The Latest Civilian Bombing by Americans

[XT]

Missed your other reply…my appologies.

@Zag

Second of all, I wouldn’t be dropping bombs willy-nilly on every suspected safehouse.

Wasn’t ‘willy-nilly’ it was a specific target. Had it been ‘willy-nilly’ there would have been a hell of a lot larger body count…and you really would have something to bitch about. In fact, I’d probably join you. But the fact was the bombs were targetted on a single house…and only the people in that house were killed (afaik).

@Zag

If I had total control of the situation, yes, I would send in the Marines - or rather, Iraqi armed forces, not American. They are hardly incapable of doing an insertion and arrest. They did hundreds in Afghanistan. Yep, it might cost a life or two, or it may go down the shitter and cost all 22 lives.

Or it might have cost MORE lives, including American lives (or Iraq armed forces lives). There are a lot of factors here. One is the element of surprise and the elimination of the suspected terrorist leadership in the house. Giving away that element of surprise could allow some of the key leadership to escape. Another is the desire to keep casualties down on our own side. Another is the unknown of how the terrorists would respond in a ground fight, what preparations they had made (i.e. mines, traps, etc), and another is the risk to OTHER houses in this neighborhood if general fighting errupts (like say an RPG round going wild, or a Brad or Abrams round doing the same, a rocket volley from a helo gunship going wild, and just general rifle/machine gun rounds flying all around). Another would be that perhaps in a ground assault other houses in that neighborhood had other terrorists or insurgents that would have joined in.

We are in pure speculation mode…my point is, its not as cut and dried or easy as you seem to think it is. Its a complex equation that any military planner has to go through when deciding on the best tactics for such a raid…one that balances the possibility of civilian casualties with the desire to keep our own casualties to a minimum, as well as the desire to complete the mission successfully. Say that it was determined that a ground assault would only give a 50% chance of success, but the estimates for civilian casualties were 10-15, and the estimate of our own casualties was 2-5 wounded or dead…vs, say a 80-90% chance of mission success with an estimate of 20-30 civilian casualties but no real risk of casualties of our own…which would you pick…especially if you were a military planner?

@Zag

You all wave this off - wave off the DEATHS OF 22 CIVILIANS - because there was maybe possibly some weapons stored there.

Not at all. But sometimes in war all your choices suck. Thats just reality. Sometimes you really do have to pick the lesser of two evils, and sometimes no matter what you choose innocent people will die. Thats the part you don’t seem to be able to understand or accept…that sometimes there isn’t a ‘best’ option, and that no matter what you do someone is going to die.

Thats why wars should be the last resort, and only happen when absolutely necessary. Its what pisses me off about THIS war…it wasn’t. We are in it now, and there isn’t much we can do about it, but this is exactly the kind of thing that America isn’t good at…because we are too vulnerable to the repercussions of such decisions, and we are two divided on such issues. Only if a war is clear cut (and hopefully brief), only when the goals are clearly understood and quickly achievable, only when the reasons are also clear cut and acceptable to the majority of our citizens…only then should America engage in a foriegn war. Otherwise we tear ourselves appart, and for nothing.

-XT

[esquimalt]

@elucidator

Trouble with air strikes is thier finality, there are no options. If a Marine is on the scene, and peers through his sights at an unarmed woman or child, he almost certainly won’t pull the trigger. Shrapnel has no such capacity for discrimination, it tears up whatever is at hand.

And again, there is the “hearts and minds” aspect of this. This “war” will not, indeed, can not, be won by direct force. When we send in an air strike, it appears to them that we hold the lives of civilians to be inconsequential, that we are willing to have them be expendable in order to keep our soldiers from harm.

This engenders resentment, and enmity, thus actually increasing the threat. If we were to show that we were willing to incur risk in order to protect the innocent, this could have an enormous impact on our credibility. Without it, we are just another occupying army. Without it, it doesn’t matter how many schools we paint and soccer balls we buy. We lose.

This is true, There is no doubt. But we just do not know who was on the ground targeting the building at the time & who exactly was in the building at the time. The propaganda war goes both ways. The “wedding party” episode a few weeks back illustrates that. There was much written back & forth about whether it was or wasn’t. The truth is we do not know & may not know for some time but people will make a judgement mainly based on what they want to hear.

[XT]

@elucidator

Trouble with air strikes is thier finality, there are no options. If a Marine is on the scene, and peers through his sights at an unarmed woman or child, he almost certainly won’t pull the trigger. Shrapnel has no such capacity for discrimination, it tears up whatever is at hand.

