WAR CRIMES AND THE DEHUMANIZTION OF THE ENEMY

Great Debates
1

Ok first off… I agree with the War on Terrorism, and I am glad the Taliban have been eliminated as a power in Afghanistan.

What has disturbed me lately is the lack of concern or notice in the public for the type of butchery that is happening to Prisoners and supporters of the Taliban in Afghanistan (And not just the prison uprising). Sure the Taliban in the reverse situation would have done the same thing and already have in the past but we are Supposed to be better then they are. As part of the Western world which actively back the Northern Alliance we should be stronger in our condemnation of their actions and more active in trying to stop this.

We condemned the Nazis for their butchery of innocent civilians and their treatment of POWs (especially the Russians)yet we sit on the sidelines and politely say please stop, then send the bombers to help the Northern Alliance on their next conquest.

Should we not stop this and stand up for the values which we espouse to the rest of the world? Do we protect the rights of the individual to fair and just treatment despite the side they are on or are these “Evil Ones” not worth caring about?

2

And what should we do?

Suggest that we’ll pull out of Afghanistan if the Northern Alliance doesn’t clean up their act? That’d be a laugh. We’re in this until Al Qaeda is gone, regardless of whether we work with the Northern Alliance or ignore them.
Put our own troops in harm’s way (increasing our commitment, our involvement, and our risk of casualties) by taking over the handling of prisoners? Good luck explaining to the American public that tweleve Special Forces were killed because we didn’t trust the Northern Alliance to take better care of our declared enemy.
Or ignore it, just as we ignored massive mistreatment of German POWs during World War II (Eisenhower attempted to have surrendered German troops reclassified so that he couldn’t be accused of breaking the Geneva convention due to their mistreatment). Lord knows we’re damned either way- we involve ourselves more in the war and we’re heartless imperialists looking to take over the country; let the Afghanis take over the brunt of the fighting and we’re heartless criminals for not involving ourselves more.
Sorry, hand-wringers. This is war, war is brutal, nasty, and ugly. Talking about the civil rights of those in a war zone is pointless- it’s a confused situation where people are trying to kill each other, and I can’t blame either side for taking drastic measures to ensure their own safety.

3

I started a thread on this in the Pit the other day, inspired by the events at the Mazar prison, the Amnesty and United Nations call for a probe into them, and some articles in the British press:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=101116

(Predictably, I was quickly labeled an anti-American peace-freak, but that’s the Pit for you.)

4

We also ignored the Stalin genocide as He was an ‘ally’ a the time. Same difference, its a bit of a necessary evil by the militarys eyes.

Truly I think that harsh ‘justice’ is harsh for a reason. Its easy to get caught up in the ‘individual rights’ that America believes it Believes in, but when you step back and look at the world, you realize how much BS that really is. I’d say an average american consumes in a day the same amount of resources as 20 individuals from an underdeveloped country, in fact i’d say that figure was realatively low considering figues I’ve seen. We preach abour ‘equality’ and ‘values’ but in all realism we obviously don’t abide by those same values on a global scale, they are merely propaganda tools we use to bolster our own self image. The military is a reflection of our society, and in all its a damn good reflecion.

5

Well, I wondered about that, too, but I think the difference is three-fold. First, the Taliban weren’t nearly as cold-blooded and business-like about it as the Nazis were. I think most members of the American public can distinguish between “more or less spur-of-the-moment tribal massacres”, or “hauling off and shooting people who bug you”, and “modern state-of-the-art assembly-line methods for killing people and processing their dead bodies”. I think America, with its frontier past, tends to be more forgiving of the “haul off and shoot the SOBs” approach to life. “Heat of the moment”, you know.

Second, there’s been no big “moment of revelation” for the American public the way there was at the end of WWII, when they started seeing newsreel footage of what really went on at the death camps. The Taliban has been shooting people right along, haven’t they? And busting up works of art, and executing women, and arresting missionaries, and banning movies, so when reports come of their rounding up the opposition and shooting them, it’s all of a piece. “Ho hum, it’s the Taliban, there they go again…”

Third, there’s the undeniable fact that what goes on with Third World members of an “alien” religion on the other side of the world doesn’t loom as large in the American public’s consciousness as what goes on with First World members of a closely related religion on this side of the world. At the end of WWII, lots of Americans knew some Jews. I would venture to say that hardly any Americans know some Afghani Muslims.

