[lit-ideas] Re: Europe's September 11 ?
- From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 17:47:25 EST
Omar, questioning my framing the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars as leisurely
responses to terrorism, replies:
*I think you are confusing representation and reality,
Eric. Iraq may have seemed not so terrible in the US
media, but take a look at the current Iraq Body Count
<snip> I would guess that for those 8437 to 10282 civilians
killed, their families, friends and so on it couldn't
have been so pleasant.
Certainly, Omar, but I was thinking of scenarios far worse than a few tens of
thousands killed. An old military axiom states that if a war is bitter and
prolonged enough, the two enemy forces will come to resemble each other. When
the two sides begin to resemble each other, the real brutality begins.
If the United States were seriously damaged or repeatedly struck, it's not
hard to imagine US tactics becoming far harsher than they are now, just as in
World War II, when the cruel Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners led to
cruel
treatment of Japanese prisoners, and ultimately made the bombing of Hiroshima
an easy call for Truman.
If the US were "fighting for its viability," almost any measures could be
justified. To pick a less apocalyptic example, the rules that govern use of
missiles and bombing would change. In the past, US rules prevented strikes on
Mullah Omar for example. But after a prolonged war, those rules would likely
disappear. Possible al-Qaeda in a village? Destroy the whole village. Possible
weapons on a Syrian freighter? Sink it. And so forth.
For comparison, Omar, look at the huge civilian death tolls in World War II
Europe. With advances in weapons technology, real brutality could make that
seem slight. War has its own momentum, and it was this prospect of "terrible
measures" I was denouncing.
Eric
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