It's time to dump the Republicans

[Ed from OC 0]

The thought occured to me recently that there's an even better approach that would work as a much broader strategy: bomb every mosque, period. Literally nuke Mecca. Leave no Islamic religious shrine untouched. Offer bounties to those who kill Islamic religious leaders, at any level from individual villages up to the Khomeinis. Anybody with any sense would quickly make a simple induction: Practicing Islam = high risk of your messy demise.

I'm very sympathetic to this view. I'm amazed that Islam gets off easy because it's a religion. If it were a secular ideology, such as Nazism, would we have any problem going after their gathering places, or taking out locations that matter to them? (Actually, given the state of things, maybe so, but the religious element is certainly important to getting us to treat them with kid gloves.)

[tommyedison 0]

If it were a secular ideology, such as Nazism, would we have any problem going after their gathering places, or taking out locations that matter to them?

North Korean Communism (secular, atheist), China (supporter of Iran, NK, etc), Russia (supporter of Iran, NK, Syria, etc) all secular and actively harming the national security of the US yet the US is afraid to go after any of them.

(Actually, given the state of things, maybe so, but the religious element is certainly important to getting us to

treat them with kid gloves.)

I now doubt it as much the religious element as the mystic one. The more mystic our enemy is, the more we treat him with kid gloves.

[Guest Michelle F. Cohen]

I am in emphatic 100% agreement with Stephen's answers in post #195, to Jack Wakeland's 'questions' and remarks in post #192.

I concur. I could not say it any better, so I am signing off this thread as well.

[Jack Wakeland 0]

The thought occured to me recently that there's an even better approach that would work as a much broader strategy: bomb every mosque, period. Literally nuke Mecca. Leave no Islamic religious shrine untouched. Offer bounties to those who kill Islamic religious leaders, at any level from individual villages up to the Khomeinis. Anybody with any sense would quickly make a simple induction: Practicing Islam = high risk of your messy demise.

Back in the autumn of 2001, I made a much more modest proposal: The U.S. should compile as complete a list as possible of every Mullah, every Imam, every Mufti, every Ayatollah, and every lowly prayer leader who has ever once issued a homicidal fatwa against America or against an American citizen.

The U.S. would then work down the list--using infantry sweeps, artillery, guided bombs, etc. in war zones; covert snipers, car bombers and kidnappers in non-cooperative countries; and FBI investigators, legal extradition or physical extraction to the U.S for detention and/or prosecution/imprisonment in cooperative countries.

We could farm out the list to allies so they could work it, too...or add names to it and ask us to help them to hunt down their jihadists. Some or most of the list could be made public in the hopes that Mulsim fanatics would take pride in being put on it...leading more to issue the fatwas that would become, on the list, a secular warrant against them.

We and our allies would probably never finish the list, but we'd be putting all the Islamo-fasicist religious leaders of the world in the grave, in detention, or in prison. As we progressed, more and more of them would feel unsafe in their own cities and towns. Eventually they'd be compelled to take their criminal religion underground--reducing their poisonous influence on the cultures (such as they are) of their native countries.

I still seriously offer that proposal from time to time.

It is something that the Bush Administration has never considered and probably never would. But it isn't so far outside the norm for our political system of mixed premises that it couldn't be done. It would be one piece of a war policy that would be well suited to the global conflict we're in: an irregular war that recognizes no national boundaries.

If the U.S. should ever be nuked, then one practical retaliatory step that might realistically be considered by an American president would be to hit the shrine of Mecca with a Cobalt bomb: BOOM one of the five pillars of Islam could be destroyed and made radioactively uninhabitable. For decades or even for hundreds of years any Muslim making a Haj to the former site of temple would die of it.

[Free Capitalist 0]

This is at last the third time in recent posts that you have made this or a similar claim, and the sole time you provided an example in support (Burgess and nation-building), it was demonstrated unequivocally that you got the facts wrong. As moderator I ask that you do not post again to this thread unless you either provide a specific concrete instance by way of a direct quote in support of your claim, or retract it. And please do not think that your current "seems to" up above in any way obviates your need to demonstrate by actual example.

Here (among other places) is where I get the perception that only one viable option is offered. If I am wrong in my understanding of this article, I will gladly take it all back.