Taken all together, it adds up to a lack of public outcry. I think most of the people I know are more concerned with being laid off at Christmastime than they are with Afghan civil rights violations.

6

I understand the nature of War, and I also understand the Western World’s stance on the rules of War and how prisoners should be treated. Even if the enemy has not signed the Geneva convention WE HAVE.

How can we sit there and try someone like Milosovich on one hand and let the NA carry out the same type of atrocities without seeing the hypocrisy of the situation.

Should we send in troops to take care of the prisoners
and prevent atrocities? Yes! Absolutely! That is what an international force should do. If we want to fight a war… then fight it. If you think that war is a messy and brutal but necessary business then you should not be afraid of risking your troops for what you believe is right. I’m sure each and every soldier would not mind the opportunity to risk their lives to protect the principals we hold so dear.

One last thing as our ally what NA do reflects on us. Do we want to be associated with these actions?

How can we ever go about in the international world condemning acts against human rights while supporting those who do them.

7

Oh, okay, I looked at it again and I realized that you’re talking about the Northern Alliance shooting Taliban prisoners, not the reports of Taliban past massacres that are just now starting to turn up, the bodies being excavated, etc.

But my points still hold, I think.

8

We are trying Milosevic for the systematic, planned murder of ethnic minorities.

In Afghanistan, a few hotheads with rifles opened fire on surrendered prisoners. Except the surrendered prisoners may have had weapons of their own. And the prisoners may have actually opened fire first.

So- on the one side, orchestrated, planned, carried out with the intent to wipe out an ethnic group. On the other side, sudden, possibly a reaction to being under fire themselves, carried out during war. Do we understand the distinction here?

Uh-huh. I think most of them would actually prefer to have the whole war over and be the hell out of harm’s way, rather than stuck in Afghanistan in the middle of tribal warfare that’s been going on for centuries.

I think war is a messy and brutal business- which means I think that the best policy is get the damned thing over with ASAP, no matter what has to be done, so that once the war is over, you can return to normalcy and justice. But trying to conduct things fairly, equitably, and justly in the middle of a war zone is foolishness of the highest degree.

So what do we do? The NA doesn’t want us around inspecting everything, which means either: A) we abandon the effort and get lambasted for being heartless bastards who aren’t stopping the NA from committing atrocities or B) we take over all efforts and try to run the war completely by ourselves, and get lambasted as imperialist swine. It’s a no-win situation.

The same way we did in the 90’s while still being a good friend and supporter of China, Saudi Arabia, Oman, etc., etc., etc.

9

I think it’s worth bearing in mind the Taliban prisoners – especially the non-Afghani hard core – have a unique status. Conventionally, prisoners will be released and go home at the end of hostilities yet no one, especially the US, wants these guys to go anywhere because it’s believed they’ll just lock into their local terrorist cells and start up again in a different way – maybe small anti-Government campaigns in Pakistan, perhaps suicide bombing elsewhere…etc.

Nor do the NA factions want to guard them – even for now is a problem: a drain on resources, a source of internal friction, against their tribal instincts, but indefinitely…they’d take some convincing.

So, if nobody wants them now and nobody particularly wants them to remain operational in the future, it makes events like the massacre at the Fort somewhat interesting from a Human Rights perspective.

Western politicians will be covering their tracks with very, very, great care just now and one assumes actions on the ground will be perceived to be “unavoidable”, “self-defence”, “misunderstandings” or justified in the context of NA commanders meeting brutality with brutality…that kind of thing. Words like ‘opportunistic’ and ‘manipulation’ also spring to mind.

Whatever, ain’t too many non-Afghani Taliban going home from this war and to believe we’re not, at least, complying with that ‘policy’ is, IMHO, naive.

10

Perhaps I should have also added that while the Marine base SE of Kandahar offers a useful local springboard for actions in pursuit of Omar, OBL and the crew, it also serves rather well as a block to the back door for any Taliban not wishing to make a last stand at Kandahar and, instead, are minded to ‘save themselves for another day’ by making their way back to Pakistan.

It reduces their options to one: You will make a last stand.

It was also interesting, for example, that when a convoy was heading towards that base (at night) from Kandahar shortly after the Marines arrived, they were bombed immediately – I didn’t see the reports that showed how ‘we’ were quite so certain they had hostile intention. Oh well.

11

**

The Taliban has been brutalizing people for a few years now. It isn’t all that surprising that when the tables are turned they find themselves on the receiving end of brutal acts. I’m not saying that makes everything okay or justified. I just think I can understand.

