The Bravery of Being Out of Range
Following up on the Young Perfesser’s post below, it’s certainly callous to bomb a crowded city in hopes of killing a handful of putative bad guys, knowing it will also mean the deaths of some number of innocents. But it’s a measure of our degradation (in elite discourse at the very least) that we don’t remark how cowardly it is.
Powered by Qumana
Comment by Dave W. —
December 15, 2009 @ 10:09 am
It has been this way ever since we dropped the big one on Japan. So we take the man out of the plane? Big deal. It is not like the man on the plane faced a lot of risk (other than psychiatric risks, I mean).
This whole “discourse” (to the extent the lopsided half dialectic about modernday military bravery can be called that) is worthless without pictures. And the exact thing everybody (except me) agrees on is that no pictures are allowed. I got on Mr. Balko about this one time. He didn’t get it. If a relatively smart American journalist like him ain’t gonna get it, nobody will.
Comment by Jonathan Goff —
December 15, 2009 @ 11:23 am
Yeah, it is amusing how when jihadis decide to take out some official, and send in a suicide bomber who also kills a bunch of other people, the focus is always on how this cowardly attack killed a bunch of innocents…but we do the same thing using a robot instead of a nutcase, and it’s now manly and cool…
I’ll never understand neocons and neolibs.
~Jon
Comment by Thoreau —
December 15, 2009 @ 1:03 pm
Bill Maher tried to remark on that. It didn’t turn out well for him.
Pingback by Those inscrutable foreigners! « A Thinking Reed —
December 15, 2009 @ 1:26 pm
[...] (Link via Jim Henley) [...]
Comment by Eric the .5b —
December 15, 2009 @ 5:14 pm
Ehn. Is it somehow braver to get on the radio and order people under your command to go into that area and try to find and shoot the putative bad guys?
On a military level, “cowardly” is just rhetoric. The other side’s tactics are “cowardly” if they’re different from yours (and work well against your tactics). Shooting from behind cover is cowardly if you’re used to standing in formations. Submarines are cowardly if you can’t detect them. Saboteurs are cowardly if you’re bad at catching them. Operating among civilians is cowardly if you are at all reluctant to kill civilians.
On a political level, accusations of cowardice only work for hawks, and only against doves.
On a moral level, focusing on “cowardice” on these terms makes the willing suicide bomber the epitome of courage. What kind of virtue is this courage?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
December 15, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
For that matter, why mention the civilian casualties? How would it be any less cowardly to shoot a missile (or send some soldiers who are not you) to destroy a bona fide bad guy camp without any innocents to be harmed?
Comment by trevalyan —
December 15, 2009 @ 7:40 pm
I’ll bite. The American government, and most of the civilians, are deeply intolerant of any military casualties. So they try to kill their targets with as little danger to American soldiers as humanly possible. Saying that even neocons regard killing large numbers of civilians as “manly and cool” is strawmanning, but perfectly accurate when describing the typical Palestinian radical’s reaction to a suicide bombing. A typical American neo-con, by contrast, will just reject the number of innocent deaths like it was completely irrelevant.
This is not terribly much better.
People think that it takes a lot of bravery to fight against enemy soldiers, but a lot less to infiltrate a crowd of poorly-defended civilians with the intent of slaughtering them- even if that infiltration does result in the death of the bomber. People can empathize with the goals of the soldier a lot more than they can with the bomber, even if the soldier is an enemy (like those belonging to conventional armies) and a bomber is Western (take the Goldstein massacre as an example). Soldiers face brutal maiming, while suicide bombers face either prison terms or instant death. If people did empathize with the goals of the bombers, I can pretty much guarantee you’d see a lot more civilian massacres, and possibly American suicide bombings.
Bill Maher seemed to think that killing people up close was less “cowardly,” by his own definition of cowardice. Well, it’s not like Americans haven’t done it in the past. Wounded Knee, My Lai, etc.
