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What are we wreaking?
Nov. 5th, 2003 01:01 pmI thought the folks in charge were clueless when I was in Iraq (don't get me started on how V Corps managed EPWs during the shooting war), but as I look at what is being bruited about in the national fora, I ponder the shortest sentence in the Bible, "Jesus wept."
I'm a soldier. I don't talk about what that means much, mostly because it is a needful job, but dirty.
In a nutshell what I do is kill people.
To quote Shakespeare, "I could be bounded up in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."
But I manage to avoid those bad dreams (as to most of the rest of my fellows) because I am bounded by more than that nutshell (rules are not the enemy... they are tools).
I have things like the Geneva Conventions and I have accepted a wealth of tradition, some of which must go back to the very first armies... one of those traditions is that non-combatants are spared (in the early days non-combatant was a bit more vague a concept, but those who were such got off more lightly than those who weren't, but I digress).
Which is why when I see things like this http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/opinion/04BROO.html my bile rises and I want to scream (this, is that scream).
"Try to put yourself in the mind of the killer, or of the guy with the plastic bag. You are part of Saddam's vast apparatus of rape squads, torture teams and mass-grave fillers. Every time you walk down the street, people tremble in fear. Everything else in society is arbitrary, but you are absolute. When you kill, your craving for power and significance is sated. You are infused with the joy of domination....
What will happen to the national mood when the news programs start broadcasting images of the brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt? Inevitably, there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause. They will be tempted to have us retreat into the paradise of our own innocence.
Somehow, over the next six months, until the Iraqis are capable of their own defense, the Bush administration is going to have to remind us again and again that Iraq is the Battle of Midway in the war on terror, the crucial turning point where either we will crush the terrorists' spirit or they will crush ours.
The president will have to remind us that we live in a fallen world, that we have to take morally hazardous action if we are to defeat the killers who confront us. It is our responsibility to not walk away. It is our responsibility to recognize the dark realities of human nature, while still preserving our idealistic faith in a better Middle East."
DAVID BROOKS
November 4, 2003
So, to eradicate the last holdouts of the evil aspects of Hussein's Iraq we have to (for just a little while) replace them with our boys, doing similar work.
After all this is not going to be done with the niceties of Stateside Police Procedures, "...the brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt? Inevitably, there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause."
It sounds like the guy in the bank saying, "Don't make me shoot these people, if you do the blood is on your hands."
But it won't be, it will be on the hands of the troops who are convinced to commit them. It may not get to My Lai as policy, but how will we decide the practical aspects of the brutality? I don't think we'll resort to summary decapitation, but we've already engaged in hostage taking (a COL left a note that a man's family was being held, pending his turning himself in... a violation of the Geneva Conventions).
Will it stop there? I doubt it. Israel did away with the rational of, "the ticking bomb" when dealing with Palestinians because they all became people who could be justifiably, "coerced."
And the Israeli Army says that such tactics are bad policy, they cause the troubles they are used to cure (Valium does that, one of the listed side effects is anxiety, but I digress).
What dreams will we foist on those who become not merely bound in that nutshell, but trapped?
TK
I'm a soldier. I don't talk about what that means much, mostly because it is a needful job, but dirty.
In a nutshell what I do is kill people.
To quote Shakespeare, "I could be bounded up in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."
But I manage to avoid those bad dreams (as to most of the rest of my fellows) because I am bounded by more than that nutshell (rules are not the enemy... they are tools).
I have things like the Geneva Conventions and I have accepted a wealth of tradition, some of which must go back to the very first armies... one of those traditions is that non-combatants are spared (in the early days non-combatant was a bit more vague a concept, but those who were such got off more lightly than those who weren't, but I digress).
Which is why when I see things like this http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/opinion/04BROO.html my bile rises and I want to scream (this, is that scream).
"Try to put yourself in the mind of the killer, or of the guy with the plastic bag. You are part of Saddam's vast apparatus of rape squads, torture teams and mass-grave fillers. Every time you walk down the street, people tremble in fear. Everything else in society is arbitrary, but you are absolute. When you kill, your craving for power and significance is sated. You are infused with the joy of domination....
What will happen to the national mood when the news programs start broadcasting images of the brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt? Inevitably, there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause. They will be tempted to have us retreat into the paradise of our own innocence.
Somehow, over the next six months, until the Iraqis are capable of their own defense, the Bush administration is going to have to remind us again and again that Iraq is the Battle of Midway in the war on terror, the crucial turning point where either we will crush the terrorists' spirit or they will crush ours.
The president will have to remind us that we live in a fallen world, that we have to take morally hazardous action if we are to defeat the killers who confront us. It is our responsibility to not walk away. It is our responsibility to recognize the dark realities of human nature, while still preserving our idealistic faith in a better Middle East."
DAVID BROOKS
November 4, 2003
So, to eradicate the last holdouts of the evil aspects of Hussein's Iraq we have to (for just a little while) replace them with our boys, doing similar work.
After all this is not going to be done with the niceties of Stateside Police Procedures, "...the brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt? Inevitably, there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause."
It sounds like the guy in the bank saying, "Don't make me shoot these people, if you do the blood is on your hands."
But it won't be, it will be on the hands of the troops who are convinced to commit them. It may not get to My Lai as policy, but how will we decide the practical aspects of the brutality? I don't think we'll resort to summary decapitation, but we've already engaged in hostage taking (a COL left a note that a man's family was being held, pending his turning himself in... a violation of the Geneva Conventions).
Will it stop there? I doubt it. Israel did away with the rational of, "the ticking bomb" when dealing with Palestinians because they all became people who could be justifiably, "coerced."
And the Israeli Army says that such tactics are bad policy, they cause the troubles they are used to cure (Valium does that, one of the listed side effects is anxiety, but I digress).
What dreams will we foist on those who become not merely bound in that nutshell, but trapped?
TK
