No decent person wants war. There are times in life when the only means of stopping greater evil is force. The impending war with Iraq is definitely one of those situations that could be called a justified war not because the U.S wants it but because the dictator of Iraq has no intention of ever peacefully disarming.
I find it disturbing that someone could put together something so trivial and inconsequential and get it published by the Rutherford Institute .
Oh, I see! Whitehead is PRESIDENT of the Rutherford Institute. That explains it. A vanity piece.
In Saudi Arabia, I saw a large group of pictures taken of the highway of death, none I have ever seen in the media. A very disturbed indivdual I worked with got them from some other very disturbed indivdual. For fleeing civilians, they sure had plenty of military hardware. I guess Kuwaitis were escaping in their RV's that looked like tanks. This story is bunk.
Anyone using Ramsey Clark to make their argument doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
. The American armed forces bombed one end of the main highway from Kuwait City to Basra, sealing it off and then bombed the other end of the highway, sealing it off. They positioned mechanized artillery units on the hill overlooking the area and then, both from the air and the land, massacred every living thing on the road.
I seem to recall that after the ends were sealed off, the Iraqi's una$$ed the area by foot. The result was a lot of vehicles destroyed, but realitively few people.
What does this person think that the Butcher of Baghdad wants and would do to any of our soldiers or citizens if given the opportunity. In every event in human evolution there will always be rogue units/actions. Are we to cave to oppression just because we wouldn't want to hurt the bad guys? I think not. I have and will continue to be willing to place my own life in jeopardy so that I may protect my own and all that I hold dear no matter what the outcome to my enemy. I pity the fool that wont.
"In fact, one "atrocitologist" estimates that roughly 144 million people died in the 20th century due to acts of war, genocide and tyranny."
Actually that number is much higher. Socialism/Communism may have killed more than 300 million alone.
"On a 60-mile stretch of road from Mutlaa, Kuwait, to Basra, Iraq, a convoy of more than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were fleeing. These were people who were putting up no resistance, many with no weapons, leaving in cars, trucks, carts, and on foot. The American armed forces bombed one end of the main highway from Kuwait City to Basra, sealing it off and then bombed the other end of the highway, sealing it off. They positioned mechanized artillery units on the hill overlooking the area and then, both from the air and the land, massacred every living thing on the road. Fighter bombers, helicopter gunships, and armored battalions poured merciless firepower on those trapped in the traffic jams, backed up as much as 20 miles. One U.S. pilot reportedly said, "It was like shooting fish in a barrel." That fateful stretch of road has since been dubbed the "Highway of Death.""
Now this statement riles me. If we were smart we would have actually finished off those on the Highway of Death, but instead Bush the Elder called off the attack. Years later Saddam used his surviving remnants of the military loyal to him to destroy various uprisings, showing the United States what a real slaughter was. The best way we could have saved lives would have been by killing more on the Highway of Death. I hope that when we go into Iraq this time we get the Iraqi Republican Guard by the scruff of their neck and slit their throats.
"We are once again preparing to wage a war that is questionable on many fronts. Despite the violence we unleashed 12 years ago during the Gulf War and the more than 100,000 Iraqis who died, despite the fact that we have been unable to unseat Saddam Hussein, despite the growing opposition to military action against the Iraqi people at this time, the American government seems determined to unleash its awesome war machine once again."
Saddam unleashed the violence and we cleaned up the mess. This writer is dishonest at the lowest levels.
Judging from this article, I would never consider becoming a Whitehead fan...
War is not about territories.
Yes it is. THe invasion of Kuwait by Iraq was indeed about territory. Iraq's Baathist party has wanted to annex Kuwait since before Saddam Hussein came to power. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in the early nineties, one of the first things it did was to annex Kuwait as its 19th province.
War is not about oil.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait in the early nineties, it did so on the pretext that Kuwait was manipulating the oil market and Iraq couldn't get a fair price ofr its oil. Iraq also came up with an excuse that Kuwait was angle-drilling beneath the border. Both were excuses, but they were about oil and territory. Everything, you see, comes down to property rights...
