Letters to the Editor
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There have been zero declared wars since WW2
And if Iraq is any benchmark then there have been zero conventional wars since 1991. Which leads me to believe that while noble and probably worthwhile the whole notion of what a legal war is, and how it's prosecuted is meaningless. Moreover it really only applies to a small community of modern western nations who ever bothered to give 'rules of war' lip service. Do you think in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Subsaharan Africa, Tibet, the Caucuses, the middle east, North Africa they or WE care who does what to whom or who gets butchered? Because no one cares. There is no such thing as a warcrime in Congo. At best, in the few places the west bothers to get involved in, like Sierre Leone, we hold trials for a few toppled leaders and hope someone gets exiled.
But the idea that all those other places are prosecuting wars according to some convention is laughable. In fact, you're the very people who assert that a tyrannical dictator like Saddam is a requirement to regional stability and no one has any problem with how that happens. And really, how DO you think that happens? So you have a few choices. You can not bother to be worried how those angry foreigners manage their states, and honestly you don't want to know. Or you can criticize them all and prosecute them all with more than the obligatory memos from AI. Or you say that the west really is different and better and can't be involved in ANY way with countries that are not like them and don't uphold the same values. Or you can run around wreaking democracy and freedom everywhere in the hope that everywhere else turns out for the better.
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@ondelette
“They are built on the concept that although war is horrible, there should be a lower limit to behavior -- things like not mutilating already wounded soldiers on the battlefield, and not leaving sailors from sunken warships to drown.”
Paul Tibbets pilot of the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb who just died said that all war was immoral. Maybe war inevitably becomes immoral, but I don’t believe the warriors have to conduct immoral acts. And, I don’t bring that up to get into a discussion about the morality of Truman’s decision. I do think that torture that doesn’t normally kill like waterboarding seems to pale in comparison to a war act that kills thousands or a terrorist bomb that kills hundreds.
Maybe that is why some people want to see degrees of awfulness regarding torture and then compare it to the so-called good that could result. The practical case against torture because it is not the best way to get valid intelligence has been well made and documented. What can get lost in the equation are values and integrity. The question that needs to be answered is what does it do to the torturers, their organization and country, if they represent one.
Any military organization has to have guidelines and limits on how to operate. That is why there are reams of regulations that represent the prior experience of how to do and not do things that will help or hurt the organization.
Ondelette you are so right about the need for a lower limit to behavior in combat. When any member of a unit sinks beneath that limit and a correction is not made that unit is headed for serious trouble because an organization needs to live by standards and values just like any person or any country. Armies learned a long time ago that winning the hearts and minds of both the country they represent and the country they invade to “help” is crucial to an army’s success.
Like all other common sense reasoning, the Busheviks in their authoritarian zeal to win at all costs, violated these time worn tenants with impunity using 9/11 as the excuse. They don’t understand standards and concepts like personal integrity when they have spent their lives violating and rationalizing so they can win and beat others. All their excuses and explanations are just tactics to reach their goals. All their goals are personal not community. They also are so obsessed to achieve that they are not capable of true sympathy and empathy.
Every waking moment is spent trying to soothe their inner feelings. They are addicts to success just like any alcoholic or drug addict. Their drug of choice is winning.
When a military unit has that kind of leadership, it inevitably fails because it practices the principles of raw capitalism- dog eat dog, the winner gets the spoils. A military unit or any organization thus looses the talents and motivation that will be best for the group. Lower limits are no longer boundaries because they cease to exist.
As you have pointed out many times, our nation is in very serious trouble when we no longer believe in boundaries, or values, or honor integrity of the individual and the unit.
The Busheviks must be held accountable in some way so the American people who still believe that humans must have moral boundaries will realize how close we are to being dominated by those who don’t.
Please keep up your outstanding work in helping all of us realize what the use of torture really represents.
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@Pan narrans
Always a pleasure to meet a fellow sophisticate. Nice eagle and tortoise reference. Huzzah!
And yet, you wound me, sir (madame?). I'm not unequivocally pro-torture. I certainly don't have the stomach to administer it. But I think it's a bit rash to demand that that club be removed from our bag (digging the bourgeois golf reference?)
Torture for torture's sake is bad. Torture for valuable intel? Depends on the type of torture, and the information extracted. Of course, this kind of cost/benefit analysis can only be done after the fact, which has its obvious drawbacks.
I guess I would approach it like this: a low-level grunt is not likely to know anything of huge importance. So we should take it easy on that guy.
But a fellow who is a known murderer, a high-level dude who is likely to have a lot of valuable information? Beat him like a rented mule, I say.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where everyone was nice to each other. But we don't live in that world. So I think a blanket prohibition against torture is (you're going to love this) extreme. Rest easy in knowing that I only get one vote like everybody else.