Tuesday, August 13, 2002
War is brewing, at the hands of our chief-of-state and his comrades… and yet the American public acts like this is an inevitability we must accept, this attack on Iraq.
“Today, less than ever, can we defend ourselves by force, for there is no effective defense against the all-destroying effect of nuclear missile weapons. Indeed, their very power has made their use intolerable, even unthinkable, because of annihilative retaliation in kind that such use would invoke. So peace remains, as the phrase goes, balanced uneasily on terror, and the use of maximum force is frustrated by the certainty that it will be used in reply with a totally devastating effect. Peace, however, must surely be more than this trembling rejection of universal suicide.
“The start and inescapable fact is that today we cannot defend our society by war since total war is total destruction, and if war is used as an instrument of policy, eventually we will have total war. Therefore, the best defense of peace is not power, but the removal of the causes of war, and international agreements which will put peace on a stronger foundation than the terror of destruction.”
--- Lester B. Pearson, Nobel Peace Prize winner, 1957.
Most of you will not agree with what I have to say here. If you already find yourself disagreeing, and don’t think you will read all of it, then don’t; if you are going to read it, read every bit of it, don’t skip.
Ever since the Gulf War, a short engagement initiated totally for purely economic reasons (oil), the US has made sure that Saddam Hussein has had quite a nasty picture painted. Don’t get me wrong, the guy is scum. No, scratch that, Hussein is evil rat scum, of the lowest kind.
Recently, George Dubya Bush revealed his stereotypical “axis of evil” including many different evil rat scum. I think there is some remote confusion on the concept of evil. Evil is not necessarily stupid. Hussein has managed to maintain power in a very very instable political environment for quite some time. To do so takes brains, not just pure luck. If you have brains, then you know that there is something in the world called nuclear deterrence. Bush’s reasoning behind attacking Iraq is that Hussein is within a few years of obtaining or creating a nuclear missile. Because Hussein isn’t stupid, he knows that the use of a nuclear weapon against the US is an unrealistic objective. Iraq is far too distant a country to fly one in, so the device would have to be smuggled in, a feat that is very, very difficult in today’s time.
Now let’s say that somehow, he did it. A bomb blows up in an American city and 10 million Americans go with it. What happens next? Hussein sits there and thinks “Boy! I got them yanks! I can’t say anything about it, so it doesn’t help me politically at all.” Or he announces to the war that Iraq is at fault. The next day Iraq is a wasteland, completely destroyed by US missiles… no, Mr. Hussein is not a stupid man, he has held on so long that he has his own personal value to maintain, he will not throw it away.
Even if he chose to deploy a nuclear weapon, the obvious target would not be the US. Why kill a small percentage of the total American population when you can destroy the Israelis? The truth is even this is highly improbable. The Israelis, who, due to obvious reasons, are more interested in their neighbors than we are, are a helluvalot better at espionage in the region. This was demonstrated in 1981 where the Israelis got a whiff of a possibility of a nuclear device at the Osiraq reactor in Iraq, and immediately blew it up. Iraq never had a chance.
Recently Mr. Hussein extended an offer to the UN and the US Government to fully (fully, not the game he played with us before) inspect Iraq’s weapons arsenal. We turned it down. Hold on one second. Does something sound strange? Look:
Reason for attacking = fear of nuclear capabilities.
A chance to check on the nuclear capabilities/reason for attacking turned down.
Plus there has been absolutely NO EVIDENCE that Iraq has sponsored any terrorist attacks on the US recently. Remember! He is evil but he ISN’T STUPID!
So Bush is bent on taking down Saddam no matter what; to hell with reasons. Ok, since he obviously won’t be argued with, let’s skip ahead and focus on the idea of an actual war with Iraq, with the ultimate objective being the removal of Hussein. Many turn to our previous war and say: “We kicked their ass! We can do it again.” Uh-uh. Iraq is not Afghanistan, and this is not a war over the control of another country (Kuwait if you never bothered to figure out what the hell the Gulf war was about).
We defeated the Iraqi forces because we found them on wide-open terrain, using long range fighting techniques and air force-assisted bombing. Saddam knows that if he lost this war then he would be the ultimate casualty, the US would do everything it could (despite the world court that was set up to prosecutes little shits like him) to kill Hussein, and he damn well knows it. So what would he do?
The obvious tactic would be to pull every single Iraqi soldier into the streets of the cities, mostly Baghdad, sit them right next to the civilians, and dare the US to drop a bomb. Doing so would mean enormous civilian casualties (although recently the US hasn’t shown much guilt over this sort of thing, especially when we bomb weddings (if you don’t know what I’m talking about then you might as well know that we bombed the hell out of an Afghan wedding… and never really apologized).
