The Wizard of Bombs

There is a concerted effort underway among the war camp to make sure that the American people do not pay attention to civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Too much focus on such unpleasantness could cool the war fever. "Pay no attention to those bodies behind the curtains!" shout the keyboard bombardiers.

Rich Lowry pitches in to the effort with a recent article in NRO. Lowry complains about the "...current handwringing over collateral damage from the U.S. attacks in Afghanistan." First of all, notice the verb chosen to describe the reaction of those who object to the killing of innocent people: "handwringing." Such a concern is apparently akin to what is felt by an uptight hostess who worries about mismatched silverware. Then, Lowry employs the Orwellian "collateral damage," and, in the next sentence, "casualties," but never the obvious and truthful word "deaths." This is the kind of language one might expect from sensitive guests talking around the fact that their host's son has just come out of the closet and walked in the house with his partner: "Oh, I see Timmy Junior has a friend visiting?"

The Afghan civilian casualties – which may be in the dozens or, if you believe the Taliban, in the hundreds – are taken as an indictment of the U.S. campaign, a sign that we are no better than the terrorists (the Washington Post has a long front-page piece today detailing such nonsensical views from around the world).

Here, Lowry first off ignores the great likelihood that there will be thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of deaths this winter due to massive famine. Secondly, if Joe has killed someone and Bill has stolen a loaf of bread, to point out that Bill's action is wrong does not mean you think he is "no better" than Joe. The fact that someone else has acted really badly doesn't excuse my acting badly.

The idea behind this sort of thinking is that everything is our fault: We started the war, and therefore everything bad that comes from it is our responsibility. Of course, it's the other way around: They started the war, and the inevitable unfortunate consequences – such as civilian casualties – are on the heads of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. But critics of the U.S. campaign have trouble grasping this, because they have trouble ever recognizing the perfidy of our enemies.

Here, one suspects that Lowry is trying to confuse the reader. Who is "they," and what is "the war"? Let's say that we accept both the (unproven, at least to the public) idea that bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks and the questionable use of terminology in calling a crime by private parties, who do not claim to represent any government, a war. Then we might say that bin Laden started a war on the U.S., and that we're justified in fighting back. (Since it's clear that bin Laden is behind other terrorist attacks, I'm all for fighting him and his organization, even if he wasn't behind 9/11.) But the Taliban didn't start a war with the U.S.! No one has contended that they aided in the attacks, or even knew that they were to occur. Is their asking for evidence before turning over bin Laden an act of war? No, it just won't work: Osama bin Laden may have started a war on us, but we started a war on Afghanistan.

But let's say, against all logic, that it turns out that the Taliban did plan the attacks. Then we'd have a case for war against them. But the question of how to conduct the war would still arise. It may be that a few civilian casualties are practically inevitable in any conflict, but it's obvious that different ways of conducting war will result in different civilian "risk profiles." For instance, carpet bombing from high altitude and dropping cluster bombs, both of which the U.S. is doing, are likely to result in far more civilian casualties than infantry action. The note at the end of the paragraph about the "perfidy of our enemies" is again an attempt to distract: it is the same fallacy mentioned above, where my acting badly is "defended" by pointing out that someone else acted really badly.

To the extent this view holds in the West, it is essentially a suicidal impulse. Followed to its logical conclusion, it would make it impossible for us ever to defend ourselves and ever to fight for a flawed, but morally superior goal against an evil enemy – because the evil of our enemy never actually registers with anyone. This is what happened in Vietnam, when Western outrage was focused on U.S. napalm runs rather than on the murderous and oppressive character of our enemy.

Well, no: Followed to its logical conclusion, it would make it impossible for us to ever defend ourselves using immoral means. And that, I think, is an eminently logical conclusion Lowry would like to avoid.

Gene Callahan has just finished a book, Economics for Real People, to be published this year by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

I've noticed this theme running through comments from the left. That is, the bombing is immoral and the use of troops would be a better solution. Of course, that would mean far more casualties for us. I can't decide if they desire deaths on our side to justify the taking of Afghan lives or if they want the casualties to use as a hammer to beat the soccer moms over the head and erode support for the war. I suspect a mixture of both. Meanwhile I read on another thread here that the Taliban are massacering thousands who are trying to flee. Presumably it's alright to kill your own.

What he said: defend ourselves using immoral means

What he meant to say: I don't want any reality to intrude on my cozy little definition of morality. Morality is whatever's convenient for me to espouse from my comfortable armchair while real men work in the real world on real problems.

