LANCE:

In regards to the article "Of Human Shields, Collateral Damage and Consequences " by Bruce Monson, the analogy contained therein is fraught with problems. Among them, an inacurate simplification of a complicated international problem with short term costs and long term benefits.

BRUCE MONSON:

Lance, I’m sorry but I think you missed the point of my essay.  I originally wrote it as a response to a press release from Donald Rumsfeld that sought to “preemptively” provide the U.S. with “plausible deniability” insofar as having to accept responsibility for the inevitable killing of thousands of Iraqi civilians by American bombs.  The report had made all the usual references to Hussein’s history of atrocities (which no one denies, although, as is always the case, the other component to that fact is conveniently left out, namely “with our support”!), but goes on to say that Hussein may be placing civilians around “military targets” (he didn’t say what these targets were—historically “military targets” have included everything from hospitals, schools and water treatment plants, to entire civilian villages.) in order to “increase civilian casualties."  

This was quite a convenient statement that does not even have to be true in order to provide the desired effect—to pacify an American audience for our cause while simultaneously levying additional “crimes against humanity” against the “evil tyrant.”  But for the sake of argument, I accepted the statement as a fact, and then posed the moral question base on that assumption.   

The “human shield” analogy is most certainly applicable as I described it since it presents a situation (on a smaller yet more personal scale—and the “personal” aspect is the key) in which there is a subjective measurement and moral judgment being applied to “justify” the wholesale murder of 15 children in order to kill one particular target; and further, doing so in a manner that ensures the safety of those doing the act (i.e., the police) by collectively opening fire on the group from a distance, as opposed to “rushing in” as you try to reinterpret later on in your email. 

In other words, where you accuse me of “inaccurate simplification,” it is actually you who has inaccurately modified the problem to better suit the moral dilemma that you recognize.  In fact, the manner in which you change the story really serves to demonstrate my point, and shows that you and I are in all probability not that far removed from one another on what we each would consider “justified action” versus an unjustified crime against humanity.

But let’s move on to your rebuttal.

First, please explain to me how the murder of a child (or anyone) is in any way a “short term cost.”  Is it short term for the persons killed, or their families?  Death is a permanent condition, not some setback in your stock portfolio.  And those “costs” represent living, breathing, feeling children with real families who care about them.  I have seen and held more dead children than I care to remember, and each time I see the agonizing grief of the family.  It is a very personal thing, and actually seeing it gives you a new sense on reality.  To see a young father screaming in horror, covered in his teenage daughter’s blood, as he tries to stop the arterial blood pouring from the bullet hole in her head is a sobering reality check on the destructive power of even small firearms, let alone the effects of assault rifles, grenades, mortar shells, tanks, daisy cutters, and other mangling weapons we’re so proud of.    And while we have a tendency to assign greater personal significance to those losses that happen close to home (like 9/11), it is remarkable how little we seem to care about the incredible destruction, suffering and civilian casualties we ourselves inflict on other people in other countries by our use of those devastating weapons, and the equally personal grief these people experience as a result.

Unfortunately, we have a system of government (i.e., a corporate aristocracy thinly disguised as a democracy) that has a strong affection for global dominance, war, and weapons of mass destruction (for ourselves, but not for others though).  We bask in our “shock and awe” capabilities and display it like just another reality television show, but at the same time we pretend that these devastating weapons are somehow magical in how they seek out “the evil enemy” and dodge the innocent.  And yet when the thousands of innocent casualties are inevitably pointed out by others (like the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others), we hide behind depersonalizing terms like “collateral damage” and “unintended targets” that occurred through no fault of our own, but because “the evil enemy” placed those civilians in and around “military targets.”     

So who decides what constitutes “acceptable collateral damage,” Lance?  Ideas about “acceptable” have a way of changing depending on who is speaking, and who is in power. 

If Saddam Hussein was thought to be located at a particular spot (and that was the case for our recent bombing of a restaurant in a residential area of Baghdad with FOUR “bunker buster” bombs—they don’t know “for sure” that Hussein was in there, but they “thought” he might be, so they bombed it), and it was determined that this location was a children’s daycare center filled with 500 children, would we be “justified” in bombing the building to get him?  What if it was known that there were only ten children in the building with Saddam, would that be an acceptable “short term cost”?  What if there were only one child?  What if that one child was your child and you were the military commander with the ability to fire or not fire?  Suppose it were not an Iraqi child, but a 20 year old American POW from Austin, Texas who has a young wife and 19-month old baby daughter back home; a soldier who knew and understood the “price he might be called to pay in service of his country” when he enlisted?  Would taking that soldier’s life, taken by our own hand, be an acceptable price to pay in order to kill the intended target?  The point is, these are all subjective judgments of value placed on real human lives, but the problem is those values tend to change based on the emotional attachments and connections we have with those lives.

