Thursday, April 01, 2004
Au Revoir, Les Enfants Terrible
A European Reader takes my 10 May journal entry and dissects it line by line.
It's an interesting window into the mind of the European left and how they view the war in Iraq, so I'll post his take, along with my own response, line by line.
Journal: …during and after the war to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein.
Reader's Response: What is wrong with your memory? Stick to reasons given to your parliament and UN (WMD Iraq –Al Queda link) and do not adapt to the new “Bush line / argument”.
My response: Memory??? This is verbatim something I wrote on 10 May 2002. Baghdad had fallen just a couple of weeks before. Were you guys born cynics? Or did you grow up rooting for the Astros or something? It so happens that those of us who were in the ranks were very conscious of the evils perpetuated by the Saddam Hussein regime--evils which we did not fully appreciate by a long shot until we saw the country with our own eyes, and heard the stories of systematic rape, torture, and murder under the old regime from the people themselves.
In point of fact, the Bush and Blair administrations did, indeed, attempt to drum up political support for the war on humanitarian grounds, with the release of such items as this dossier on human rights violations in Iraq.
Nevertheless, Thomas could not believe--could not comprehend that Christ had risen from his Tomb until he could physically put his fingers in His wounds.
You can read all the dossiers you want, but until you see one disfigured Iraqi body after another--hands that look like they've been taken apart and put back together again, knees that bend backwards from encounters with sledghammer-wielding Mukhabarrat goons, men missing ears, former soldiers' forearms bent crooked from being broken by Ba'athist officers for minor offenses, when you see these kinds of things with your own eyes, as I have, and many other soldiers have--and see that they were actually commonplace
in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, then you do not know--you cannot know-- the extent of the terror.
And having not lived under it myself, neither can I. I only talked to survivors--who's experience, as survivors of Saddam's torture cells, may not have been all that typical.
The human rights angle is not a new angle; it just wasn't the chief argument the US put forth to the United Nations, simply because we had no reason to believe that any organization which could, without any apparent sense of irony, appoint Libya to chair its Human Rights Commission, could possibly give a rat's ass about human rights.
But human rights was always part of the equation for us. I certainly knew it by May of 2003, or I would not have framed the war as a 'liberation' myself, nor bothered to carry a photograph of Anne Frank around with me to remind myself of why I showed up in the first place.
Reader: Just accept you were in an ill prepared occupation after a wrong war at the wrong time. You 100,000 plus troops would have been better in Afghanistan to secure and rebuild that country.
My response: I've written here before that any amateur knows tactics. The professional understands logistics. Afghanistan is a landlocked country. There are no handy seaports in nearby supportive host nations we could use to stage theater level logistics out of.
There were no modern road or rail networks sufficient to support a 100,000 man force. Pakistan's support is sketchy--largely dependent upon the actuarial chances of President Musharraf. Moreover, A heavy US log presence in Pakistan or Uzbekistan sufficient to support 100,000 troops, even if it were possible would create an attractive terrorist target in and of itself, and serve to undermine support where we need it most--and perhaps further destabilize Musharraf.
So, let's see: you can spend $87 billion to deploy 100,000 soldiers to make the rubble bounce in Afghanistan, where their presence would represent a marginal contribution, at best, to US policy aims in Afghanistan, which were already mostly achieved with the routing of the Taliban, while substantially increasing strategic risks in the process WRT a nuclear power, or...
You can deploy the same 100,000 troops and spend the same $87 billion, get rid of Saddam Hussein, eliminate the risk that he would eventually develop WMD and use them against the US or against Israel, eliminate a major source of terrorist funding in the region, end US dependence upon Saudi Arabian military and logistics facilities, send a powerful message to Libya and anyone else who wants to develop WMD, while taking no additional risk of terrorism attacks on US troops in the region (they'd be just as targeted in and around Afghanistan as they are in Iraq), AND still achieve the principal US aims in Afghanistan.
That's a no-brainer.
Journal Entry May the world be a safer and better place for the sacrifices we make here today.
Reader response: That’s wishful thinking, this war (and Bush support of Sharon) created just a few millions more US haters.
I am sure you follow the results of research and opinion pools of the US standing in the world.
My Response I'm not concerned with short-term blips of fickle public opinion in foreign nations--in fact, I couldn't care less. It's a nonissue for me. Rather, I'm far more concerned with US credibility and the strategic situation in the middle east looking forward decades from now.
20 years from now, we may well look back and realize we blundered. But NOT for the reasons you cite. Anti-US sentiment in Europe is nothing new. I mean people were blowing up McDonald's restaurants in France under the Clinton administration.
I just don't have a great deal of faith in the moral discernment of populations of countries such as France, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Sweden which, when civilization's great moment of crisis came, couldn't even formulate a coherent opposition to Hitler and the Holocaust.
But I guess Americans just lack the neccessary veulerie to see things in a really nuanced, European way.
