[QUOTE=Uncivil]
A sad fact of war is that, historically speaking, they kill more civilians than soldiers.QUOTE]
That´s not true, AFAIK, untill WWII, wars involved more militar casualties than civilian, in general. YMMV
A Dell QuietKey 9000, I’ll have you know, with dual carb shift key and a stroked and bored hemi NumLock.
(Glad you pointed that out, I was staring at that quote and scratching my head. I mean, its perfectly sensible, and all, but it lacks sarcasm. A bit unsettling, like a man with seven children who suddenly realizes that six look like him…)
Ale…lol. Thats wildly inaccurate. Civilians have always suffered. While its true that this wasn’t ALWAYS the case (I would guess less ‘civilians’ died in the US civil war or the Revolutionary war, say, than soldiers…but it still wasn’t good), history abounds of wars where a hell of a lot more civilians died than ‘combatants’ long before WWII. Just look at European history and the examples will leap out at you. Look up the civilian casualty estimates for the Thirty Years War sometime…its truely astounding.
-XT
Sorry, apologies all around.
I´m not an expert, but for what I know, untill the 20th century urban warfare was not the norm, civilians were not in the line of fire, or direct targets; obviously, civilians, like everybody else suffered the effects of a war, and sure enough civilians have been dying for the effects of conflicts since Og, whacked the chief of the next tribe on the head with a club.
Plague…starvation…disease…fire. That was how civilians died in the time before mechanized warfare when various armies marched about (ah, the good old days :)). No, they weren’t DIRECTLY targetted mostly (though plenty DID die this way). I suppose its all in how you look at it. But dieing of starvation or the Plague is as dead as dieing from a sword or gun…or bomb. Nastier way to die, to, than a bomb blast IMO.
You are thinking of bombs and air power. Think of sieges with poor sanitation. You are thinking of rockets and guided missiles. Think of armies burning farms and fields, or raiding food storage areas. In the good ole days, when an army would capture a town or village, entire populations could and were put to the sword…men, women and children. The more ‘civilized’ of course would simply release their troops on the defenseless population for a bit of R&R. If the civilians were lucky, the troops wouldn’t burn down the town…they’d only rape their women and kill SOME of the population off, in their enthusiasm to have a good time.
Anyway, don’t want to get into this hijack. Hell, make a thread about it and you will get Tamerlane involved who REALLY knows this stuff…or several of the other really knowledgable historian types on this board.
If you are interested in this, like I said, look up such things as the Thirty Years War, or any of the other large European conflicts for that matter (the various Catholic/Protestant wars, which the 30 years war was sort of an example were especially brutal on the civilian populations, as well as several of the English civil wars…or the '45, especially AFTER the defeat of the Bonney Prince at Colloden). I’m not as familiar with other areas, but I’d guess that this was pretty much the norm throughout the world when it came to warfare…civilians ALWAYS took it on the chops. You will be surprised at how many civilians died during the wars before mechanization.
-XT
Been taking debating lessons from Bush, huh?
The civil war in Yugoslavia saw UN intervention occur almost immediately, and a cease fire within six months. The initial intervention, and most of the subsequent stuff, was done under Chapter VII, Action with respest to threats to the peace, breaces of the peace, and acts of aggression.
The Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide could have been invoked instead, and in fact was subsequently invoked.
Just in case you didn’t know.
Next, you can tell us how Saddam didn’t let the inspectors back in.
[QUOTE=Ale]
[QUOTE=Uncivil]
A sad fact of war is that, historically speaking, they kill more civilians than soldiers.
Thats a widely held misconception. Its probably true that soldiers killed more soldiers than civilians in direct combat, but a lot of the causualties are caused by famine and disease. A few examples from history.
In 1919, a year after the end of WWI, the infant mortality rate in Berlin was about 1 in 5.
In the Napoleonic wars, there are many examples of British troops going on the rampage after a battle, raping, killing their way through towns. (I mnetion that example becuase I know about, I wouldn’t be suprised to learn other armies of teh same period behaved like this.
“Tuez-les tous; Dieu reconnaitra les siens.”
(“Kill them all; for the Lord knoweth them that are His.”)
[Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux, 1209, when asked by the Crusaders what to do with the citizens of Beziers who were a mixture of Catholics and Cathars.]
'In order to wipe out Catharism, a religion thriving in the south of France, the predominant Christian power of the time ordered a crusade. The crusade, named the Albigensian Crusade, lasted thirty-years. The death toll from this butchery is estimated at one-million lives, many of whom were Catholics, indistinguishable from Cathars by the marauders. Even children were slaughtered. One commander told his men: “Kill them all, for God knows his own!”
UN intervention, Desmostylus?? Correct me if I’m wrong here (with a cite would be good) but I thought it was NATO that intervened in Bosnia…without UN SC approval at all. I’m not getting into whether it was good or bad, right or wrong here…just getting the facts straight. If I’m wrong, by all means put a cite in and I’ll stand corrected. Or maybe I’m misunderstanding what you are saying??
-XT
Here’s a brief timeline of what happened in Yogoslavia:
Yes, they could have done that, but the UN’s condemnation of the genocide in Rwanda didn’t stop it. The UN is often pretty toothless. Despite that, I’d agree that working through the UN would have been better than unilateral action. I’m not saying Iraqi oppression had much to do with the US’ decision to wage war on Iraq.
Even by the most conservative estimates it looks like Bush has still killed twice as many civilians as bin Laden.
Funny how selective Americans are about their outrage.
Fair question.