LANCE:

I wonder if Mr. Monson believes America should we have not liberated France in WWII because innocent civilians were killed in the process?

BRUCE:

Well, first off, WWII was a world war that had Germany, the strongest military in the world at the time, marching across Europe, and as such there was a necessity to act by those European countries affected, although most people conveniently forget or suppress the fact that America (sitting safely across the Atlantic) watched silently for nearly three years before entering the war.  In fact, America had been steadfastly against getting involved in “another war in Europe,” and even produced many congressional acts against such an eventuality, including the Neutrality Act of 1937, signed by Roosevelt.  This did not go unnoticed by our “allies.”  Indeed, a strong case can be made that the greatest “mistake” of WWII was Japan’s “preemptive strike” against the American naval fleet at Pearl Harbor (because of what we “might” do), which is what really got us into the war.  So, if you’re going to claim credit for “liberating France” (and the U.S. was not alone in that endeavor since Britain kicked the ball around the schoolyard as well), then you must also acknowledge that by delaying entering the war for two years, millions more “innocent civilians” died and suffered who otherwise would not have.  And what about the thousands of uprooted German and Austrian Jews who tried, in 1938, to come to America for asylum only to be denied visas.  Most of these Jews ultimately ended up in concentration camps and died horribly.  This is truly one of the more shameful acts in American history.  See the can of worms you open with such postulations, Mr. Watts?  

We should also not forget that we are damned lucky Hitler was such a moron in terms of marshaling his military.  Had he stuck to what he was good at, namely propaganda, and allowed his generals to do the planning instead of opening haphazard fronts all over the place (particularly the eastern front against the Russians, which was ultimately his downfall), we would have been in a world of hurt. 

But aside from this little trip down history lane, the circumstances of WWII are not comparable with the case in Iraq by any stretch of the imagination.  Iraq was a weak country during the first Gulf war, and is a hundred times weaker today.  Moreover12 years of sanctions have thoroughly devastated the civilian population (the sanctions alone have caused the deaths of over a half-million children), while any military aspirations Hussein might once have had have been thoroughly contained.  And while Bush & Co. and their mouthpieces at FOX, MSNBC and CNN have been partners in crime in propagating the myth that Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks on 9/11 (on September 16th, 2001 at a meeting at Camp David, Bush administration war hawk Paul Wolfowitz was already pressing to use the event to justify an attack on Iraq.  Everything the Bush administration has done to date, in fact, follows precisely with an agenda outlined in a 1992 Pentagon report authored by Paul Wolfowitz.), and yet there is not one shred of evidence supporting that.  There is not one shred of evidence of any direct links between Hussein and Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or Usama bin Laden.  They are mortal enemies, in fact, and bin Laden has as much reason for wanting Hussein out of the picture as anyone else since Iraq is currently a secular nation with a majority Shiite Muslim population that has also been suppressed.  And Bin Laden, a Saudi national, would like nothing more than for Iraq to become a Muslim theocracy under a Shiite ruler!  So for Hussein to actually give “weapons of mass destruction”—if he had any—to bin Laden would be like giving a loaded gun to someone you just raped.   

On the other hand, there is a mountain of evidence demonstrating DIRECT LINKS between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt (all supposedly our “friends & allies”) with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups who have targeted the United States, including 9/11!  There are dozens of families of victims of 9/11, in fact, who are currently suing some of the people behind these Saudi connections (some of whom operate within the U.S.), and do you know who is trying to stop the action?  The Bush administration!  Why do you suppose that is?  All of these countries have long records of humanitarian atrocities and systematic oppression of their citizens that rival or exceed those of Hussein (Turkey, for example, has murdered and suppressed far more Kurds than Hussein has) and yet the U.S. continues to support, fund and sell arms to these countries without a word about “regime change” or condemnation of their humanitarian atrocities, or their support of terrorist groups, let alone their totalitarian and theocratic systems of government.  Why do you suppose that is, Mr. Watts? 