Marc

12

king, Thanks very much for posting on this topic. Here is a link to an op-ed by Robert Fisk, a British journalist who specializes in international affairs and has been providing excellent resources on various issues ever since 9/11.

The publication is The Independent, a mainstream UK broadsheet newspaper.

Some excerpts as well as the link.

*"Over the past 50 years, we sat on our moral pedestal and lectured the Chinese and the Soviets, the Arabs and the Africans, about human rights. We pronounced on the human-rights crimes of Bosnians and Croatians and Serbs. We put many of them in the dock, just as we did the Nazis at Nuremberg. Thousands of dossiers were produced, describing – in nauseous detail – the secret courts and death squads and torture and extra judicial executions carried out by rogue states and pathological dictators. Quite right too.

Yet suddenly, after 11 September, we went mad."*

Here is an interesting historical contrast:

*"Winston Churchill took the Bush view of his enemies. In 1945, he preferred the straightforward execution of the Nazi leadership. Yet despite the fact that Hitler’s monsters were responsible for at least 50 million deaths – 10,000 times greater than the victims of 11 September – the Nazi murderers were given a trial at Nuremberg because US President Truman made a remarkable decision. “Undiscriminating executions or punishments,” he said, “without definite findings of guilt fairly arrived at, would not fit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride.”

No one should be surprised that Mr Bush – a small-time Texas Governor-Executioner – should fail to understand the morality of a statesman in the White House What is so shocking is that the Blairs, Schröders, Chiracs and all the television boys should have remained so gutlessly silent in the face of the Afghan executions and East European-style legislation sanctified since 11 September."*

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=107292

MGibson: “The Taliban has been brutalizing people for a few years now. It isn’t all that surprising that when the tables are turned they find themselves on the receiving end of brutal acts. I’m not saying that makes everything okay or justified. I just think I can understand.”

Yes, I can understand too. But what I can’t understand is why it’s right to profess to fight a war against “evil” only to perpetuate yet another wave of evil. It is well known that the Northern Alliance do not respect human rights any more than does the Taliban. I also reject this action on purely pragmatic grounds: the way to rein in the Northern Alliance and help to facilitate multi-ethnic regime isn’t to insist them in their slaughters.

Interestingly, the only group that has consistently opposed oppression and demanded social justice for all is RAWA (a woman’s organization). And yet of the 1,000+ members of various Afghan coalitions that recently met (in the justifiable effort) to create a multi-ethnic government rather than a Northern Alliance regime, not one woman was present.

13

…and more people die.

We’re not just talking Taliban sympathizers, here. There’s an awful lot of people trapped in the crossfire. Given the necessity of foreign aid, the brutality of both sides, and the fact that most of the battles have been in heavily-populated areas, I don’t think it’s inconceivable that the number of civilian deaths are approaching or have exceeded the number of people dead on Sept. 11.

But we won’t know for sure. We don’t have any statistics. Not even the UN has any idea at this point.

I’m glad the Taliban’s (almost) gone. But if this multi-ethnic government doesn’t work out, and Afghanistan collapses into civil war, then we can hardly pretend we’ve made those people’s lives better.

If America doesn’t care how many innocents have to die to get the man and the organization that murdered its own citizens, and if this war continues to spread to places like Iraq, then no one can honestly claim it’s about justice. And if the political situation throughout the region continues to destabilize, it’s certainly not about security.

Uncle Sam loads harpoon, takes aim for a second shot at its White Whale.

14

Sorry, that’s the fourth time that’s happened this week. The above post is mine, not matt_mcl’s.

15

kingpengvin, just in order for me to understand where you are coming from, I wonder if you could clarify your remarks by pointing out to what you feel are relevant reports which support your view. I ask this because I am having trouble, in the particular case of the uprising at Fort Kala-i Janghi, in understanding how the response amounted to a war crime.

16

If you’re refering to the talks going on in Bonn, that’s not quite correct. Sima Wali, a woman, is part of the “Rome Group” supporting former King Zahir Shah. She is pictured at the talks on page 4 of today’s Chicago Tribune.

Also from CNN.com: “Afghanistan’s ex-king: King Mohammed Zahir Shah, a Pashtun, says he has no ambitions to rule again but has portrayed himself as a type of father figure around whom all Afghans can rally. His delegation will include at least two women.”