War is not even about winners and losers.
Of course it is. Wars are only finished by winners, otherwise they linger on and on for years and even generations as vendettas, and the longer they go without clear winners and losers, the more people die and the more enduring the misery. Ask the North Koreans, who have been starving for decades...askk the Cubans, who linger on in misery, and whose government spreads death in Africa and in South America.
In the end, all that can really be said is that war is about killing. It is about the taking of human life.
Nope. War is only a tool, and is neither good nor bad. Those who fight it determine whether or not they fight for good or evil. In some cases it is about taking property and power from those to whom it belongs, in others, it is about restoring property and power to its rightfiul owners, and in some cases it is about shifting power and property between combatants but still not to whom it belongs. IN some cases war is about saving human life, and more importantly, about saving individual liberty, without which there would be no point in living.
So no, war is not about killing any more than is a baseball bat, which can be used for baseball, for bashing in an innocent victim's skull, or for bashing in the skull of an evil person to prevent him from victimizing others. It depends on how it is used, you see.
Appeasement, however, is about maintaining an illusion of peace through the calculated murder of innocents. It is about taking human life, or shall I say, trading the lives of other innocents for temporary and illusionary safety. It is little different from terrorism, which also specifically targets the innocent. Appeasement could be described as passive terrorism. There is nothing accidental about the resulting death.
John Donne wrote that "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.... Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind…"
While that sounds very sweet, it isn't true. Mankind as a whole is not any way diminished, nor am I diminished, by the death of Adolf Hitler or Timothy McVeigh. Instead, mankind is diminished every moment such people live to perpetuate their evil.
Care to count the victims of the Khmer Rouge, of Stalin, of Hitler, of Hussein, of Castro? Do you not think mankind would be less "diminished" if these individuals had been killed earlier, when it first became obvious what they were?
If this is so,
It isn't
then we belong to a race of human beings that has been greatly diminished over time. In fact, one "atrocitologist" estimates that roughly 144 million people died in the 20th century due to acts of war, genocide and tyranny.
Some of these died FIGHTING genocide and fighting against tyranny. The bulk of the people died of something you didn't even list, of which war is but a symptom and in which winning war and restoring order and liberty is a cure: mob rule. That's important since you seem to lump all sides in together as if they are morally equivalent. They are not. You also forgot, "apathy and appeasement," some of the two biggest killers of all, and these are absolutely essential to commit murder, to commit genocide, and to tyrannize, all of which are part of mob rule, of course. It simply isn't possible for tyrants to rise to power if people aren't apathetic and aren't appeasers. Apathy and appeasement allow lunatics to instill fear. And they only gather a following, a mob, of any truly dangerous size when they are capable of intimidating others with fear. A few thiugs establish the fear, and apathy and appeasement blow the fear out of proportion until societyt is paralyzed and in the control of the thugs. Note that I do not say "war" is what killed people- it isn't. Men murder people, and only when forcibly stopped by other Men does murder stop.
War is also about the loss of humanity—a loss that has become an inherent part of modern-day warfare.
Don't be absurd. It is human nature.
Modern technology totally dehumanizes warfare and,
No, it does not. It may distance us from our enemy, but it does not make us less human, nor does it make our enemies less human. And hand-to-hand combat with chert knives won't make us better, nor more human, nor our enemies less evil. Modern technology is yet another tool, and it does only what Men direct it to do, for good or for bad. That which increases individual liberty and promotes property rights of the individual, as brutal and cold as it may seem to you, is good. It is good that we have the ability to oobliterate those who would take away individual liberty as efficiently as possible.
in the process, totally dehumanizes us as human beings.
That's ... silly. That's a product of the sort of thinking that is produced by people who believe they can breed evil out of humanity, or perfect humanity by manipulating the individual's experiences in some state-sponsored farm. Communists and humanists think this way, but it is delusional. Perfection can never be achieved, and "peaceful" human beings cannot be created without also creating bleating, dependent sheep. Human beings remain imperfect and making people fight with rocks will not make them "more human" than if they go on fighting with daisy cutters.