If the real reason for invading Iraq (a sovereign nation) is because we want to “liberate the Iraqi people” and bring them the “gift” of democracy—and at a cost of nearly a trillion dollars to American taxpayers, by some estimates, in an already reeling U.S. economy—then why are we not making that a universal policy?  Why do we continue to support and fund brutal dictators all over the world?     

LANCE:

Nevertheless, I'll adhere to your premise and offer a more appropriate analogy:

An escaped killer takes over a daycare center with 500 children. He murders 10 of them, tortures and rapes 10 others and then deprives the remaining children adequate food and medical attention.

BRUCE:

As I mentioned earlier, you missed the premise.  However, for the sake of argument let us consider your revision and see if holds water even by your selective standards.

To begin with, if you wish to be true to the facts in your scenario then you will have to acknowledge the following, and then ask yourself whether the “police” shall remain without blame:

(1)   The escaped killer (we’ll call him “Mr. X” for short) didn’t actually “escape,” but rather the police let him out of jail and gave him a job as a handyman with specific instructions to go and “fix things” at area daycare centers.  The police tell him that he can do pretty much what he wants in his free time, and they will continue to support him so long as he works on “problems” that are of police interest.  And as luck would have it, the police are having some nagging problems with one daycare in particular (we’ll call it Iranamuck Daycare) and they want Mr. X to “take them out,” which Mr. X doesn’t mind because he’s never liked the people at Iranamuck daycare anyway.

(2)   Over the next few months the police provide Mr. X with chemical, biological and conventional weapons and all the money and support he requires to carry out his task.

(3)   And perform his task he does!  Mr. X proceeds to use the weapons of mass destruction the police gave him to murder lots and lots of the “bad people.” Unfortunately, he also murders lots and lots of innocent people.  In fact, this goes on for years, with Mr. X killing lots and lots of innocent people; so much so in fact, the Childcare UN steps in and condemns these acts and demands that they stop.  Sadly, the “police,” who have been arming, funding and supporting Mr. X all this time vote against the Childcare UN, and not only do they continue to provide weapons & money to Mr. X, but they send one of the head janitors, a certain Mr. Rumsfeldstiltskin, over to check on Mr. X personally and make sure everything is still buddy-buddy and on course.  Mr. Rumsfeldstiltskin is satisfied all is well (Of course, one day in the future Mr. X will decide to start acting on his own account—something that “the police” will not like, but that’s another story).  Mr. X is even given some nice gifts of “friendship” for his continued service to the police cause.   How nice.  Too bad about all those innocent children though...

 

LANCE:
The police arrive at the scene and demand that the murderer relinquish his weapons and surrender. The murderer refuses and continues to murder torture, rape and starve the children.

BRUCE:

You forgot to mention that in this case the “police” do not “demand that the murderer relinquish is weapons and surrender,” but rather provide him with MORE WEAPONS, and more resources, and more support, and even give him a gift of some fava beans and a nice Chianti for his efforts.

LANCE:
For 12 years, the police attempt to negotiate with the murderer. All efforts fail and the police finally decide to take action. Violence ensues as the police storm the daycare center. Two of the innocent hostages are accidentally killed in the process of freeing the remaining victims.

Is it safe to assume that the survivors are grateful? Should the police have simply walked away from the situation and allowed the murderer to continue brutalizing the hostages?

The collateral damage is unfortunate. Any life lost is certainly a tragedy. But a greater tragedy would have occurred had the police not asserted force to end the murderers' daycare reign. If the murderer would have been allowed to live, more children would have been killed and tortured and, more importantly, a clear message would have been sent to future murderers that the police do not have the resolve to risk the lives of a few to achieve the greater good.

BRUCE:

First, “all efforts” did not fail!  Iraq was always contained after the first Gulf war and would have remained so indefinitely with inspections and monitoring.  And while Hussein certainly remained a rebellious child who spurned authority, he was not considered a viable threat to even neighboring countries in the Middle East, let alone to the United States or other Western nations.  Hussein couldn’t even control the northern and southern parts of his own country!  As one commentator said, “At best he [Hussein] is the mayor of Baghdad.”  Indeed, if Iraq were really considered a legitimate “threat” to the United States you can be sure that we would NOT be attacking them!  By convention, the U.S. will not attack any country that can fight back (which is why the U.S. is so against other smaller countries having nuclear weapons—we don’t want them having a deterrent to our “might makes right” impositions). 