Dr. Brook's "Just War Theory vs. American Self-Defense" (co-authored with Alex Epstein), The Objective Standard, Spring 2006,

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues...-war-theory.asp :

"Given the options available to us, it is inconceivable that the best strategy is to spend endless military resources to set up a “democracy” in Iraq, and then pray that every terrorist nation decides to adopt a free, constitutional government. [...] Given the options available to us, the Forward Strategy of Freedom is entirely self-sacrificial."

The current war is not just merely a bad strategy, it is immoral. And not merely some parts of it, but the entirety of it, without even one salvageable nugget of self-interest. What does that say about someone who might not be completely and 100% against it?

"Observe that in Bush’s policy the “liberation” of Iraq is not seen as part of defeating that country, ut as replacing the necessity of defeating it. And the magical inspiration it is supposed to provide to Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and so on, will allegedly replace the necessity of militarily confronting those nations. Since Bush feels morally unwilling to defeat our enemies, he regards it as necessary to delegate that task to their subservient and sympathetic populations.

[Here go examples of how nation-building inspires our enemies.]

To call this a policy of American self-interest or American self-defense is to invert the meaning of these concepts. This is a policy of American self-destruction, and it is made possible by a theory that morally rules out self-defense while claiming to support it."

To "regard it as necessary to delegate [the task of winning] to their subservient and sympathetic populations" is to invert the meaning of the concepts of American self-interest and American self-defense. What is such a thinking made possible by? It is only the "Just War Theory", which traces back to no one else but Augustine, and to nothing other than altruism. (See the article.)

"Once the facts are rationally evaluated, if it is found that using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran’s nuclear facilities or flattening Fallujah to end the Iraqi insurgency will save American lives, then these actions are morally mandatory, and to refrain from taking them is morally evil." [emphasis mine]

This course of action is not just a best strategy amongst a variety of viable options, but the only strategy, and the only moral strategy. Whatever else, to not do it would be to condemn oneself. (I'm assuming he's talking about saving American soldiers' lives, which is different from civilian.)

However, there is one concession:

"Once an aggressor country is defeated, there is a legitimate question of what the victor should do. There are numerous options, ranging from letting the most powerful domestic faction take over (with the knowledge that any aggression against America will lead to the same fate as the predecessor), to handing over the reins to a friendly strongman or tribe, to making a serious effort to establish a proper, free society."

The above quote, though, is not a discussion of how to wage the war, but what to do after the war is already won. That's a wholly different topic, pretty much unrelated to our discussion. How do we win that war in the first place? What options are we legitimately granted? I have been unable to find any but one. Which is the whole of my point, and all that I was trying to say.

--------------

As I say, give me options. Surely there's more than one way that a self-assertive people can act in a given war without being altruistic. If we do criticize Bush's policy -- and I'm right alongside everyone else in considering that something more assertive and something more drastic is needed -- if we do criticize the current war, then let us do so in the realm of strategy. If the American people will not accept the most destructive option, let us discuss something less destructive, but not in any way more sacrificial.

I also think the thread has gone too far, and will take my discussion on this topic elsewhere. As a last word, I would strongly suggest for consideration the difference between the "best war possible" and the "best war that the nation will accept, but which will not compromise our principles". These two wars are not the same. If we continue advocating our ideal war instead of the most nationally acceptable version of our war, we'll continue to get sidelined, and needlessly.

[PhilO 0]

... the "best war that the nation will accept, but which will not compromise our principles".

For which there is no solution. It would be like saying "the best temperature that the nation will accept is 120 degrees Fahrenheit in order to solve the problem of boiling water at sea level air pressure." Wishful thinking does not change reality, and "the best war that the nation will accept" - assuming that the current war *is* the "best war" - is not going to stop Islamic terrorism from annihilating America, on the current course.

The reason why pragmatic expediency, and telling people only what they may want to hear, is bad (vs. the truth) is that it doesn't work in reality.

[Rose Lake 0]

There was a reference to saving American lives in the article FC cited. I see no reason to assume that this refers only to soldiers. I think this statement is a literal, overarching moral statement of the purpose of war for the United States. Saving American lives, preventing Americans from being murdered by foreign aggressors, is the sole justification for a just war. There is no other option. Actions that save American lives by preventing our murder by foreign aggressors are morally necessary. Actions that do not help to achieve this end, used as substitutes for those actions that will achieve it, are evil.

[Stephen Speicher 0]

Here (among other places) is where I get the perception ...

Free Capitalist, the only "perception" that matters right now are the three that I have so strenuously objected to. Let me remind you of those three statements:

In this post.