I've noticed this theme running through comments from the left. That is, the bombing is immoral and the use of troops would be a better solution.

The right-wing solution is to treat the matter as a criminal act and issue letters of marque and reprisal for those we have sufficient reason to believe are responsible. No one, except maybe the neocons, wants troops sent it.

Gene Callahan is and has been a lifelong democrat, with democratic liberal values. I knew his father Joe and his bother Francis, and live less than a quarter of a mile from their old family farm. Our community is predominately conservative republican, but anytime I couldn't get to first base with the county republicans in power, all I had to do was contact Fran as everyone called him.

My opinion of this article is that, in his haste to make a case against the bombing all liberal logic got lost in the sea of facts.

There is a concerted effort underway among the war camp to make sure that the American people do not pay attention to civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

There is a concerted effort at lewrockwell.com to have us dismiss the deliberately caused deaths of 5000 innocent people in NY, PA, and VA of citizens from around the world and place higher value on the relatively small numbers of innocent Afghans killed inadvertantly during our campaign against Taliban and Al-Quaida forces. The million that will likely die of famine this winter are the same ones that would have died if we weren't there anyway. Its as if our campaign has somehow turned a prosperous, well fed country into the barren hungry land it is today.

Too much focus on such unpleasantness could cool the war fever

Whereas too much focus by lewrockwell.com on the unpleasantness that is the WTC ground zero site could continue to shore up the resolve of the real peacemakers. So they won't do it.

If you were a clerk in a liquor store and some gun toting goon walked in while no one else was in the store and said "The owner of this store stole all my money! Gimme all the money in the cash register and live, or, resist me and die!" what would you do? You, being sensible and wanting to live review your options. You are faced with a choice. Whether or not you agree that the goon deserves the money or think he is just a petty criminal the choice is still there and you have to make it: either give up the money and face the consequences (maybe some ridicule, maybe getting fired, or, maybe even praise for being wise!) or try to overtake the bandit who clearly has superior firepower when compared to only your fists. So, since you want to live to see another day, you hand over the money, the goon leaves and you live to go home to your family.

The moral of this story is that the Taliban are faced with a similar choice, whether they like it or not. The US clearly has superior firepower and has made demands; hand over Bin Laden and his terrorists, or face the consequences of war. The Taliban have chosen to resist. Every death that results is a consequence of that decision. There would be no innocent deaths if they would meet our demands.

There is a concerted effort underway among the war camp to make sure that the American people do not pay attention to civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

There's no doubt that innocents will die in any war, but there's a BIG difference between the terrorist's killings and our killings: We do our best to AVOID innocent deaths while the terrorists killed 5000+ innocent people absolutely, positively on-purpose. Anyone who doesn't see the moral difference doesn't have a moral compas.

Ada, just wondered if you make a pretty good wage for running a Rockwell mirror site on FreeRepublic?

Maybe I should reverse it. A mirror site is for when a politically unpopular site is expected to be attacked by hackers and go down. Like antiwar.com was during Kossovo.

Don't want to jinx Rockwell, but his site has been amazingly stable through all this.

Like our demand to the Yugoslavia government, our demands to the Taliban were designed to be refused. If our primary goal was Bin Laden, we would have offered some sort of proof. From all indications its the Taliban who are our real target, not Bin Laden.

I agree. It's important to send a message to the GOVERNMENTS that sponsor terrorism. Iraq is next. If others don't want to be on the target list they should clean up their acts. Terrorism on the scale we've seen recently can't be carried out without state sponsorship. By eliminating the governments that allow terrorist groups to exist inside their borders, we're attacking the root of the problem.

The author conveniently overlooks the fact that Bin Laden is the Commander In Chief of the Taliban.

There are no civilian casualties in afghanistan. there are either taliban or taliban supporters. In either case they are valid targets.

The attack on afghanistan should not stop until we have OBL and his network and the leaders of the taliban in our hands or until every last man women and child in afghanistan is no more. If they don't want to die then they had better turn over OBL or at least join up with the opposition forces.

the time has come that every afghani must choose sides. Either stand with us or die with them.

God Save America (Please)

"Ada, just wondered if you make a pretty good wage for running a Rockwell mirror site on FreeRepublic?"

Actually, I have it on good authority, either Pravda Online or the Hindu Times (two of Ada's other sources), forget which, that Ole Lew Rockwell is about to sue Ada for loss of revenue. Seems the hits are down on his site. Too many find it more convienient to just come here knowing that Ada will make sure the very best "anti-war" and "blame America first" propaganda is posted here.

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