Second, if you can justify attacking Iraq because of “violations” of UN resolution 1441 (and violation of any resolution, incidentally, DOES NOT automatically give another nation permission to attack—that decision must be voted on and approved by the UN Security Council.  Thus, the U.S. and Britain are themselves in violation of resolution 1441 by initiating an offensive without UN approval!), then you must also attack every Middle Eastern country who possess “weapons of mass destruction, because part of Resolution 687 applied to all countries or powers in the Middle East.  This means that U.S. itself and its “allies” such as Egypt, Syria and Pakistan (all of whom have nuclear and/or chemical weapons), and in particular Israel (which has more than 200 nuclear missiles) must immediately “disarm of all weapons of mass destruction”!  If they do not they are in violation of resolution 687.  So, in lieu of these direct violations, why aren’t we threatening to invade those countries, Mr. Watts?  Turkey has also been shown to be guilty of dozens of violations of other UN resolutions, not to mention an appalling record of murder and human rights violations.  Why aren’t we attacking them and demanding a “regime change”? 

The United States itself has a long history of resolution and treaty violations, and has even blocked UN weapons inspectors from inspecting our own weapons facilities where even now we are producing ILLEGAL chemical and biological weapons.  This is the same country that gave Saddam Hussein his chemical and biological weapons program!  This is the same country that has employed the use of chemical and biological weapons (Agent Orange, Mustard gas, sarin gas, napalm, CS gas, and others) in multiple military excursions since WWII, and include a documented record between 1949-1969 in which the U.S. Government and military were even carrying out secret biological, radiological and chemical experiments on the general American population by releasing agents into the air over populated areas and monitoring changes. This is the same country that has literally thousands of nuclear weapons in it’s arsenal, and is the only country ever to actually use nuclear weapons in a war (and killing 200,000 civilians in the process, incidentally—but that was a “just cause,” of course), and, alarmingly, even threatened to use them in Iraq!  This is the only country that has been condemned by the World Court for acts of state-sponsored terrorism and ordered to cease and desist with the unlawful use of military force, and ordered to pay substantial reparations in the multiple billions to the country we were terrorizing—Nicaragua. 

Who’s the greater “threat” to “peace,” Mr. Watts?  This is a running joke in the international community, but a reality that is apparently lost on the duped American public.

But back to the daycare analogy.  I really like how you try to make the “rescue” sound so heroic in your restructured version.  “[T]he police storm the daycare center.”  What a nice image of bravery.  But that isn’t the scenario and that is not what we do in war, as a matter of policy.  We learned a lot about appearances from our experiences in Viet Nam.  And one of these is that the support for war among the American public plummets when we see thousands upon thousands of body bags coming home filled with U.S. soldiers.  And the same applies when we see graphic photos of that “collateral damage” that our Government is so careful to censor today—because our humanity cannot be allowed to interfere with all the “good” we are doing.   

So instead of soldiers “storm[ing] in,” we prefer “heroic” air assaults on cities and civilian populations and “soft target” infrastructure (e.g., water treatment plants, food stores & food production such as entire Vietnamese villages working in rice fields, sanitation systems, pharmaceutical factories, roads, bridges, etc.) with atomic bombs, “bunker busters”, daisy cutters, napalm, Agent Orange, and numerous other “weapons of mass destruction” we have employed throughout our glorious history of war and “peace-keeping missions” since WWII.  In these scenarios, Mr. Watts, the result is wholesale and indiscriminate murder of EVERYONE who happens to be in and around the selected target.  A bomb dropping from 30 thousand feet onto a “targeted” building is not the same as a strike force of soldiers “storming” that same building on a rescue mission.

And THAT is really the crux of my point, because regardless of how those “innocent civilians” happened to get around that “military target,” the fact remains that if one knows in advance that those civilians are there and yet still pushes the button to the drop the bomb on them, then one cannot escape the fact that a conscious decision has been made to take the lives of those “innocent civilians” who would otherwise still be alive had the button not been pushed.

