Keeping the Peace

I am sorry about your loss. The thought than any of my best friends would die under such circumstance would likely anger me.However, you would need to point to a war ever prosecuted which wasn't chock full of mistakes and blunders before commenting so definitively on this one. It would be great if all priorities could be tackled equally well but not every priority can be number one. I don't know the details here but if seizing the oil fields was a prime objective at the time and that meant exposing a risk of munitions capture or even certainty of munitions capture - with all the downsides later that that might incur - then tackle the highest priority one must still

Maybe you've heard of a little action in a place called Kosovo? You know, it's funny - a while back I was looking for statistics on American casualties in Kosovo, because I was sure they were less than Iraq, by far.I googled and googled but I just couldn't find a number of American deaths. I was perplexed because I knew I was a better searcher than that. Finally I read a little further and all was revealed.There were no American casualties in the Kosovo action. We took down a brutal dictator, a genocidal madman with weapons of destruction, and didn't lose a single American life. Did it in months. So, oil is more important to you than human life. Gotcha. It's too bad how many people in our administration are in exact agreement with you.

I myself don't consider the objective soley to ensure that your own troops aren't killed. Neither do most prosecutors of war these days. Folk got killed in the conflict and to decide that the flag stitched to their tunics or that they were civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time renders them irelevant to the discussion makes this statement of yours ring somewhat hollow This message has been edited by iano, 08-Feb-2006 03:26 AM

I guess I don't know how to respond to this. If human life is valueless to you, I guess I don't see under what scheme you can consider yourself a moral person.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 02-08-2006 12:37 AM

If you haven't seen it already go watch 'Saving Private Ryan' Follow closely Captain Millar. Captain John Millar

To answer this direct question. Theoretically Individual human lives might be less important than survival of the whole, or perhaps a moral objective is more important than human lives. That would still allow someone to be moral.While I agree with your position that the Bush administration was incorrect in its handling of operations and securing oil rather than safety of troops (not to mention civilians) so that SECURITY was top priority rather than potential MONEY, I am at a loss to understand your point about Kosovo.If you were against Iraq, the Kosovo conflict should have been just as odious. It was just as much a violation of a nation's sovereignty with no threat posed to the US. The reason we lost no one was because we conducted it in the most cowardly fashion a nation could conduct its business.We bombed people. We bombed wholly innocent people. You say we took down a dictator but he was in fact the elected official and we did not kill him at all. I don't believe any one of the people accused of atrocities were killed. We destroyed civilian structures and civilians in a sort of uber-siege until the gov't gave in.Not sure if you remember the bridge full of civilians wearing targets in demonstration against our bombing their populations centers.If you value human life, perhaps you should find out how many human lives we took in our campaign. We even managed to bomb a convoy of people we were supposed to be helping (whoops!). And after the collapse of the gov't we did nothing to put security into place for those people, and lawlessness and revenge killings were common.Both Kosovo and Iraq stand as examples of really horrific use of power by the US, followed by gross negligence in providing security.Its possible Germany's bombing raids into Spain in support of that gov't resulted in no casualties on the german side. I'd be sort of put out thinking of the spanish airiraids as more "humanitarian" than when they'd physically invade and incur losses of their own troops.This message has been edited by holmes, 02-08-2006 02:22 PM

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

If I thought Iraqis would stop being killed if troops pulled out, I'd be for withdrawing troops. Unfortunately as bad a job as we are doing, it really could be worse for THEM. They do not have security available for infrastructure and the population.Since we invaded and destroyed their security systems, no matter what losses we take, it is important that we not leave until they are back up and running.I was 100% against the war. This is one of the reasons why. But since it happened, there is an obligation.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)

I've seen it. Not exactly a date movie.But I don't see how that answers my question.