Whether or not we chose to kill off lots and lots of innocent people (and we probably wouldn’t, the rest of the world would not allow it, and rightfully so), we would eventually have to invade. This would mean room by room, street by street, close combat fighting. We are damn good in the hills and on the desert, but an Iraqi with a Kalashnikov is pretty damn close to American with an M16, and the casualties would skyrocket. If you don’t believe me, examine the 1993 incident in Mogadishu, Somalia. Yes, we only lost about a dozen and a half men as opposed to a thousand enemies… but those enemies were are poorly trained semi-civilian population. Saddam has soldiers. A mobilization against the cities of Iraq would be the greatest American military operation since Vietnam.
I do agree that we could win such a war, but I don’t try and pretend like it would be similar to the training exercise that was the Operation Enduring Freedom. It would be nasty, it would be gritty. If you believe that we should attack Iraq to free its civilian population (what Kurds are left included) (you’ve obviously watched Three Kings) then imagine the damage done to that population in this sort of war. We cannot support this.
Think of our current (probably close to nonexistent) “terrorist threat.” When do you think enemies of the US would choose to attack us again? When we are in our current paranoid state, or when we are in the middle of a dirty war with Iraq. It would shatter many of our hopes to hit us then, and that is a very possible future.
So far, I have eliminated the reasoning behind an attack on Saddam Hussein and shown that it would be quite a dirty war to get involved in. Both these are apparent, and yet the American population, so far, has been quite oblivious (or apathetic). Maybe we’ve forgotten what war really is. My generation never knew war (Gulf War, give me a break) and I don’t think we should start getting familiar now.
Such a war could only benefit arms/military technology companies in America. The same money used to wage this war could be used to conduct quick exercises to save many African nations for tyrants just as evil as Hussein, or to pay for AIDS treatment that 40 million need right now. The US has shunned the world community for long enough. We should take the diplomatic approach: go to Iraq, see what Saddam is doing there. Then slowly press on his regime until it topples. We are too impatient. We must calm down. We must be rational. Remember! “…if war is used as an instrument of policy, eventually we will have total war…”
Listening to: Schubert – Symphony No. 8 Allegro Moderato
“Today, less than ever, can we defend ourselves by force, for there is no effective defense against the all-destroying effect of nuclear missile weapons. Indeed, their very power has made their use intolerable, even unthinkable, because of annihilative retaliation in kind that such use would invoke. So peace remains, as the phrase goes, balanced uneasily on terror, and the use of maximum force is frustrated by the certainty that it will be used in reply with a totally devastating effect. Peace, however, must surely be more than this trembling rejection of universal suicide.
“The start and inescapable fact is that today we cannot defend our society by war since total war is total destruction, and if war is used as an instrument of policy, eventually we will have total war. Therefore, the best defense of peace is not power, but the removal of the causes of war, and international agreements which will put peace on a stronger foundation than the terror of destruction.”
--- Lester B. Pearson, Nobel Peace Prize winner, 1957.
Most of you will not agree with what I have to say here. If you already find yourself disagreeing, and don’t think you will read all of it, then don’t; if you are going to read it, read every bit of it, don’t skip.
Ever since the Gulf War, a short engagement initiated totally for purely economic reasons (oil), the US has made sure that Saddam Hussein has had quite a nasty picture painted. Don’t get me wrong, the guy is scum. No, scratch that, Hussein is evil rat scum, of the lowest kind.
Recently, George Dubya Bush revealed his stereotypical “axis of evil” including many different evil rat scum. I think there is some remote confusion on the concept of evil. Evil is not necessarily stupid. Hussein has managed to maintain power in a very very instable political environment for quite some time. To do so takes brains, not just pure luck. If you have brains, then you know that there is something in the world called nuclear deterrence. Bush’s reasoning behind attacking Iraq is that Hussein is within a few years of obtaining or creating a nuclear missile. Because Hussein isn’t stupid, he knows that the use of a nuclear weapon against the US is an unrealistic objective. Iraq is far too distant a country to fly one in, so the device would have to be smuggled in, a feat that is very, very difficult in today’s time.
Now let’s say that somehow, he did it. A bomb blows up in an American city and 10 million Americans go with it. What happens next? Hussein sits there and thinks “Boy! I got them yanks! I can’t say anything about it, so it doesn’t help me politically at all.” Or he announces to the war that Iraq is at fault. The next day Iraq is a wasteland, completely destroyed by US missiles… no, Mr. Hussein is not a stupid man, he has held on so long that he has his own personal value to maintain, he will not throw it away.