Sorry, but I had trouble linking to the above quote directly. It can be found under CNN’s War on Terror>Extra Information>Afghanistan’s Key Players.

17

Thanks milroy. Good to know there’s been some progress (however limited). The article I read referred to an earlier set of talks: “Despite calls for participation from numerous Afghan women’s groups, a recent summit in Peshawar included 1,200 men and not one woman.”

From the same source, here’s what RAWA has to say about the Northern Alliance:

“Although the Northern Alliance has learned how to pose sometimes before the West as ‘democratic’ and even a supporter of women’s rights, in fact they have not at all changed, as a leopard cannot change its spots. RAWA has already documented heinous crimes of the Northern Alliance. Time is running out. RAWA on its own part appeals to the UN and world community as a whole to pay urgent and considerable heed to the recent developments in our ill-fated Afghanistan before it is too late. The UN should withdraw its recognition to the so-called Islamic government headed by Rabbani and help the establishment of a broad-based government based on the democratic values.”

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1122-04.htm

18

Look, is anyone laboring under the illusion that the NA is democratic and commited to human rights? Do you really think that we Americans are so ignorant that we think that anyone who fights the Taliban must be George Washington in a turban?

Stop being so silly. The NA is a collection of bandit groups and warlords. It has no democratic pretensions. However, they are helping us to destroy the Taliban which is the siamese twin of al Qaida who murdered several thousand innocent people a while ago. The NA is a tool. If they help us then they will be rewarded with economic aid and a long-shot chance at peace in Afghanistan, funded by Uncle Sam.

Odds are, they’ll blow it and Afghanistan will descend back into hell-hole status. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be hunting down and destroying the Taliban/al Qaida with their help.

I still can’t understand why people keep bringing this up. Or must the US only deal with liberal democrats? Then why does Canada, Britain, and the rest of the EU trade with Cuba? You all trade with Cuba because it benefits you. We are working with the NA because it benefits us. That doesn’t make Castro a liberal democrat, it doesn’t make the NA into liberal democrats. So what?

I’m getting sick and tired of this whining and crying about the war. I’m just glad no one with any sense is listening to it anymore. The predictions of the anti-American left have so far all proven to be 100% wrong. If everything you predict turns out to be proven wrong, doesn’t that mean that you should perhaps examine the premises from which you were arguing?

Or is it just too much fun to blame America?

19

Oh, its lots of fun to blame America. Or rather, the military strategy of the current government.

You are missing the point. Its all well and good to fight a war and win it. Its another thing to fight a war from the high moral ground. The United States has been losing that for a while now. People like Cheney have cast themselves in the same get-down-and-dirty mould as bin Laden. That would be fine if they were the leaders of some backwater country with no influence, but this is the government of the nations which likes to describe itself as the “leader of the free world”.

Possibly the worst thing I have seen come out of 11 September is that the US seems to have sold its soul.

20

Lemur, I think you’re entirely missing the point. No one has suggested that the US can’t be allied to the Northern Alliance–only that the US and its allies shouldn’t help the Northern Alliance to commit the kind of war crimes against which the US has itself protested in the past. I should think that the logic of that argument would be clear enough–however much one’s cynicism might make the logic unpersuasive.

Again, my own complaint is not only on humanitarian grounds but also pragmatic. You wrote:

“The NA is a collection of bandit groups and warlords. It has no democratic pretensions. …The NA is a tool. If they help us then they will be rewarded with economic aid and a long-shot chance at peace in Afghanistan, funded by Uncle Sam.”

The irony here is that if this were the Cold War period and the enemy were the Soviets you could substitute “NA” for “Osama bin Laden,” or “Islamic fundamentalist regimes” and you’d have exactly the mentality that helped to get us to where we are right now.

Doesn’t the US have any obligation, in your view, to practice what it preaches? Does world opinion matter not at all? Are foreign lives so vastly inferior to American lives that only “whiners” can debate the legitimacy of aiding a ruthless ally in slaughter? Isn’t the purpose of this war to stabilize the region? Isn’t Bush supposedly defending freedom and democracy in ousting a regime that harbors terrorists? Or is it only your freedom, and your human dignity that counts.

Believe me, Lemur, I haven’t forgotten that several thousand innocent people were killed on September 11. But, frankly, I’m getting rather tired of people who see this as a carte blanche excuse for abandoning the principles that US professes to hold dear. It would appear that Harry Truman’s dignified view of the American conscience is entirely lost on you.