[Vision2020] Re: LMT reporting US losses

[Phil Nisbet]

Before beginning a reply I would like to say that though we disagree on this 
topic, I have the highest respect for Sunil though I very strongly disagree 
with him here.  I hope that my response, as in most of my other response, 
will not be seen as an attack on him, but as a debate of ideas.

Sunil writes;

"Germany and Japan invaded not just their neighbors but their neighbors too. 
  We helped Iraq in their war against Iran, and that hardly gives us the 
moral high ground in condemning them now.  As for their invasion of Kuwait, 
that was dealt with a decade ago."

I respond;

And at the time of the invasions we were nether a member of the League of 
Nations or anything but a neutral.  The Congress had the Neutrality Act in 
place and yet were one sidedly supplied one side in the conflict, convoyed 
ships and carried out a series of things that under international law of the 
day were clear acts of war.

In the case of Japan, we did not act when the Japanese invaded Manchuria, 
when they invaded China proper, when they conducted the genocide at the Rape 
of Nanking.  We stayed out of the fight over their invasions, though we did 
take action in the form of sanctions finally in `1941, 8 years and literally 
millions of deaths into the beginning of the Asian portion of the Second 
World War.  But for the eight years that we took no action, we shipped arms 
and war materials to the Japanese.

As for Germany, we did not enter the war when Germany invaded Austria in the 
Anschluss or when they took half of Czechoslovakia, or when they invaded 
Poland or when they invaded Denmark, or when they invaded Norway or when 
they invaded the Netherlands or when they invaded Belgium or when they 
invaded France or when they invaded Greece or when they invaded Yugoslavia 
or when they invaded Russia and so on and so on.  The invasions had been 
going on for close to four years before we entered the warm millions of 
people were dead and the concentration camps were being built to slaughter 
millions more.

So invasions of other nations was not the justification for war in WW II, we 
instead committed a series of acts to try to insure that the Germans and the 
Japanese declared war on us.  The acts we committed at the time were and 
still are considered Acts of War under International Law.

Then we fought for slightly less than four years, won the war and occupied 
the losers, imposing our form of government upon them.  We did not battle to 
their former borders and say, there you go now do not do that again, we went 
in and told them what government they would have and went so far as to write 
their constitutions for them and select who would be allowed to run for 
office in their nations.

There was absolutely no provisions in International Law that allowed us to 
do what we did.  We planned it and carried it out and then organized the 
United Nations to rubber stamp the action post facto as being justified 
under International Law.

Compared to our actions in WW II, we were positively legal in Iraq.  We had 
UN backing to take some sort of action, though the action was not specified. 
  We had authority under law to set up a democratic process for Iraqi self 
governance and instead of imposing our forms on them, had them write their 
own Constitution, a process assisted by the UN and sanctioned by 
International Law.  I can even recall some on this listserv beefing about 
the fact that we did not impose laws more similar to our own, which was 
definitely not the case in Germany and Japan.

Sunil wrote;

"Phil, when you find me justifying Dresden, it will be the first time I've 
done that.  As for killing Iraqis in combat zones, apparently any place we 
are is a combat zone, and I don't justify their deaths.  Since I don't think 
we have any right or reason to be there, I don't think we have any 
legitimate combat zones in Iraq."

I respond;

Sunil, the terror bombings we carried out in WW II were definitely against 
International Law and its conventions.  Death of civilians on the other hand 
that happen in war zones which current law states as including zones of 
civil unrest which are not specifically targeting civilian populations are 
not crimes, but are considered accidental death.

One of the points that I think you are missing though is that the bulk of 
civilian deaths in Iraq are not exactly the result of our actions.  Far more 
Iraqis have died from the actions of the insurgent forces attacking people 
who they deem to be working with the authorities, by bombings, 
assassinations, ambushes and other acts of aggression on their fellow 
citizens.  I can understand your reaction that if we were not there, that 
would not be happening, but you might wish to remember that quite a few 
Iraqis were dying under Saddam as well.

Frankly I think it’s interesting that more people died under the sanction 
and blockade policy than died in any comparable period of war.  One did not 
involve occupation, but sanctions coupled with the no fly zone were 
definitely a source of civilian deaths and are actually as much an act of 
war under existing International Law.  How many fewer Iraqis would be here 
today if we had continued and expanded the sanctions?

Sunil writes;

"We didn't give a crap about his war crimes for years.  We turned a blind 
eye to them when they suited us.  Bush Sr. urged the Shiites and Kurds to 
rise up in '91 and then did nothing to help them when Saddam reacted 
predictably.  We have no moral high ground here, and I hope I'm never 
hypocritical enough to pretend otherwise.  Bar of justice my ass. "

I respond;

We knew about the death camps in Germany and the genocidal war crimes in 
China as well.  We refused to take any action about those for years either.  
In essence Roosevelt turned a complete blind eye to the systematic 
extermination of Jews, the Roma and Gays, refused to allow refuges into the 
USA and blocked transit for them to other countries.  Roosevelt also blocked 
publication of the information that the mass murders were happening, refused 
to allow military force to be used to block the rail lines or destroy the 
gas chambers and even blocked movement to safe haven for those who managed 
to make it to our lines during the war.  Heck FDR even let Dupont bank the 
royalty checks for the use of its patent on Zyklon B by the SS as the 
primary gas used in the extermination camps.

