Next week Gen. Colin Powell will be at my university to speak on volunteerism. A student organization, the Radical Action Network, is planning to protest this speech on the basis that Gen. Powell is a war criminal. Last semester, this same group forced the cancellation of a speech by fmr. Sec. of State Henry Kissinger because they felt he was also a war criminal.
I always thought of a war criminal as someone who tortured prisoners of war, or their own citizens who opposed them. But RAN feels that anytime a civilian dies during the course of a military action, the leaders involved are war criminals.
What are your opinions?
I don’t know exactly what the Radical Action Network stands for, but from they way you’ve described them they remind me a lot of campus groups I’ve tangled with before. When listening to foreign policy prescriptions from a self-described “pro-peace” organization, I always ask myself this: if the countries who defeated Nazi Germany had followed that group’s philosophy to the letter, would they still have won the war? Basically, any group whose idea of peace means being conquered by Nazis is not worth listening to.
that was my first reaction, also- this campus (UT Austin) is a hotbed of sanctimonious “if you aren’t with us, you’re against us” student organizations-
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my other favorite is the “Anti-Racist Organizing Committee” - they were responsible for an immature display of intolerance at a Ward Connerly speech…God forbid color-blind admissions and a level playing field become a reality
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it’s a hard place for a capitalist to go to school
RAN is apparently ignorant of the laws of war. Nothing as established in the Geneva Conventions, the Law of the Sea, the UN Charter or any other relevant laws would really make Powell a war criminal.
Technically, a deliberate attack on civilians is a war crime. I’m not sure that the Allied bombing campaign against Iraq deliberately targeted civilians. Of course, civilians were killed, and the nature of the bombing plans (attacking targets in a crowded city) made it almost certain that civilians would die. It’s a pretty long stretch from there to concluding that Powell’s a war criminal, though.
RAN might be arguing (and probably will at times) that UN sanctions are killing Iraqi civilians, but A) Powell has nothing to do with that and B) It’s a misleading argument, and isn’t really true anyway.
I don’t know anything about RAN, but their charge isn’t as crackers as it sounds.
The U.S. specifically targeted infrastructure during the Gulf War. Water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, etc. Considering the time-frame of the war, and our overwhelming military superiority, it’s hard to make an argument for military necessity. This wasn’t a siege.
The only real effect of this (and the only real effect of the sanctions) was to cause widespread sickness and death in the civilian population. Was that our goal? I personally don’t see what other goals we had in doing this, or how the results could have come as a surprise, but I don’t claim to know all the facts.
I don’t think General Powell is a war criminal, but I think the U.S. has acted criminally toward the citizens of Iraq, and still continues to do so with the sanctions.
Giraffe said “Water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, etc. Considering the time-frame of the war, and our overwhelming military superiority,”
I believe the short time frame of the war was partially due to the destruction of the infrastructure. That was part of the plan.
Our big mistake was in not finishing the job at the time.
Had we done so, the sanctions would not have been considered necessary by the powers that be.
On the other hand you might be able make a case that continuing to slaughter military personnel that were running for their lives would have been a criminal act.
Shooting fish in a barrel is not something that the American culture condones (Mai Lai not withstanding.
The point is, if you deliberately do something whose only real consequence is the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, it’s a crime. (And, regardless of existing law, it’s morally reprehensible.) It doesn’t matter if it’s part of a battle strategy. (Not that I can see how wiping out the civilian infrastructure can be expected to have any strategic use in a war that lasts for three months.)
C’mon. The U.S. fresh out of the Cold War with the most modern and deadly military on the planet, versus…Iraq? We knew their military capabilities. We were never planning on engaging in a long war – it would have been too unpopular.
But it’s irrelevant. The war plus the sanctions have directly led to the deaths of over a million Iraqi civilians, due to malnutrition and easily preventable disease. What did those deaths accomplish? What have the sanctions accomplished? Nothing. Oh well. Our bad.
The large number of civilian casualties resultant from the Allied bombings had one specific result.
It eroded the power base of Saddam Hussein and helped to make him even more unpopular. We will try to gloss over the fact that Saddam Hussein intentionally placed important military targets in the midst of his civilian population.
For the sake of argument, let’s call General Colin Powell a war criminal. Now, what does that make Saddam Hussein? Considering that he has probably slaughtered more of his own family and people than we ever have?
I’m not talking about collateral deaths from the bombings, I’m talking about the deaths resulting from our destruction of the infrastructure and the sanctions on food and medicine we maintained for years following the bombings.
You’ll get no argument from me that Saddam is a corrupt dictator and all-around Bad Man. But his actions don’t excuse our actions. (He killed Iraqi civilians, so to stop him, we…killed Iraqi civilians.)
Even if what you said were the case, and these deaths were all somehow justified by the magnitude of his villany, why didn’t we stop him? We had a chance to support the rebels who wanted to overthrow him, right after the Gulf War. We didn’t. The sanctions hurt his people, not him. Why are we torturing people for the crime of being born under the rule of a dictator we don’t like (right now)?
I’m sorry if I’m being confrontational – I’m trying not to be. This is an important issue to me, and it distresses me how little the American people seem to know or care about this issue, despite the killing that is being done in our name.
Giraffe – and did you really think France could hold off Germany in 1914? The von Sclieffen plan was flawless!
Modern warfare is rough on populations. But if you don’t target the infrastructure, then you may have exactly the long drawn out war you want to avoid.
“Why didn’t we stop him?” is one of the residual nagging questions from this campaign.
Sadly, the most plausible rationale is that we could not go any earlier, (nothing politically less popular than kids coming home in boxes for Christmas), nor any later (no Arab wants to fight during Ramadan).
Basically, it was a war planned around something like, “Well, I think that we can pencil you in for a three o’clock on Friday, is that OK for you?”
I feel that people must value their own country enough to put their bodies on the line. Hussein remains in power because of the cowardice of their military combined with a disarmed public. How sad that a county’s leader can place his own political welfare above that of his people. Why am I not surprised?