I would like to question the very fundamental premise that soldiers are necessarily considered to be "sacrificed" if they aren't used according to how the people would like them being used.

In this post

What I had meant to say was that a lot of people take 'total war' as the only sensible alternative, precisely due to that "host of Op-Eds , letters-to-the editor, and lectures [from ARI]"; for that same reason, anything other than total war is automatically viewed as altruism

In this post

but due to a representation of total war that at least seems to appropriate morality exclusively on its side and preclude any other alternative course of action.

How you get these conclusions from the Brook quotes that you provided, is beyond me. Perhaps you really mean something other than you have said, but I take your words to mean what they actually say.

As to your three statements: No one necessarily considers soldiers to be sacrificed because we don't like how they are being used, and there is nothing automatically viewed as altruism. That would imply a possible non-rational basis for judgment, hardly a standard to employ. Rational justification is given throughout. Note also that the Brooks quote that you gave starts out with "Given the options available to us ...," which leaves open the possibility that other situations with other options might imply a different course of action.

Frankly, I don't think you have previously articulated your objections, much less understood the view that Brook has presented. But, at the end of this current post you say:

As I say, give me options. Surely there's more than one way that a self-assertive people can act in a given war without being altruistic.

I think this statement more neatly underscores your difficulties. In any given war there are always options in the specifics of how the war is fought, but there is no option in terms of the principle that it is never rational to act in a self-sacrificial manner. Your objections seem to stem from a different sense of morality than the moral principles that Brook both implies and enunciates throughout his writings.

[Paul's Here 0]

The American armed forces weren't the only forces that faught ferciously on Okinawa. The Japanese forces did, too.

The biggest difference between the battle for Okinawa and the big battles in Iraq are the scale and intensity of the enemy action. The military effort of Iraq's insurgents is dwarfed by those of the Imperial Japs.

When the fighting errupts, war is war, but scale does matter. American losses on Okinawa were over 12,000 dead, 36,000 wounded, twice the number of wounded and five times the number of dead in 3-1/2 years of war in Iraq. The situation on Okinawa was so horrific that over tens of thousands of American infantrymen were psychologically immobilized by "combat fatigue." We don't see signficant rates of combat fatigue in Iraq.

Another issue of scale matters, too. In Iraq, a nation of 25 million, there have never been more than 20,000 or 40,000 active enemy militiamen. In Okinawa, a population of 0.5 million was defended by a regular army of 110,000.

The Japanese had some industrial capability. The Muslims have nothing other than oil. A military like the US's should be able to sweep through Iraq in two weeks. How many civilians are killed is strictly a military question that is determined by the requirements to kill those 20-40,000 militiamen. But killing those 20-40,000 is a requirement of any war. I don't care how many civlians are casualties. If the US is not there to kill the enemy, it shouldn't be fighting a war. Besides, why aren't those 25 million civilians killing those 20-40,000 militiamen themselves? Are you telling me those civilians are totally innocent?

When 1 in 5 inhabitants are hostile combatants, many civilians will be killed in the course of battle. In this kind of battle it is of little concern when 10 or 20% of them are killed. But when only 1 in 600 or 1,200 is a hostile combatant, the deaths of 0.01% or 0.1% of the population might be the expected by-product of combat. tHE the number of civilian deaths is only 0.01% that small, is does that indicate the Armed forces are being held back. Would the deaths of 1% of the population be better?

One judges the success by how many enemy are killed, not how many civilians. I don't see many enemy combatants killed. All I hear is 4 today, 11 yesterday, 8 the previous day, etc. It seems like the militants kill more of themselves in suicide bombings than the US army is killing them.

To do that would require the U.S. to purposely and systematically target and kill very large numbers of civilians (about 250,000). Would that weaken support for the insurgency or strengthen it? Would that decrease or increase the number of enemy combatants we face?

If those 20-40,000 were among the 250,000, then yes, it would decrease the number of enemy combatants we face.

What would that do to our countrymen's sense of the moral legitimacy of the war? What would that do to the our soldiers' sense of their moral legitimacy as a fighting force? Would the conclusion that we're a criminal actor in Iraq committing an evil that is essentially of the same character as Saddam's really be all that irrational? Be objective, now.

OK. Let's be objective. Withdraw all troops from Iraq immediately because we don't care about allowing are soldiers to attack our enemy.

Would it make sense to go, lets say, to a hostile neighborhood like Sadr City and pick out a thousand hostages and execute them for each American soldier killed by the enemy? Would that be the way to get the numbers of enemy supporters down?