If you read the transcripts of the War Crimes Trials at the Palace of 
Justice there on Further Strasse in Nurnberg, you will see the Germans 
noting that our actions were quite complicit, so where was our moral high 
ground to execute Nazi War Criminals?  Frankly, I do not see a hill of a 
beans worth of difference between the two scenarios and I do see plenty of 
justification for trying Saddam and his cohorts just as we did the Nazis 
before them.

Sunil writes of Kosovo;

"I don't know about this.  I was opposed to our bombing but I can't 
articulate a position here.  Just because Clinton ordered it doesn't mean I 
think it was OK."

And I respond;

The justification for the war was specifically to halt genocide carried out 
by Serbian troops on ethnic Albanians.  We did not limit that war to Kosovo, 
an integral part of the Serbian Republic.  We bombed all over.  We forced 
the Serbs to give up a portion of their territory over a matter of their 
internal policy.  50,000 Moslem Kosovars did end up in mass graves, but we 
probably saved hundreds of thousands by taking action.  There was absolutely 
no justification in International Law for doing what we did, but there was 
plenty of moral justification.  All the convention on Genocide allows us to 
do is try the guilty after the fact, not to take action to stop mass murder.

The Serbs would have continued lining them up at the side of ditches if we 
had not acted.  Opposing the bombing was in essence saying that mass murder 
of your own citizens is justified.  The same would then be true of Rwanda or 
Dafur, since those were internal slaughters of selected citizens by a 
central government within their own jurisdictions.  As far as I am 
concerned, Kosovo was Clinton's finest hour.  We showed the world that we 
were willing to risk ourselves for what was the highest moral value, saving 
human life from genocidal terror.

Sunil writes of Dafur;

"Our inaction here gives lie to the 'humanitarian' justifications for our 
invasion and occupation of Iraq."

My response;

Actually Sunil, we did take action.  We looked at the situation and sent our 
diplomats to Khartoum and flat told Sudan that if they did not take action 
to halt the killing we would be heading their way next.  Within a few weeks 
the killing stopped.  If we had not taken action, lead by Condi Rice and by 
Colin Powell, there would have been close to a million dead according to 
most international aid groups.  The fat that we had taken action in both 
Kosovo and Iraq is what lent teeth to our telling the Sudanese dictators 
that we would hammer them to nothing if they did not cut it out.

Sunil writes;

"Phil, I do disagree with your argument that this war isn't about oil and 
instead is about a new paradigm in the Middle East; perhaps it's because I 
hope our leaders are not so immensely stupid that they would launch a war on 
that theory."

And from the Phillipoke;

As with Clinton in Kosovo, where we had no economic reason to act, or 
Clinton in Bosnia, where we had no economic reason to act, we are acting 
with no economic reason now in Iraq.  You may think that such actions are 
wrong or not workable, but they are indeed the reasons.

And Sunil writes;

"Is there any historical evidence from the Middle East that suggests Western 
nations can invade other states and 'create' democracy?  And if that was the 
reason, why didn't we have a discussion about it before the war?  "Mr. and 
Mrs. Smith, we're going to send your son to die in Iraq.  We don't know if 
our plan to bring democracy to the region will work, it's a little nutty and 
really arrogant, and we have no successful examples to point to, but 
wouldn't it be great if it did work?""

And I respond;

Japan had never been a democracy, but we seem to have created one there.  
And we did make the justification that this war was specifically to spread 
the idea of free societies and to move the cause of democracy forward in the 
world right fro the very outset.

So what you want to tell Mr. and Mrs. Smith is that their son died for oil.  
I find that a lot nuttier than telling them that he served a noble cause of 
trying to see that another country with millions of people was freed from a 
brutal dictator and allowed to form a democratic government that would no 
longer commit genocidal actions on its people.  It may take fits and starts 
and a lot of time and effort, but which is nobler, the old policy of playing 
off brutal dictators for economic gain or trying to give a free society to 
human beings.  Which is more arrogant, saying that democracy is not suited 
to those nasty old Arabs and that they need a brutal dictator to keep them 
in line, or saying that they like all human beings have a right to the four 
freedoms?

Sunil asks;

"Can you tell me why the war is off-budget?  How are we going to pay for 
it?"

And I reply;

We did not exactly have the funds to pay for the Second World War either.  
Do you recall how we paid for it?  We paid for it over a number of years and 
were able to do so because a more peaceful world is better for the economy 
over the long run and that generates more tax dollars.

I was reminded of the America First in that comment too Sunil.  They asked 
the same question about the Lend Lease Act that funneled arms and equipment 
to the Allies prior to 7 December 1941.  If we had not given those materials 
to Britain and to Russia, we would now be speaking German.  I prefer to pay 
some taxes rather than learning to pray in Arabic.

Phil Nisbet

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