Parallels to be drawn with the war on drugs perhaps....Your argument against Crashes position is I think a sound one. I was intending to ask him how many combat troops had been deployed and which firefights they had gotten involved in - but you seem to have made the point more convincingly. Without pointing fingers at anyone, it is incumbant on us all that we don't begin behaving like those soliders in Saving Private Ryan who sat around joking about the dog tags of soldiers killed and lose sight of the fact that each battered statistic represents untold human misery and death. With that in mind...Securing oil might well be considered an acceptable moral objective which involves loss of life if what oil means to the world is taken into consideration. I think the following may be accepted to be true:- the Bush administration is not to blame for the fact that oil is the fuel which allows the heart of our economy to beat. Take away the oil and the worlds economy goes into immediate cardiac arrest.- the middle east is a critical supplier of oil to the world. There is neither a short or long term alternative to their oil for an world economy thus constructed- the middle east is a very unstable region for a wide variety of reasons. Saddam was only one of them and probably not the most significant of themIf these things are true then it is safe to say that left to itself, an assurance that the worlds economic heart would continue to beat healthily would in no way be forthcoming. Whatever one thinks about the rights and wrongs of a world economy that has let itself become so dependant on oil the fact remains that it is. And given a scenario where unstableness risks careering off into chaos it is not unreasonable that action be taken to ensure that this doesn't happen. A serious interuption in mid east oil supply caused by any event tipping the Mid East into chaos would result in the collapse of the worlds economy. And if that isn't sure to cause serious loss of life then I don't know what it. If people are indeed prepared to risk life to safeguard oil supplies when oil supplies are flowing, hold onto your hats for what will happen when they suddenly flow not.Irans nuclear power stations can be safely predicted never to come into operation - even though they are arriving/have arrived at the stage where they are to ready to receive fuel grade uranium from Russia. The Israelis will never permit such an enemy to come into possession of the weapons grade material which will flow from such power stations. How they will achieve that is open to question, but one can be sure that whatever it takes will be done. They successfully employ afterall, the same modern philosophy attempted every other military in the world: maintain your strike/defence capabilities at one or more orders of magnitude above your percieved enemies.Is there the potential for sudden catastophic destabilisation in the region, the rapid countering of which, in order to ensure no interruption of oil supply, would result in a mind bogglingly high loss of life? I think so. Is demonstrating to all who may be thinking thus, that such destabilising action will in no way be tolerated a reasonable preventitive strategy to use. I think so too.Whether or not this was the thinking that precipitated the US action in Iraq is open to question but it is safe to say that most are not in possession of the data necessary to fully inform. We may chose to suppose that the powers that be are operating somewhat along the thinking I suggest. If so, that they are imperfect, make mistakes does not take away from the correctness of their actions. They might well be playing the cards with which they have been dealt.

No, not exactlyI think my point was that in Captain Miller, we find a man who accepts there can be a need to sacrifice life in pursuit of a greater goal and is willing to lay down the lives of others in achieving that goal. But who is nevertheless racked by the responsibility that comes with it.I don't think anyone who saw the film would think of Captain Millar as an immoral man

I didn't say that oil is more valuable compared to human life, that's why I started this topic. It is useless to be over there in the first place. I made the oil comment becuase that is the only and bare minimum reason why we are over there. The oil is still just an excuse to be over there.

Whenever there are oil shortages, the two main concerns are1. Emergency services
2. Delivering/harvesting foodAnd there are plenty more. Is oil worthless compared to life? No, oil allows us to live as we do, a sudden withdrawal of oil will cost lives.

Both you and Holmes seem to think that I'm not willing to place a greater goal over the value of one or many human lives. How you two got this misconception, I have no idea. Holmes seems to have a problem with basic English but I'm not sure where your mistake is.Let me assure you that you're both wrong. I have no problem with the idea that some goals are worth dying for.What I've asked repeatedly, and what you've consistently dodged, is precisely what goal you believe justified the death of my buddy, and all the rest of the 2,000+ Americans and 30,000+ Iraqis this conflict has killed. "Freedom"? "Democracy"? You can't hand someone democracy at the point of a sword. And if establishing democracy had been the goal, we would have worked hard in the beginning to make sure dangerous weapons didn't fall into the hands of an insurgency. It doesn't take a crystal ball - only a history book - to see that anytime you have an occupation, you have an insurgency. Disarming that insurgency, which begain almost immediately after the invasion, should have been top priority.It's not clear to me how insurgents would have used oil fields as weapons. So the idea that an oil field is a greater priority than taking actions to disarm the enemy directly is laughable to me. The only persons who could place a higher priority on an oil field than on the lives of troops is a person with no regard for human life. When I told you that you had no regard for human life, it was because I had already discounted the possibility that you percieved a greater goal worth dying for. If you had, you would be able to tell me what it is.

I didn't say that you did.

Crash you need to take a break because you totally misrepresented my post to you.In one post you said that a person who did not value human life could not be moral. I was explaining how such a person could be. I didn't even mention you or suggest what I thought you thought.I then went on to discuss your (in another post) use of Kosovo as an example of a more humanitarian (or safe/successful) approach to warfare than Iraq. At best it was suggesting that you were misinformed about Kosovo, and at worst that you were viewing success based on sacrifice of US personnel compared to all that are lost in order to achieve a goal.

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)