While the Blitzkreig Raged and the Bodies Stank
Here, though, you come to another equation in the calculus of appeasement. Is the United States willing to fight this war the way it needs fighting, with grim ferocity and cold unconcern for legalistic niceties? To lay waste great territories and their peoples, innocent and guilty alike, to level cities, to burn forests and divert rivers, to smite our enemies hip and thigh, to carry out summary execution of captured leaders? Of course not — how barbaric! And yet (whispers the ancestral, tribal voice in our heads, and in British heads too) if not, then what’s the point? War is a tribal affair, one tribe exterminating another, or reducing it to utter impotence and ignominious surrender. That’s what war is, and it isn’t anything else.
John Derbyshire in The National Review, July 8 2005.
Hussein is alleged to have ordered the killings in Dujail, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, in retaliation for an attempt on his life there on July 8, 1982. In an ambush organized by the Dawa party — a Shiite political group whose members include Iraq’s current prime minister, Ibrahim Jafari — gunmen concealed in a palm grove fired on Hussein’s passing motorcade. Within hours, army helicopters were conducting airstrikes on Dujail and soldiers were rounding up villagers. Hundreds were imprisoned, and many of them were tortured or executed.
Three men who allegedly orchestrated the massacre are Hussein’s co-defendants in the case: his half brother and former intelligence chief, Barzan Tikriti; former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan; and Awad Haman Bander Sadun, the former chief judge of the Revolutionary Court that sentenced 143 men from Dujail to death.
Andy Mosher in The Washington Post, July 18, 2005.
Pretty much every massacre Saddam Hussein’s regime committed was undertaken as part of a war or civil war. (Iraq’s Kurds have been in periodic armed revolt since the 1960s, its Shiites since the time of the Iran-Iraq War.) Many of the individuals and families he slaughtered were connected to attempted coups and assassinations. The Dawa Party at the time of Dujail cleaved to an enemy power, theocratic Iran.
If you believe there can be such a thing as a war crime, Saddam Hussein is a notorious war criminal and deserves whatever he gets. If you believe in “war the way it needs fighting, with grim ferocity and cold unconcern for legalistic niceties,” then Saddam Hussein is your boy. You and he are brothers under the skin. If you believe that there can be war crimes when our enemies commit them, but not when we or our allies do, then perhaps Saddam Hussein himself would be shamed by your company. What’s surpassingly interesting is that the people who bleat loudest about the morality of our crusade seem to keep a healthy supply of a-moralists around to justify the rough stuff.
Comment by Kyle S. —
July 20, 2005 @ 11:57 am
I give Derb credit, bless his homophobic little heart, for describing how viscerally nasty war actually is. All you’d get out of a say, Max Boot would be some preliminary throat clearing about ‘unavoidable tragedies’ followed by a mammoth treatise on how combat is a glorious crucible on which to test your manhood. These guys have probably never even been in a barfight before.
Comment by apostropher —
July 20, 2005 @ 12:16 pm
Amen, Jim, and thank you for saying it.
Comment by shkval —
July 20, 2005 @ 6:49 pm
“What’s surpassingly interesting is that the people who bleat loudest about the morality of our crusade seem to keep a healthy supply of a-moralists around to justify the rough stuff.”
Testify, brother.
These are the same folks who believe all life is sacred before it becomes a thinking person, but are OK with capital punishment or murdering abortion providers. Who believe existence is more important than quality of life. I do not want to live in the world they want, any more than I want to live in the world Al Qaeda wants.
Trackback by apostropher —
July 20, 2005 @ 10:35 pm
Amen.
The one post the jingosphere should have to read….
Pingback by The Poor Man Cafe » Word —
July 20, 2005 @ 11:39 pm
[...]
Thu 21 Jul 2005
Word
Posted by The Editors under Uncategorized
The Jim: If you believe there can be such a thing as a war crime, Saddam Hussein is a not [...]
Comment by Leonard —
July 21, 2005 @ 11:25 am
The critical difference between Western warmongers’ war and traditional human instinctive warfare is not one of means, but ends. “Our” war crimes are allowable because “we” have the right ends: democracy, peace, love, “the children”, etc. Run of the mill warcrimes (like Saddam’s), are not allowable, not because killing, torture and rape are inherently wrong, but because they were done for the wrong reason. Mere will to power on the part of an individual is not acceptable.
.
This is consequentialism. An action is moral or not based on the intent of the actor.
Comment by Kevin Carson —
July 21, 2005 @ 11:41 am
Unfortunately, Empire puts you in a position where you have to do those things–or withdraw in humiliation.
It’s also an unfailing recipe for increased terror. Think about it: The U.S. has military bases and imperial proconsuls in most countries, and takes a stand on every domestic civil war or counter-insurgency. Under such circumstances, the chief consideration for any political faction desiring victory in the domestic struggle is to influence public opinion in the imperial core. And guess how they do that?
Trackback by Neolibertarian Network Blog —
July 22, 2005 @ 7:14 am
Morality and War
Jim Henley has this right…
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
July 22, 2005 @ 9:33 am
“This is consequentialism. An action is moral or not based on the intent of the actor”
Consequentialism is the notion that an action is moral or not based upon the consequences of the action. I suppose “intentionalism” would be a term that was concerned about the intentions of the actor.
Rule consequentialists generally reject on the grounds of bad consequences the rule–let those with power do whatever they think best to achieve what they consider good consequences.
Rule consequentialists generally favor rules that should be followed–perhaps even “rules of war.”
Comment by Pierre Drano —
July 23, 2005 @ 1:56 pm
“..:bleat loudest..”, that’s a gigantic point, worth making again and again. Well put.