The question is: were such massacres particularly brave? Of course not. Then why pretend suicide bombing is, like Bill Maher demonstrably did?
Comment by Mojo —
December 15, 2009 @ 8:03 pm
The more dangerous it is to make a particular attack, the less care will be taken and the higher the collateral casualties. This isn’t a serious attempt to address the issue of collateral damage but instead is an attempt to shame people into ceasing military operations entirely. (If they operate with an advantage they’re called cowards and if they operate with a disadvantage they’re dead.) But it will be as ineffective as yelling, “That bomb makes you look fat!” as a means of stopping suicide bombers.
Comment by Dave W. —
December 15, 2009 @ 10:02 pm
For that matter, why mention the civilian casualties? How would it be any less cowardly to shoot a missile (or send some soldiers who are not you) to destroy a bona fide bad guy camp without any innocents to be harmed?
Bravery is sacrificing your own life in preference to killing an innocent civilian. Cowardice is protecting your own life at the expense of a life of an innocent civilian.
The cowardice or bravery question should not determine whether a war is conducted, but it should determine how a war is conducted. A well-conducted war is one where the soldiers are required to be brave. A poorly-conducted war is one where soldiers are allowed be behave in a cowardly fashion. If political support for a war requires that it be fought in a cowardly fashion, it is an unjust war to start and/or continue.
By these standards (that is, the correct standards), our cause is NOT just.
Comment by sglover —
December 15, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
Lobbing missiles into Pakistani cities, eh? Why, what could possibly go wrong?
I swear, DC makes the Romanov court look like a gaggle of forward-thinking geniuses.
Comment by Mojo —
December 16, 2009 @ 12:39 am
Dave,
Are you really claiming that sending US ground troops into Pakistan would work out well because it would be just so darn brave? There are many good arguments against military ops in Pakistan but showing that we watched too many cowboy shows as kids isn’t one of them.
Comment by matthew h —
December 16, 2009 @ 9:08 am
George S Patton: “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.”
Though Patton, in fairness, wasn’t necessarily speaking of civilians in enemy territory.
Comment by Dave W. —
December 16, 2009 @ 10:32 am
Are you really claiming that sending US ground troops into Pakistan would work out well because it would be just so darn brave?
I am suggesting that:
(i) if sending in ground troops with strict orders to do no collateral damage in Pakistan would fly here in the US then it would be just for the US to have military operations in Pakistan;
and
(ii) if sending in ground troops with strict orders to do no collateral damage in Pakistan would not fly here in the US then it is unjust to use death from above as a substitute for justly-conducted and braver military operations in Pakistan.
I am not suggesting anything about cowboy shows, but if I were some kind of wacky guy maybe I would.
Comment by Dave W. —
December 16, 2009 @ 10:42 am
Oh, and it is nice to be back in the USA now that I can safely speak my mind on these issues. I am grateful to Canada for providing me a haven when things were otherwise here in the USA, but it is real tough to get ahead there and day to day life was not as pleasant or renumerative.
Comment by Nell —
December 16, 2009 @ 1:32 pm
Lobbing missiles into Pakistani cities, eh? Why, what could possibly go wrong?
Hell, apparently we don’t even have a straight story on what would constitute things going right …
Comment by Aunt Deb —
December 16, 2009 @ 2:10 pm
Perhaps because I watched the Baader Meinhof Complex several nights ago I find the entire discussion vis-a-vis ‘cowardice’ jarring. The definition of terrorism seems deeply involved here but I’m not clear on that definition, either. At this point, I am thinking all these usages and their presumed opposites — such as “heroes” and what is the current opposite of terrorism, anyway? — are mired in bloviation to the point of being equal parts embarrassing and exasperating.
Comment by barstoolcadaver —
December 19, 2009 @ 1:18 am
Millions of Canadians get ahead just fine, the quality of life here is tres manifique, and in many case the pay is higher. Myths and half truths about the great white north give me gas.