Enjoy those Jerry Lewis movies.
Splash, out
Jason
It's an interesting window into the mind of the European left and how they view the war in Iraq, so I'll post his take, along with my own response, line by line.
Journal: …during and after the war to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein.
Reader's Response: What is wrong with your memory? Stick to reasons given to your parliament and UN (WMD Iraq –Al Queda link) and do not adapt to the new “Bush line / argument”.
My response: Memory??? This is verbatim something I wrote on 10 May 2002. Baghdad had fallen just a couple of weeks before. Were you guys born cynics? Or did you grow up rooting for the Astros or something? It so happens that those of us who were in the ranks were very conscious of the evils perpetuated by the Saddam Hussein regime--evils which we did not fully appreciate by a long shot until we saw the country with our own eyes, and heard the stories of systematic rape, torture, and murder under the old regime from the people themselves.
In point of fact, the Bush and Blair administrations did, indeed, attempt to drum up political support for the war on humanitarian grounds, with the release of such items as this dossier on human rights violations in Iraq.
Nevertheless, Thomas could not believe--could not comprehend that Christ had risen from his Tomb until he could physically put his fingers in His wounds.
You can read all the dossiers you want, but until you see one disfigured Iraqi body after another--hands that look like they've been taken apart and put back together again, knees that bend backwards from encounters with sledghammer-wielding Mukhabarrat goons, men missing ears, former soldiers' forearms bent crooked from being broken by Ba'athist officers for minor offenses, when you see these kinds of things with your own eyes, as I have, and many other soldiers have--and see that they were actually commonplace
in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, then you do not know--you cannot know-- the extent of the terror.
And having not lived under it myself, neither can I. I only talked to survivors--who's experience, as survivors of Saddam's torture cells, may not have been all that typical.
The human rights angle is not a new angle; it just wasn't the chief argument the US put forth to the United Nations, simply because we had no reason to believe that any organization which could, without any apparent sense of irony, appoint Libya to chair its Human Rights Commission, could possibly give a rat's ass about human rights.
But human rights was always part of the equation for us. I certainly knew it by May of 2003, or I would not have framed the war as a 'liberation' myself, nor bothered to carry a photograph of Anne Frank around with me to remind myself of why I showed up in the first place.
Reader: Just accept you were in an ill prepared occupation after a wrong war at the wrong time. You 100,000 plus troops would have been better in Afghanistan to secure and rebuild that country.
My response: I've written here before that any amateur knows tactics. The professional understands logistics. Afghanistan is a landlocked country. There are no handy seaports in nearby supportive host nations we could use to stage theater level logistics out of.
There were no modern road or rail networks sufficient to support a 100,000 man force. Pakistan's support is sketchy--largely dependent upon the actuarial chances of President Musharraf. Moreover, A heavy US log presence in Pakistan or Uzbekistan sufficient to support 100,000 troops, even if it were possible would create an attractive terrorist target in and of itself, and serve to undermine support where we need it most--and perhaps further destabilize Musharraf.
So, let's see: you can spend $87 billion to deploy 100,000 soldiers to make the rubble bounce in Afghanistan, where their presence would represent a marginal contribution, at best, to US policy aims in Afghanistan, which were already mostly achieved with the routing of the Taliban, while substantially increasing strategic risks in the process WRT a nuclear power, or...
You can deploy the same 100,000 troops and spend the same $87 billion, get rid of Saddam Hussein, eliminate the risk that he would eventually develop WMD and use them against the US or against Israel, eliminate a major source of terrorist funding in the region, end US dependence upon Saudi Arabian military and logistics facilities, send a powerful message to Libya and anyone else who wants to develop WMD, while taking no additional risk of terrorism attacks on US troops in the region (they'd be just as targeted in and around Afghanistan as they are in Iraq), AND still achieve the principal US aims in Afghanistan.
That's a no-brainer.
Journal Entry May the world be a safer and better place for the sacrifices we make here today.
Reader response: That’s wishful thinking, this war (and Bush support of Sharon) created just a few millions more US haters.
I am sure you follow the results of research and opinion pools of the US standing in the world.
My Response I'm not concerned with short-term blips of fickle public opinion in foreign nations--in fact, I couldn't care less. It's a nonissue for me. Rather, I'm far more concerned with US credibility and the strategic situation in the middle east looking forward decades from now.
20 years from now, we may well look back and realize we blundered. But NOT for the reasons you cite. Anti-US sentiment in Europe is nothing new. I mean people were blowing up McDonald's restaurants in France under the Clinton administration.
I just don't have a great deal of faith in the moral discernment of populations of countries such as France, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Sweden which, when civilization's great moment of crisis came, couldn't even formulate a coherent opposition to Hitler and the Holocaust.
But I guess Americans just lack the neccessary veulerie to see things in a really nuanced, European way.
Enjoy those Jerry Lewis movies.
Splash, out
Jason
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