A valid point…you certainly can make a case that you have more options if you send in ground troops as opposed to just bombing from the air. However, as I explained to Zag there are a lot of factors that go into such calculations…one of which is OUR casualties, another of which is the percent chance of being able to fulfill the mission…i.e. kill the target leadership, not just the terrorist/insurgent flunkies.

In addition, you know as well as I do that when you send young kids into that kind of fire fight that you could actually generate MORE casualties (buck fever and all that)…or have situations where a Marine shoots a woman or child by mistake (or even on purpose…it happens). And of course in a ground fight in an urban setting with houses all around (and potentially more terrorists/insurgents near) anything can happen. Rockets can go off course, bullets slam into nearby houses, tank or helo gunship canon fire going wild…etc etc. So its not a slam dunk that sending in the ground troops would necessarily do anything more than put our own troops at risk…and it might make the percentage chance of accomplishing the mission less.

@elucidator

And again, there is the “hearts and minds” aspect of this. This “war” will not, indeed, can not, be won by direct force. When we send in an air strike, it appears to them that we hold the lives of civilians to be inconsequential, that we are willing to have them be expendable in order to keep our soldiers from harm.

Definitely a valid point…but again, I don’t see how sending in ground forces would necessarily be preferable to bombing from a ‘hearts and minds’ perspective. Especially if any of a myriad of accidents happened…or if, worse still, you had a buck fever incident where a Marine clearly shoots a woman or a child non-combatant. Again, this has to factor into the calculations, but its really a complex thing, and I’m unsure whether this would factor either way. Also, I’m unsure whether we will ever (or really COULD ever) win the Iraqi hearts and minds in any case…reguardless of what we did or do.

@elucidator

This engenders resentment, and enmity, thus actually increasing the threat. If we were to show that we were willing to incur risk in order to protect the innocent, this could have an enormous impact on our credibility. Without it, we are just another occupying army. Without it, it doesn’t matter how many schools we paint and soccer balls we buy. We lose.

Gods help the Iraqi’s if we lose…

-XT

[XT]

@Zag

Now X, I’m going to go watch some TV, so if I don’t reply to you within 20 seconds, don’t hyperventilate

lol, I’ll do my best.

-XT (<----just for you Zag :))

[elucidator]

@xtisme

… I don’t see how sending in ground forces would necessarily be preferable to bombing from a ‘hearts and minds’ perspective…

First and foremost, it is a common feature of hyper-macho cultures to have a warped perspective on violence, that there is an honorable way to commit slaughter. I have no sympathy for this view, but it is quite prevalent.

Soldiers against soldiers is honorable, manly, dignified. Using machinery to do your fighting for you is less so. At the very bottom, is using such methods and injuring women and children.

Time and again, wars have continued far beyond sane limits because one side believes that it has some “moral” or “spiritual” advantage of the other, that even if tactically inferior, “warrior spirit” will somehow save the situation. It is utter nonsense, of course, but it happens again and again.

If our enemy, and more importantly, our potential enemy, sees the situation in these terms, then air strikes create more enemies than they kill. Further, they slow the movement of the other side to the negotiating table, which is the only place this conflict will end, other than blood and horror.

Just as you say, some will fall victim to a soldiers understandable fear (“buck fever”, as you have it…) But at least a decision will be made, an assessment rendered.

There is no such thing as a “surgical strike”. Bombs are indiscriminate by thier very nature. I entirely understand a reluctance to put our troops in harms way. But by creating more enemies than we kill, we are incurring a net loss, in terms of our soldier’s safety.

If we have thier respect, we can deal from strength. Without it, we can only deal from force.

[Zagadka]

@xtisme

Wasn’t ‘willy-nilly’ it was a specific target. Had it been ‘willy-nilly’ there would have been a hell of a lot larger body count…and you really would have something to bitch about. In fact, I’d probably join you. But the fact was the bombs were targetted on a single house…and only the people in that house were killed (afaik).

Technically, it was two houses destroyed and six damaged.

By “Willy-nilly”, I didn’t mean the actual technical process of dropping the bombs; I’m sure no expense was spared in ensuring that they dropped within so many millimeters of the laser or whatnot. I meant the approval to drop the bomb was loosely handled.

This is not the first time we have bombed the residential neighborhoods, especially since it was at its height in April with all the fighting - but just the most recent.

