on terrorism". These wars started by the governments of the so-called "civilised" countries are far more dangerous for the common people than any terrorist act, as reprehensible and immoral as these are.
Usually, the official reason given for a strike on a civilian area is that "terrorists hide among them", whereby justifying the killing of innocent people in the process, may it be in Iraq or Lebanon (or elsewhere!). Those killings are quite blandly termed "collateral damage", and are considered -- rather unfortunate -- accidents as opposed to what terrorist did with the attacks on New York and Washington, or suicide bombers on market squares in Israel whose actions are deliberate. This distinction is actually quite preposterous and anyone who thinks about it will see where the flaw is. When an area is shelled because military intelligence (what an oxymoron!) has established that a "suspected terrorist" -- such uncertainty should also be taken into consideration, as the attackers admit themselves that they may be wrong -- dwells there, the women and children killed are treated as mere casualties of war. Nice mentality!
Whatever action kills innocent civilians in the process is as immoral as any terrorist attack intended to kill and maim people who have nothing to do in the conflict considered. These "collateral" casualties are far more numerous than any deliberate slaughter committed by those terrorists and raise the question as to waging war against the perpetrators of such awful actions. Let’s remember that US bombs killed over a million civilians during the Vietnam conflict alone, and whereas these deaths probably weren’t intentional, they cannot be ignored. By comparison, the total body count of victims of terrorist attacks since they exist (mid-20th Century until now) is certainly far below this incredibly high number (although I admit that I haven’t got the exact figures).
So, as the launch of large-scale military campaigns to counter terrorism is largely inefficient on top of having a dubious morality, what are we left with? Wouldn’t it be time that the so-called "civilised" Western nations re-think their worldwide policies and finally find a peaceful solution to all this mindless slaughter?
P.S.: Kofi, man, you really have all my sympathy. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes!
What we see of the current situation in the Middle-East and the American as well as Israeli attacks to "punish" or "prevent" terrorism may allow us to draw a fairly simple conclusion: massive military operations, with their inevitable failure to hit "cleanly" the designed targets, do not achieve the goals originally established for their existence. After three years or so, the military campaign led by the USA in Iraq -- starting with a heavy show of power and continuing with the occupation of the incriminated territories -- has completely failed to achieve what it was intended to do, that is bringing peace and stability to a country that used to be held in its dictator's iron fist. You all may have noticed that Iraq seems to be still a long way away from being a stable and peaceful democracy. Likewise, the military intervention of Israel in Lebanon has done nothing to achieve the protection of the Israeli people but, on the contrary, has simply flared up the hatred and outrage of the inhabitants of many Arab nations.
For those of you who like to read or watch old films, I'd recommend that you get hold of The War Lover, a brilliant novel by John Hersey that was made into a film with Steve McQueen in 1962. It relates the story of a B-17 bomber pilot during WWII who loves to go over Germany and "drop his load", while bragging about his success with women back at the airfield. The thing is… he's impotent! This is what I thought of when I saw those glorified pictures of George W. Bush on CNN, parading in a flight jacket on an aircraft carrier and claiming that the US were victorious in Iraq. Pretty much like the bomber pilot of the novel/film, President Bush is bragging a lot, but his wonderful army is quite impotent.
All the wars waged after WWII have shown that massive military operations were actually quite useless and ineffective. Both the USA and the USSR, huge military powers as they are (or were in the case of the USSR), were powerless to tackle efficiently the resistance of the people in countries that didn’t have even half of their military might -- like Vietnam for the USA, or Afghanistan for the Soviet Union -- and eventually had to give up. Besides, the two blocks arising from WWII, the USA and USSR, were not in full control of the countries they thought were "under their thumbs", so to speak: Latin America for the United States, and Eastern Europe in the case of the Soviet Union. Similarly, the so-called "victories" do not last long either. A good example is that of the attack and subsequent invasion of Afghanistan by the US troops, followed by the announcement that the Taliban had been defeated. Now, over four years after the initial attacks, the country is still riddled with violence and the Taliban are still around to wreak havoc wherever they feel like it.
What is more important is that that modern warfare uses all too often disproportionate force and causes the unnecessary deaths of vast numbers of innocent people. In other -- maybe rather blunt -- terms, war has become some sort of terrorism in itself, hence the contradiction of the expression "war on terrorism". These wars started by the governments of the so-called "civilised" countries are far more dangerous for the common people than any terrorist act, as reprehensible and immoral as these are.
Usually, the official reason given for a strike on a civilian area is that "terrorists hide among them", whereby justifying the killing of innocent people in the process, may it be in Iraq or Lebanon (or elsewhere!). Those killings are quite blandly termed "collateral damage", and are considered -- rather unfortunate -- accidents as opposed to what terrorist did with the attacks on New York and Washington, or suicide bombers on market squares in Israel whose actions are deliberate. This distinction is actually quite preposterous and anyone who thinks about it will see where the flaw is. When an area is shelled because military intelligence (what an oxymoron!) has established that a "suspected terrorist" -- such uncertainty should also be taken into consideration, as the attackers admit themselves that they may be wrong -- dwells there, the women and children killed are treated as mere casualties of war. Nice mentality!
Whatever action kills innocent civilians in the process is as immoral as any terrorist attack intended to kill and maim people who have nothing to do in the conflict considered. These "collateral" casualties are far more numerous than any deliberate slaughter committed by those terrorists and raise the question as to waging war against the perpetrators of such awful actions. Let’s remember that US bombs killed over a million civilians during the Vietnam conflict alone, and whereas these deaths probably weren’t intentional, they cannot be ignored. By comparison, the total body count of victims of terrorist attacks since they exist (mid-20th Century until now) is certainly far below this incredibly high number (although I admit that I haven’t got the exact figures).
So, as the launch of large-scale military campaigns to counter terrorism is largely inefficient on top of having a dubious morality, what are we left with? Wouldn’t it be time that the so-called "civilised" Western nations re-think their worldwide policies and finally find a peaceful solution to all this mindless slaughter?
P.S.: Kofi, man, you really have all my sympathy. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes!
