Non-American Dopers: Should your government give the U.S. carte blanche?

[zoony]

Originally posted by Sam Stone
But note that the U.S. is deploying troops all over the world, and not just near Afghanistan. It’s entirely possible that the U.S. has evidence of involvement by other countries, but they are holding it close and publically focusing on Bin laden in order to keep those other countries off guard and preventing them from alerting their forces. I would not be surprised at all if one of these days we get a ‘Breaking News’ report that says Iraq, Syria, Yemen, or some other despotic country is under attack. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Lovely news. So now the US is poised to use the WTC tragedy as an excuse to topple every regime opposed to it, under the pretense of ‘ending terrorism’?

I suspect that much of that proof is coming from intelligence sources outside the U.S. And the U.S. is at war. So if you are looking for a detailed information that would reveal the source, get used to disappointment. The government has said that it will produce the evidence when it can do so without harming the effort. You’ll just have to accept that.

I must say I find it ironic on so many levels that the American and world public are being asked to ‘trust’ the US when it says it has sufficient evidence to justify whatever it is they end up planning. Not only is that the worst-case scenario of ends justifying the means, but in the American experience, it is anathema to their entire history, which was built in its entirety on the distrust of paternalistic government.

And Hamish? I was about to raise the same arguments in defense of your position before you did so much of a better job.

Sam, as a card-carrying member of the PC party (there, you made me admit it publicly), I find myself agreeing nonetheless with the position of Hamish and gasp matt_mcl (although you gotta stop Clarking up from deoxy.org, matt).

The vast majority of my colleagues in the legal profession feel the same way, and you could hardly call many of us ‘left-leaning’. In fact, I don’t see how any amount of sober thought could lead you anywhere but as far away as possible from supporting what the US may lead the world into.

I only hope they won’t.

Z

[matt_mcl]

The coalition decided (or the US commanders decided) that the economic infrastructure of Iraqi society was - all of it - a legitimate military target: communication and transportation systems, electric power grids, government buildings of every sort, water pumping stations and purification plants… But power and water - water most clearly - are very much like food: they are necessary to the survival and everyday activity of soldiers, but they are equally necessary to everyone else. An attack here is an attack on civilian society. In this case, it is the military effects, if any, that are “collateral.” The direct effect of the destruction of water purification plants, for example, was to impose upon civilians in urban areas (and Iraq is a highly urbanized society) the risks of disease in epidemic proportions.

From: Walzer, Michael. “Justice and Injustice in the Gulf War.” In: DeCosse, David, ed. But Was It Just? Reflections on the morality of the Persian Gulf War. New York: Doubleday, 1992. pp. 12-13.

[Blackclaw]

*Originally posted by zoony *

Lovely news. So now the US is poised to use the WTC tragedy as an excuse to topple every regime opposed to it, under the pretense of ‘ending terrorism’?

We’ve never said any such thing but don’t let that stop you from leaping to grand conclusions about our plans for world conquest.

In fact, I don’t see how any amount of sober thought could lead you anywhere but as far away as possible from supporting what the US may lead the world into.

I only hope they won’t.

Z

I would think that sober thought would involve knowing what one is condeming before condeming it.

[Blackclaw]

Matt,

First off, thanks for looking up that quote and thanks for compelling me to wander though my house until I found my copy of Just and Unjust Wars. This is one good book.

There is some doubt that allied forces ever intentionally targeted water purification plants.

http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2000/msg00994.html

The above link contains a denial of such targeting, but its legitimacy is difficult to confirm.

The targeting of an opponent’s infrastructure has been a standard practice of war ever since wars became organized events. If we have reached the point in history where such destruction is no longer necessary to win a conflict, this represents a new milestone in the conduct of warfare. The tactics used to fight war often evolve too slowly on both an operational and moral level.

If the water purification plants were intentionally targeted, they should not have been. It is likely that they were damaged not as the result of direct targeting but from damage inflicted when adjacent power plants were destroyed. The targeting of power plants, in the past always an early target of wars, has itself come under debate. The nature of war is an evolving thing and in each new conflict civilized nations seem to focus in upon some new horrible aspect of it and decry its existence. It must be a constant source of shock to military commanders to discover that what was once a valid military target is now off limits. I do not dispute that we should try our best to spare noncombatants from the pains of conflict but we should keep in mind that what is acceptable or is not acceptable in a war is itself a moving target.

Despite its shortcomings the US and its allies should be given some credit for attempting to fight a Just war while it’s opponents made no attempts to do so. Even Mr. Walzer recognizes that the war was one that had to be fought least aggression be rewarded. It is fair to call for improvements in military doctrine to better avoid civilian casualties but unfair to condemn a nation’s entire effort in a war on the basis that civilian casualties did result from mistakes that could have been avoided. The fog of war is not so kind to those who are in it and knowing precisely what is needed to defeat an enemy is knowledge only those with 20/20 hindsight possess.