Or it might have cost MORE lives

It might have. It might cost a police officer his life making a drug bust. That doesn’t mean we should drop mortar rounds on suspected drug dealers. Those people knowingly risk their lives, funnily enough, for just such a thing.

The difference is that you can say, “we tried. We spent time and effort and risked our men to verify and make the arrests in peace.”

Now, we can only say, “we dropped a bomb on some suspected terrorists and piled up 22 bodies.”

We are in pure speculation mode…my point is, its not as cut and dried or easy as you seem to think it is. Its a complex equation that any military planner has to go through when deciding on the best tactics for such a raid…one that balances the possibility of civilian casualties with the desire to keep our own casualties to a minimum, as well as the desire to complete the mission successfully.

And on top of that, the political aims of not increasing dissent and starting more insurgents, or a riot. As the Occupying Power, we have a responsibility to not just drop bombs on residential compounds that we “suspect” are safehouses.

Is it risky to go in? Well, yes, counterinsurgency isn’t playing cowboys and indians in the front lawn. The lives of 2 dozen civilians count as much as that of 2 dozen soldiers, ESPECIALLY when we are the freaking invading force.

I mean, you’re keeping the US soldier body count at 800, but racking up the 10,000 dead Iraqis with policy like this. That isn’t a good thing.

Did you know that it is estimated that we killed more people than Milosevic while bombing hte f* out of Yugoslavia? Because Clinton was afraid to put boots on the ground and come home with some coffins. Same deal. We surround, blockade, lay siege, and bomb until they give up, then wonder why anyone hates us.

[Ale]

@esquimalt

This is true, There is no doubt. But we just do not know who was on the ground targeting the building at the time & who exactly was in the building at the time.

And that´s the problem, I don´t know, you don´t know and the Iraqis don´t know wheter the action was justified or not.
The last remaining justification for the war and invasion is to set up a democratic society. Now think of what makes you want to live on a democracy, freedom and a goverment that responds to the people are among the first things you may think about. Now if we go to the goverment, you assume rightly that a democratic goverment must have checks and balances, you surely would not trust a system where those are abscent.
Summary exectutions do not fit inside a frame of check and balances, how can the Iraqis have trust in the ocupation forces if they can´t have proof of the veracity of the motivations of an attack like the one we are discussing? There was no trial, no jury, it was decided that a place had to be bombed and the hell with the collateral victims. No appeals, no nothing; the targets were sentenced to death and the people around them were deemed expendable.
I don´t know you, but if stuff like that would be happening around my neighborhood I´d be royally pissed off, I´d be angry, furious; and you can count on me not wanting to live under that set of “laws”.

[Sam_Stone]

Pantom: Let’s see… You fly off the handle and accuse me of calling you a traitor when I said no such thing. I replied that my claim was that you are biased by your hatred for this administration. You claim that’s not good enough, and you want an apology.

I suggest you wait by the computer, perhaps standing on one foot, for that apology. It’ll be along any day now.

[esquimalt]

@Ale

And that´s the problem, I don´t know, you don´t know and the Iraqis don´t know wheter the action was justified or not.
The last remaining justification for the war and invasion is to set up a democratic society. Now think of what makes you want to live on a democracy, freedom and a goverment that responds to the people are among the first things you may think about. Now if we go to the goverment, you assume rightly that a democratic goverment must have checks and balances, you surely would not trust a system where those are abscent.
Summary exectutions do not fit inside a frame of check and balances, how can the Iraqis have trust in the ocupation forces if they can´t have proof of the veracity of the motivations of an attack like the one we are discussing? There was no trial, no jury, it was decided that a place had to be bombed and the hell with the collateral victims. No appeals, no nothing; the targets were sentenced to death and the people around them were deemed expendable.
I don´t know you, but if stuff like that would be happening around my neighborhood I´d be royally pissed off, I´d be angry, furious; and you can count on me not wanting to live under that set of “laws”.

What if people in your neighborhood were setting of car bombs at local little league games & shopping malls? Would you like that set of “laws”?

[Zagadka]

@esquimalt

What if people in your neighborhood were setting of car bombs at local little league games & shopping malls? Would you like that set of “laws”?

What if some assholes invaded your country and wouldn’t leave, then started dropping bombs on your neighbors?

[Ale]

@esquimalt

What if people in your neighborhood were setting of car bombs at local little league games & shopping malls? Would you like that set of “laws”?