No, I would go into that cesspool, and tell each neighborhood that the houses will be burned to the ground if they don't turn in the terrorists. I would destroy whatever method they have of financially supporting themselves. I would destroy all local food sources and agriculture. I would do this from town to town, until a sufficient number of refugees moved to Iran. Then, anyone seen in the area would be killed if they returned.

No, that would just enrage the enemy without crippling them, you say? Okay, how about setting about killing every man, woman and child in each city and town, one, by one, until the last insurgent surrenders? Military history proves that--right or wrong--the prospect of death is enough to subdue the enemy.

That's only if the enemy values life. And it is clear that the Islamic totalitarians don't have that value.

Moral issues are black and white and the right does not depend on numbers. But we live in a world of particluars. With today's superbly accurate bombs and shells and today's superbly effective infantry forces, the death of 10 or 20 civilians for each enemy combatant killed would require a policy that purposely targets and kills civilians because they might be supporting the enemy.

I wouldn't say "might." If there is sufficient evidence to support a military operation whose goal is to kill the enemy, then the death of civilians is on the head of the terrorists. And I really don't care whether the people in France, Germany, or the UN understand that.

In that kind of a war, who is the criminal?

For a killing to be right, it has to be rationally understood to be a way to preserve innocent life.

Whose life? Americans or Iraqis?

So if killing large number of civilians in an occupied country.

[RickWilmes 0]

I don't know if you read TIA Daily or would ever care to, but in that paper I went into the details of military tactics and the political situation in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 to report on whether or not the U.S. is wining and losing.

Since you bring this up, I would like to focus on the following quote,

Counter-insurgency war is the specific context in which the immediate waging of war and the question of what kind of government we are trying to create in the conquered nation necessarily overlap.

This quote first appeared in Vol. 19, No. 7 & 8 of the print version of the TIA in the article, The Weapon of Democracy (p. 26) and than reappeared in the TIA Daily on October 11, 2006 in the article A Guide to Counter-Insurgency War.

Can you explain why it is in the United States’ self- interest to create a government of the conquered people of Iraq? And when did President Bush make this policy change?

According to Cobra II:The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq by Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, Bush did not think that ‘stabilizing newly ordained states' was the role of the U.S. Military.

When he was running for president, George W. Bush had signaled that he wanted to overhaul the U.S. military. His father’s earlier victory in the Persian Gulf, Bush said in a 1999 speech at the Citadel, was an impressive accomplishment, but also one that had taken six months of planning, amassing of military forces and supplies, and preparation. That was too long for the sole remaining superpower to project its power throughout the world. Bush pledged to develop lighter, more mobile, and more lethal forces.

Nor did Bush see the need for the sort of lengthy peacekeeping operations or difficult nation-building missions that the administration of Bill Clinton had undertaken in the Balkans. The purpose of the military, Bush argued, was to fight and win the nation’s wars, not to linger to bring stability to newly ordained states. A strong secretary of defense would be appointed and he would have a broad mandate to develop a new military structure. Generals and admirals who supported the new program would be promoted. Billions of dollars in new spending would be channeled for the research and development of missile defense and other high-technology military systems.(3)(p. 5)

(Bold is Mine)

The essence of the upcoming election is the HONESTY of the Republican Party. The Republicans are asking for our LOYALTY to ‘their’ cause of bringing ‘democracy’ to the Islamic world 'not 'the SELF-INTEREST OF OUR NATION. That is why I agree with the topic of this thread, “It is time to dump the Republicans.”

(3) George W. Bush, “A Period of Consequences,” 23 September 1999, the Citadel, available from http://citadel.edu/r3/pao/addresses/pres_bush.html, accessed 1 November 2005. Richard Armitage, who later served as deputy secretary of state under Colin Powell, drafted much of the text.(p. 513)

[Jay P 0]

....

If the U.S. should ever be nuked, then one practical retaliatory step that might realistically be considered by an American president would be to hit the shrine of Mecca with a Cobalt bomb: BOOM one of the five pillars of Islam could be destroyed and made radioactively uninhabitable. For decades or even for hundreds of years any Muslim making a Haj to the former site of temple would die of it.