Even if he chose to deploy a nuclear weapon, the obvious target would not be the US. Why kill a small percentage of the total American population when you can destroy the Israelis? The truth is even this is highly improbable. The Israelis, who, due to obvious reasons, are more interested in their neighbors than we are, are a helluvalot better at espionage in the region. This was demonstrated in 1981 where the Israelis got a whiff of a possibility of a nuclear device at the Osiraq reactor in Iraq, and immediately blew it up. Iraq never had a chance.
Recently Mr. Hussein extended an offer to the UN and the US Government to fully (fully, not the game he played with us before) inspect Iraq’s weapons arsenal. We turned it down. Hold on one second. Does something sound strange? Look:
Reason for attacking = fear of nuclear capabilities.
A chance to check on the nuclear capabilities/reason for attacking turned down.
Plus there has been absolutely NO EVIDENCE that Iraq has sponsored any terrorist attacks on the US recently. Remember! He is evil but he ISN’T STUPID!
So Bush is bent on taking down Saddam no matter what; to hell with reasons. Ok, since he obviously won’t be argued with, let’s skip ahead and focus on the idea of an actual war with Iraq, with the ultimate objective being the removal of Hussein. Many turn to our previous war and say: “We kicked their ass! We can do it again.” Uh-uh. Iraq is not Afghanistan, and this is not a war over the control of another country (Kuwait if you never bothered to figure out what the hell the Gulf war was about).
We defeated the Iraqi forces because we found them on wide-open terrain, using long range fighting techniques and air force-assisted bombing. Saddam knows that if he lost this war then he would be the ultimate casualty, the US would do everything it could (despite the world court that was set up to prosecutes little shits like him) to kill Hussein, and he damn well knows it. So what would he do?
The obvious tactic would be to pull every single Iraqi soldier into the streets of the cities, mostly Baghdad, sit them right next to the civilians, and dare the US to drop a bomb. Doing so would mean enormous civilian casualties (although recently the US hasn’t shown much guilt over this sort of thing, especially when we bomb weddings (if you don’t know what I’m talking about then you might as well know that we bombed the hell out of an Afghan wedding… and never really apologized).
Whether or not we chose to kill off lots and lots of innocent people (and we probably wouldn’t, the rest of the world would not allow it, and rightfully so), we would eventually have to invade. This would mean room by room, street by street, close combat fighting. We are damn good in the hills and on the desert, but an Iraqi with a Kalashnikov is pretty damn close to American with an M16, and the casualties would skyrocket. If you don’t believe me, examine the 1993 incident in Mogadishu, Somalia. Yes, we only lost about a dozen and a half men as opposed to a thousand enemies… but those enemies were are poorly trained semi-civilian population. Saddam has soldiers. A mobilization against the cities of Iraq would be the greatest American military operation since Vietnam.
I do agree that we could win such a war, but I don’t try and pretend like it would be similar to the training exercise that was the Operation Enduring Freedom. It would be nasty, it would be gritty. If you believe that we should attack Iraq to free its civilian population (what Kurds are left included) (you’ve obviously watched Three Kings) then imagine the damage done to that population in this sort of war. We cannot support this.
Think of our current (probably close to nonexistent) “terrorist threat.” When do you think enemies of the US would choose to attack us again? When we are in our current paranoid state, or when we are in the middle of a dirty war with Iraq. It would shatter many of our hopes to hit us then, and that is a very possible future.
So far, I have eliminated the reasoning behind an attack on Saddam Hussein and shown that it would be quite a dirty war to get involved in. Both these are apparent, and yet the American population, so far, has been quite oblivious (or apathetic). Maybe we’ve forgotten what war really is. My generation never knew war (Gulf War, give me a break) and I don’t think we should start getting familiar now.
Such a war could only benefit arms/military technology companies in America. The same money used to wage this war could be used to conduct quick exercises to save many African nations for tyrants just as evil as Hussein, or to pay for AIDS treatment that 40 million need right now. The US has shunned the world community for long enough. We should take the diplomatic approach: go to Iraq, see what Saddam is doing there. Then slowly press on his regime until it topples. We are too impatient. We must calm down. We must be rational. Remember! “…if war is used as an instrument of policy, eventually we will have total war…”
Listening to: Schubert – Symphony No. 8 Allegro Moderato