Your mistake is in minimizing the REASONS people fight, and in placing all reasons, including individual freedom, in a ssubordinate position to safety.
While it allows us to wage battles from afar and bring more American fighting men and women safely home,
That's why your essay is so pathetic... if the US wins this war, humanity wins. The faster and more decisive our victory, the more people will live and prosper on both sides.
modern technological warfare also reduces the act of killing human beings to nothing more than targeting blips on a screen—a macabre video game with faceless victims
Don't be silly. The people who drop daisy cutters know very well what they do. That's why we go through so much trouble to make our weapons more precise and less destructive overall.... we do not like to kill and prefer to minimize the amount of killing we have to do to accomplish our objective. We could simply nuke everyone, if we had "lost our humanity" by using modern technology.
And you know as well as I that history clearly shows that we have NOT lost our humanity from modern technology at all, if anything, thanks to modern technology we have the LUXURY of being humane to our enemies. We have continuously stiven to reduce casualties while accomplishing the same goals, and unlike your "more human" rock-chucking or trench-fightng ancestors, we go ourt of our way to prevent the deaths of even enemy soldiers.
Not that it matters, because the only thing that really matters is the preservation of our individual, God-given liberties. If we have to kill everyone else on earth to preserve them, so be it. I'd much rather spread these liberties around. Fortunately, most everyone on earth would love to share in those liberties. Only the occassional rejects who want to take away people's individual rights have problems with this, and I don't really care if they get hurt or shredded while they try to deny these individual blessings to others with Shariah Law or fascism-communism or whatever other sick group-rights philosophy that comes along.
and no danger of someone shooting back.
That just bugs the snot out of you, doesn't it. And that's why you really wrote the piece. It burns people that the US is able to defeat enemies while incurring smaller losses than people think possible.
It's not just technology that makes those victories possible. It helps, but it is not the magic ingredient. The magic ingredient is America itself; we have what others only dream of having and we believe in it; our enemies, by contrast, are forced to fight for that in which they do not believe, often wishing we would win so as to end their misery and so they can go back to their families and live without fear.
Add a little psy-op to that and we can give them the courage to stand aside and let us get at the tyrants among them.
That's why so many on the side of evil strive day in and day out to make us feel ashamed of our country, America. they want us to quit believing in it, because they know that it is our belief in America which enables us to prosper, to fight, and to conquer. They can't make our enemies believe in their tyrannical leaders- they tried. So all they can do is try to get us to lose faith in ourselves.
Our enemies don't always WANT to shoot back. They would much prefer to live here rather than go on another day serving self-appointed gods like Saddam Hussein. The will to fight is more important than tehnology. we would be happy if Commando Solo was the only weapon we ever had to use.
I was an infantry officer in the Army from 1969 to 1971.
Thanks for your (brief) service, but I notice that you do not claim to have been in Vietnam yourself, although a casual reader might not notice that and may assume you did.
Men in my platoon who had served time in Vietnam told me many stories—but none more chilling than the one from two helicopter pilots. They told me how they would shoot the "friendlies" on their way back from reconnaissance missions just so they could empty their ammunition before returning to base. The "friendlies" were South Vietnamese women and children, helpless victims in a war they did not understand. But to the American pilots, they were simply dots on the ground.
That's interesting. Though I know many veterans, I know of no veteran who has ever said such a thing to me, and I don't believe you, any more than you should have bellieved them. And if you were their officer, and were told these things, it was your responsibility to investigate the matter, was it not? Well... did you?
This is what warfare does to so-called civilized people.
This is what you THINK it does, based on a tale allegedly told to you by your underlings, probably over a few beers. It was a tale which you evidently chose not to pursue and investigate, and probably didn't even consider looking into. You don't have any more personal experience than I do in war, and not much of a sense of ethics.
Unfortunately, these "joy killings" are not isolated instances.
On the contrary, such things are rare and are punished when made known.
Take, for instance, a U.S.-led attack that occurred twelve years ago during the Gulf War.
Wrong; this was no "joy killing" it was intentional.