So when my daycare analogy related that the “police” opened fire on the group and killed all 15 of the “human shields” as well as their “target,” there was no variable for a valiant rescue mission as you describe.  Of course, a SWAT team rescue mission is probably what we would do at some point in such circumstances, and perhaps some children and maybe even a police officer or two might be killed in the process.  But that is not the issue, and that is not what my analogy with “human shields” is addressing.  The question is, what would the public response be if the police in this case acted in the same manner as our military commanders have done when they give the order to drop bombs on structures that they know in advance contain innocent civilians (be they “human shields” or simply occupants), all of whom will die as a direct result of that action?

I’m saying that because of the personal connection and value we assign to our own people in our own communities, there would be intense outrage if the police performed such an act.  And the vilification of the police would grow exponentially as the photos, life stories, and tear-jerking testimonials from grieving mothers appeared in the media.  But transport that event half a world away on some other continent, populated with people of a different culture for whom we have little connection or interest, and suddenly all sorts of “collateral damage” become “acceptable.”  

LANCE:
To shift the focus back to the present situation: The result of the present  war is that future generations in Iraq will enjoy the freedoms we, in the U.S., take for granted.

BRUCE:

And what of the “freedoms” of those thousands of innocent men, women and children who died as a result of the Bush administration’s imperialistic unilateral decision to overthrow the government of a sovereign nation—the same government that the “liberating Americans” put into power and continued to support throughout its worst atrocities?

LANCE:

Hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq have already sacrificed their lives while attempting to gain those freedoms.

BRUCE:

It’s interesting that you should say that, because in the first Gulf war it was George Bush Sr. who signed the death certificate for tens of thousands of those innocent Iraqis who had joined the fight against Saddam, when he decided to pull out rather than remove Hussein from power.  Not many people are aware of this (because it’s not something you will hear in the American media), but we allowed Hussein’s Republican Guard to cross our own military lines (literally, our military stepped aside to allow them through) so that they could go “put down the resistance.”  And put it down they did!  And do you know WHY Bush Sr. stopped short of Baghdad?  Was it really because we did not want to appear to be a warmongering nation, and we were only interested in stopping Hussein’s aggression into Kuwait?  Actually, Hussein was specifically left in power because we did not want to deal with the aftermath of civil war between the three opposing factions that make up Iraq (the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds), and Hussein was a stabilizing force that we knew quite well and felt we could reasonably control (we helped him get into power, supported him through his worst atrocities, and right up to literally days before he invaded Kuwait, he was still our “friend and ally”).  The last thing we wanted was to create a “democracy” and then have the majority Muslim population elect a Shiite leader—that wouldn’t do at all!  

LANCE:

If several thousand more are sacrificed in the effort to free millions, than so be it. The blood that is spilled is the regrettable price of freedom.

BRUCE:

Regrettable indeed, especially when it is the blood of someone else’s children that are being “sacrificed.” 

And whatever lofty ideas of “freedom,” and “democratic values,” and “good intentions” you may wish to project on the American agenda in Iraq in order to “make it okay” in your own mind, that does not change the fact that we have invaded a sovereign nation with the expressed purpose of overthrowing a government.  Just despising a foreign government is not grounds for overthrowing that government, and to do so constitutes an illegal act of aggression that is, by definition, a war crime.  There was absolutely no justification for our unprovoked attack on Iraq.  There is nothing in UN Resolution 1441, or any other resolution, that gave us that authority.  We were not attacked by Iraq.  We were not “defending” against an “imminent threat” of an Iraqi-made “mushroom cloud over New York.”  Indeed, the only “mushroom clouds” caused by “weapons of mass destruction” that we have seen in this “war for peace” are those over Baghdad, and these weapons are Made in America.

Ultimately, whether or not the Iraqi government should be overthrown is not our decision, it’s the decision of the Iraqi people to determine that.  And if we were really interested in HELPING THE IRAQI PEOPLE to initiate such an act of SELF-DETERMINATION, then the best “weapon” we could have used would have been to lift the Draconian sanctions we have subjected them to for the last twelve years!  Sanctions have never worked as an effective “motivator” to “inspire citizens to revolt against their own government,” as we like to say.  Sanctions only siphon the strength of the people while making the oppressive government ruling over them even stronger, thus assuring that there WILL NOT be a revolution.  Starving people are preoccupied with one thing—food, for they have neither the strength nor the resources to focus on anything else.

 

Bruce Monson

www.freethoughtfirefighters.org

Adherence to Life BEFORE Death