It wouldn't be for hundreds of years, right? Let's see if I understand this. A "cobalt bomb" (do we even have any of these?), it is my understanding, is a nuclear bomb to which lots of cobalt has been added. When it explodes, exposure to the neutrons ends up transforming this cobalt into cobalt-60. OK, now I see that the half-life of cobalt-60 is a little over 5 years. So that means that after, say, 50 years, 10 half lives would have passed, and the original cobalt-60 activity would have dropped by a factor of two, ten times over. I.e., its activity would be about 1/1000 of what it was originally. So maybe it would be dangerous for a few decades? (Also, wouldn't the contaminated area be wherever the wind happened to blow the fallout; not necessarily Mecca, where the bomb exploded?)

I also don't understand why you would advocate this action, when you have, in other posts in this forum, argued against us using nuclear weapons on our enemies today. (For example, Iran.) Is the difference that you think it would be OK to use a cobalt bomb in retaliation, once the US has been attacked with nuclear weapons, but that it's not OK to use nuclear weapons preemptively? Or.... why?

Why not use our overwhelming might now, to bring destruction to our enemies, before they have a chance to kill more of us? Why do we have to wait until the enemy strikes the first nuclear blow, killing who-knows-how-many Americans in the process?

[Guest ElizabethLee]

Loose lips sink ships. So do loose and embittered condemnations of one's countrymen; one's brothers-in-arms.

....

Support the good aspects of President Bush's war plan. Offer corrections that would repair that policy where it is wrong. And vote Republican in November.

I agree completely, Jack, about needing to support our countrymen. Have you been following the HBL’s on the religiosity issue? I’m gravely concerned about Pres. Bush’s religiosity, and in particular his statements like “God told me to attack Iraq, and I did.” [possibly not exact]

[Army Ant 0]

Are you asking if counter-insurgency warfare is intrinsically self-sacrificial? If so, I would suggest you check your premises.

If not, then an obvious counter-question must be: In what context? So far as I can recall in this very long topic-thread, no one has said that C-I warfare is always wrong no matter the circumstances. My view is that there might be times when using C-I is appropriate. Everything would depend on one's purpose and on the circumstances, perhaps with other factors. As for the present situation, I have never seen any persuasive argument in favor of using C-I warfare against Islamo-fascists in the Middle East to the exclusion of other probably more effective, and certainly less expensive methods.

What do you mean by "built into"? Are you asking if it is an essential characteristic of C-I warfare? If that is what you are asking, then based on the little I know of C-I warfare, I would say, "No, of course not."

I agree with this. There are two approaches in dealing with 4GW forces. The escalation model, and the de-escalation model. The de-escalation model tries to use as little force as possible and the military acts like police. The police generally try to de-escalate situations, not escalate them. They don't bomb, or get into huge firefights like in Fallujah. But when they act, they act fast, like SWAT teams. The military acts like the police, its job is to bring order and, in my view this entails protecting the individual rights of the citizens.

Then we have the escalation model, which is the opposite. We go in like Romans or Mongols, and we flatten the place. We go in hard and fast, and leave. And from what I've read from the experts, you either try one or the other CONSISTENTLY. If you try to compromise between the two, you will FAIL.

But how do you determine which is the right one to use?

I think the only way to do this is by looking at the occupied peoples culture to see if it at least somewhat consistent, or will accept western values. If it is, then you can de-escalate and establish a proper non-threatening government.

By the way, C-I is non consistent with altruism. The only reason why some people think that's the case is because they uphold the principle of de-escalation above the western values they are trying to establish in the form of a proper government. Which in turn means sacrificing our values in order to appease the enemy just so they wont have to escalate.

For example, just imagine that we have to attack the fictional country of KAPI that is a threat to America because their religion tells them that America sucks. The people in this country are backward, mystic, death worshipping, collectivists who hold religion above all. And for some reason we have determined that we have to establish a new government after we are done defeating them so KAPI wont be a threat to us anymore.

The military determines for whatever reason that de-escalation is the right approach. Now the Kapians are mystic nuts, and believe that religion and government are connected, and they also have tons of crazy beliefs like, sacrificing virgins to their god.

Now imagine the military trying to do its job, and protect these virgins from being killed. The KAPIANS would revolt if they weren't allowed to follow their practices. So the military, in order to uphold the principle of de-escalation, decided to allow them to keep practicing their sacrificing. And so we wont be forces to massacre them, we plan to allow some of their religion into their new constitution. Just to appease them.

Of course this undermines the whole point of the invasion in the first place. The military has to re-evaluate the KAPIANS and act accordingly.

Now if the KAPIANS were different, and didn't believe that religion and government should be united. And didn’t take religion "THAT” seriously, then the de-escalation model might work.