No, and I don´t see where´s the connection with anything I´ve said; would you care to explain yourself?

[esquimalt]

@Zagadka

What if some assholes invaded your country and wouldn’t leave, then started dropping bombs on your neighbors?

Read the news lately? They are killing many more Iraqis than Americans. Why do you suppose that is? Think if we were to pack up tomorrow the suicide bombings would stop? There are more Iraqis fighting these bastards than Americans right now.

[esquimalt]

@Ale

And that´s the problem, I don´t know, you don´t know and the Iraqis don´t know wheter the action was justified or not.
The last remaining justification for the war and invasion is to set up a democratic society. Now think of what makes you want to live on a democracy, freedom and a goverment that responds to the people are among the first things you may think about. Now if we go to the goverment, you assume rightly that a democratic goverment must have checks and balances, you surely would not trust a system where those are abscent.
Summary exectutions do not fit inside a frame of check and balances, how can the Iraqis have trust in the ocupation forces if they can´t have proof of the veracity of the motivations of an attack like the one we are discussing? There was no trial, no jury, it was decided that a place had to be bombed and the hell with the collateral victims. No appeals, no nothing; the targets were sentenced to death and the people around them were deemed expendable.
I don´t know you, but if stuff like that would be happening around my neighborhood I´d be royally pissed off, I´d be angry, furious; and you can count on me not wanting to live under that set of “laws”.

Do you think Zarqarwi or Bin Laden give shit about checks & balances.

[Zagadka]

@esquimalt

Read the news lately? They are killing many more Iraqis than Americans. Why do you suppose that is? Think if we were to pack up tomorrow the suicide bombings would stop? There are more Iraqis fighting these bastards than Americans right now.

Ooooh right, they just need America to drop an occasional bomb or two.

Let’s review the “LALALA THERE ISN’T A WAR LALALA” scorecard from the past few days.

6 US Servicemen Reported Dead in Iraq, 11 Iraqis

US Marine Killed; 23 Iraqis Killed in Separate Attacks;
US Helicopters mistakenly Kill 5 Policemen at Samarra’

Thousands of Indian Shiites Protest US Policies in Iraq

3 Wounded by Bomb at Central Bank;
22 Guerrillas Die in Fallujah Bombing

One US Soldier Killed, 3 Injured along with Contractor

Destruction of Key Bridge Halts Southern Rails
Muqtada Aide Declares East Baghdad an American no-go Zone

42 Killed, 138 Wounded in 3 Thursday Bombings
Coalition Soldier Among Dead

2 US Troops, Oil Official killed;
21 Wounded in Rocket Attack

[Zagadka]

@esquimalt

Do you think Zarqarwi or Bin Laden give shit about checks & balances.

I thought we were bringing Peace and Freedom and Democracy to Iraq?

Oh, that’s right. All we did was bring Al Qaeda and suffering.

[esquimalt]

@esquimalt

Do you think Zarqarwi or Bin Laden give shit about checks & balances.

Sorry hit reply by accident.

Again, you do not know how much collatarel damage there was & if an arrest warrant were issued & the Marines went head first back in the collateral damage would have been much worse. If they have intellegence sources inside Fallujah pinpointing these guys & they are living with women & children then they will be causalties. The cost of not going after them is greater IMHO.

[Zagadka]

@esquimalt

Again, you do not know how much collatarel damage there was & if an arrest warrant were issued & the Marines went head first back in the collateral damage would have been much worse.

Cite?

If they have intellegence sources inside Fallujah pinpointing these guys & they are living with women & children then they will be causalties. The cost of not going after them is greater IMHO.

Women and children be damned, we’re winning their hearts and minds here!

[Ale]

@esquimalt

Do you think Zarqarwi or Bin Laden give shit about checks & balances.

No, and do you know what the difference between a democratic goverment and a terrorist organization?, because, you see, in my post I was talking about the Iraqi goverment/governing authorities (as in occupation forces); not about terrorists. I thought it was quite clear, and I can´t see why you feel like bringing Zarqawi and Bin Laden into the discussion. In any case the actions of terrorist are no excuse for a goverment to do the same thing as them.

[Zagadka]

Oh, by the way, thanks esquimalt for pointing out that they knew there were women and children present.

“We’ll kill anyone in the way to stop terrorism!”

[esquimalt]

@Zagadka

Cite?

Women and children be damned, we’re winning their hearts and minds here!

Check back about the beginning of April the last time hte Marines were there.