This took place after Saddam Hussein announced a complete troop withdrawal from Kuwait in compliance with U.N. resolutions.
Wrong...Saddam Hussein's withdrawal from Kuwait had absolutely nothing to do with UN resolutions.. if he was following UN resolutions, he would have withdrawn on Jan 15, 1991:
JANUARY 15, 1991 : (UN DEADLINE PASSES - IRAQ STILL IN KUWAIT) UN Resolution 678 deadline; Iraq did not leave Kuwait.
Instead, Iraq did this:
JANUARY 16, 1991 : (INDIA : IRAQI-BACKED TERRORISTS BOMB AMERICAN AIRLINES TRAVEL AGENCY) Iraqi terrorists or their surrogates probably were responsible for the bombing of the American Airlines Travel Agency, an Indian-owned agent of American Airlines, in New Delhi on 16 January. The blast caused extensive damage but no casualties. - "Patterns of Global Terrorism: 1991, " http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/terror_91/asia.html , Asia Overview
JANUARY 18, 1991 : (GULF WAR, IRAQI SCUDS STRIKE ISRAEL) (UK source) The first of several Iraqi scud missiles attacks on Tel Aviv. The US warns Israel against retaliation saying it is an attempt to widen the war and break up the opposition.
JANUARY 19, 1991 : (PHILIPPINES, IRAQI TERRORISTS) Philippine authorities aggressively worked against terrorists during the Persian Gulf war, particularly Iraqis who planned to conduct operations against Western targets in Manila. On 19 January, a bomb exploded close to the Thomas Jefferson Cultural Center in Manila, killing the man carrying the device -- an Iraqi national -- and seriously injuring his partner, also an Iraqi. Following the attempted bombing, the consul general of the Iraqi embassy was expelled. Manila also rejected the credentials of an arriving Iraqi diplomat and forced him to depart. Two Iraqi students were also expelled. - "Patterns of Global Terrorism: 1991, " http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/terror_91/asia.html , Asia Overview
JANUARY 20, 1991 : (GULF WAR, IRAQ DISPLAYS POWS) Iraqi television broadcasts pictures of seven captured allied airmen.
JANUARY 22, 1991 : (GULF WAR, IRAQ BLOWS UP KUWAITI OIL WELLS) Iraq begins blowing up Kuwaiti oil wells.
JANUARY 25, 1991 : (GULF WAR, IRAQIS PUMP OIL INTO THE SEA) Iraq begins "environmental war" by pumping millions of gallons of crude oil into Gulf.
JANUARY 29, 1991 : (GULF WAR, CEASEFIRE OFFER) The US and USSR offer to declare a ceasefire if Iraq pledges to withdraw from Kuwait.
FEBRUARY 19, 1991 : (GULF WAR, PEACE PLAN REJECTED, OIL SPILL GROWS) Soviet-Iraqi peace plan rejected by Pres.Bush. Oil spill in Gulf now estimated at 1.5 million barrels.
FEBRUARY 22, 1991 : (GULF WAR, US ULTIMATUM) Pres.Bush issues 24-hour ultimatum: Iraq must withdraw from Kuwait to avoid start of ground war.
FEBRUARY 24, 1991 : (GULF WAR, GROUND WAR 'BEGINS') Pres.Bush announces the start of a ground operation. Allied ground campaign begins. Schwarzkopf's warriors carry out Gulf War's critical "left hook" maneuver as conceived by General Grant's 1863 Civil War campaign at Vicksburg. Allied forces commander General Norman Schwarzkopf says it is a "spectacular success".
FEBRUARY 25, 1991 : (GULF WAR, IRAQ LAUNCHES SCUDS ON SAUDI ARABIA, KILLS US SOLDIERS IN THEIR BARRACKS) Iraqi Scud missile hits U.S. barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 U.S. soldiers and injuring 98.
FEBRUARY 26, 1991 : (ALLIED FORCES ENTER KUWAIT CITY) Kuwaiti resistence leaders declare they are in control of Kuwait City.