From a PBS article written in 1998:
So, based on the UN’s numbers, my number was incorrect. Thank you for pointing that out. I should have said that 5,000 children were dying each month.
Here’s a more detailed 2001 report on the effects of UN sanctions:
So 250 people every day would bring the number up to 7,500 people dying every month as a result of UN sanctions.
I doubt I need to talk about the thousands of “innocent Iraqi citizens” buried in mass graves that were unquestionably killed by Saddam and his henchmen. So let’s just say that there were other reasons that thousands of “innocent Iraqi civilians” were dying, and that Iraqis have less reason to worry now that Saddam has been deposed.
Personally, I think the estimates of how many people died because of UN sanctions could have been high. But I don’t see how you can say that your opposition to war and your support for continuing the policy of UN sanctions and containment didn’t condemn thousands of “innocent Iraqi citizens” to death.
Please. You’re arguing against the war because it could theoretically have gone worse?
Well, it didn’t. You were wrong. Get over it.
And I’m not trying to “pretend we were on a campaign of selfless and noble liberation.” I have no illusions that regimes still exist that are nearly as bad as Hussein’s. We went into Iraq because it best fit our goals and was in our best interests. One of the reasons I supported regime change was that it was (in my opinion) in the best interests of Iraqi citizens . . . but it wasn’t the only reason, or probably even the most important.
But don’t you pretend that your opposition to the war is in any way influenced by some alleged concern for the well-being of “innocent Iraqi citizens.” In fact, you made the same analysis that you disparaged Bush & Co. for making. You looked at thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians that were dying every month, and apparently made the decision that it was better to let them die than to lose face with the international community.
I’m sorry, but are we seriously suggesting Sadaam is to blame for the results of UN sanctions? If the sanctions were so harsh that people were starving and dying of treatable disease en masse, then it was incumbent on the UN to alter the terms of the sanctions to protect civilian life. The fact that they continually refused to do so, prompted largely by the US, was one of my greatest criticisms of the Clinton administration.
Okay, got it. You’re like the woman in the old joke who agrees to cheat on her husband and sleep with another guy for a million dollars. The guy then offers her five bucks. She slaps him and says “What sort of woman do you think I am?” The guy retorts “Well, we’ve already established that, now we’re just haggling over the price”.
In other words, what you don’t get is that a whore is a whore. The pay off may make the immoral act more understandable but it doesn’t change the label, nor does it change its connotations.
The bottom line is that we put the civilians of Iraq in harms way by invading. The Iraqi people, 40% of whom are under the age of 14, were unable to make their conformed consent to take the risk of being put in harms way. I think that for the Iraqi dead, the Iraqi’s maimed, widowed and orphaned by our bombs the solution was worse than the problem and we didn’t have the right to make that decision for them.
This is an enormous assumption. At the moment the Iraqi’s have very little by way of electricity or clean water. Vast swathes of the land are littered with unexploded cluster bombs. Inflation has seen the price of food skyrocket by about 700% (and no I don’t have a cite for that, I saw it on BBC news the other day). Insurgents are still blowing themselves up with horrific results. The stage seems to be set for lasting political conflict between the Sunni’s and Shiites and what’s more we still have absolutely no indication whatsoever that the new boss will be any better than the old boss.
What we have done in Iraq is instigate the worlds first ever mass mercy killing, without the consent of the people we killed and at the moment we have absolutely no idea whether or not it did any good.
Sanctions which, may I remind you were [url"http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/civflight/000926us.htm"]Rigorously enforced by the U.S. in spite of calls from other nations to do away with them. The horrific consequences of the sanctions were good reason to drop them years ago, not effect a regime change. Hell, for all we know the new Iraqi Government may not co-operate with us and the sanctions may be reinstated.
Oops, buggered the coding.
Click [url=“http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/civflight/000926us.htm”]here to read how America rigorously enforced the UN sanctions at the expense of 7,500 civilians per month.
Oh for fucks sake. There aint enough :rolleyes: in the world for this shit. Just click below.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/civflight/000926us.htm
I didn’t know the convention had been invoked on Bosnia. And after looking at the link you provided for xstime, and doing some research on my own, I still couldn’t find anywhere that the UN invoked any articles on genocide with regard to Bosnia. I’d appreciate a cite.
But my snarkiness has apparently obscured my point. The US need not have invoked the UN convention on genocide to have been concerned with genocide. Invoking the charter would have had no more effect than writing the word “genocide” on a peice of paper and then crossing it out with a big, red “X.” Which is to say that it would have had no effect at all, except as a waste of time, effort, and ink.
Are you seriously suggesting that he had nothing to do with them? Or with mutliplying the number of deaths that resulted from them? And if you bothered to look at the article I linked, you’d see the following:
But that point is irrelevant to my argument. Even if you think Saddam Hussein was just sitting around in his gold-plated bachelor pads and preparing lesson plans for Cub Scout meetings while the big, bad UN was hammering his people with sanctions, it doesn’t matter.
The sanctions were causing thousands of deaths. The sanctions were inextricably tied to Saddam’s regime. Thousands of other deaths were caused by the torture and murder ordered by Saddam and his regime. By getting rid of Saddam, the UN was able to lift the sanctions and the Iraqis were freed from the threat of torture and murder at Saddam’s hands.
So anyone that argues that we should have kept the status quo was effectively arguing that it wasn’t worth saving the lives of thousands of Iraqis by deposing Hussein.
I don’t think you looked very hard.
I take your point. I guess that’d explain why Milosovic is still running Serbia, instead of being on trial for Genocide. Oh, wait a minute…