And the grand finale, you will note, was NOT in compliance with UN resolutions, as Hussein must renounce claims to Kuwait. The deadlines on UN resolutions had long ago passed without the Iraqis withdrawing. Hussein withdrew from Kuwait ONLY because he was about to lose his troops altogether. No cease fire agreement had yet been made since the Iraqis had rejected all offers :
FEBRUARY 26, 1991 : (GULF WAR, HUSSEIN RETREATS) Hussein announces Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait.on Radio Bagdad that Iraqi troops have been ordered to retreat from Kuwait. But he does not renounce claims to Kuwait. Iraqi troops exodus from Kuwait City results in "Highway of Death."
FEBRUARY 27, 1991 : (GULF WAR, KUWAIT CITY LIBERATED) First Kuwaiti troops and Coalition forces enter Kuwait City. U.S. 1st Armored Div. fights battle of Medina Ridge against Iraqi Republican Guard in Iraq. Pres.Bush announces the liberation of Kuwait. He announces the cessation of hostilities will be effective from 0400 GMT the following day. The allies say they have destroyed more than half the Iraqi divisions and captured 500,000 prisoners.
FEBRUARY 27, 1991 : (BUSH ORDERS US CEASE FIRE) President Bush orders a cease fire effective at midnight Kuwaiti time. Note that Bush ordered the US forces to cease fire BEFORE all Iraqi troops surrendered, and that Iraq didn't capitulate until AFTER the "Highway of Death," where Iraqi troops had been attempting an armed withdrawal :
FEBRUARY 28, 1991 : (GULF WAR, IRAQ CAPITULATES) Iraq accepts all UN resolutions. Combat operations against Iraq are suspended
Note that Iraq didn't agree to a cease fire until well AFTER the US already stopped unilaterally :
MARCH 3, 1991 : (GULF WAR CEASE FIRE) Ceasefire agreed on Persian Gulf War, or Operation Desert Storm- Iraq - Scotsman says Saddam has weapons to wipe out world's population, nuclear bomb within 3 years "The Scotsman dossier - SPECIAL REPORT ON IRAQ" by Fraser Nelson, Westminster Editor
In short, your tale of woe is bogus. A retreating army is a legitimate, and entirely appropriate target.
.On a 60-mile stretch of road from Mutlaa, Kuwait, to Basra, Iraq, a convoy of more than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were fleeing.
Wrong-o. ANY Iraqi exiting Kuwait didn't belong there in the first place, and any Iraqi in the company of armed Iraqi soldiers is effectively a combatant, not a civilian. It is the responsibility of the Iraqis to keep civilians out of harm's way, not to use them as shields in a parade northward, assuming there were civilians in the mix at all.
These were people who were putting up no resistance, many with no weapons, leaving in cars, trucks, carts, and on foot.
Wrong. They were a retreating army endeavoring to avoid capture and had not surrendered, and they were indeed armed. There is no requirement for EVERYONE to be armed, by the way. It matters not at all in what sort of vehicles they were riding, other than I would point out that by stealing those vehicles and other property, stealing Kuwaiti official archives, they had violated the human rights of the Kuwaiti owners and had shown intent to use Kuwaiti materials to further Hussein's cause. They deserved everything they got.
The American armed forces bombed one end of the main highway from Kuwait City to Basra, sealing it off and then bombed the other end of the highway, sealing it off.
That IS a good way to destroy a retreating force of armed soldiers. They should have surrendered in Kuwait City instead of following Hussein's orders and trying to escape with their weapons and stolen goods. They tried to preserve their force to fight again elsewhere, and would have, as other retreating Iraqi troops ended up murdering Kurds shortly after getting away from us.
They positioned mechanized artillery units on the hill overlooking the area and then, both from the air and the land, massacred every living thing on the road. Fighter bombers, helicopter gunships, and armored battalions poured merciless firepower on those trapped in the traffic jams, backed up as much as 20 miles. One U.S. pilot reportedly said, "It was like shooting fish in a barrel." That fateful stretch of road has since been dubbed the "Highway of Death."
That's how it goes. Next time, don't invade another country, don't kidnap its people, don't rape, pillage, or destroy the property of your victims, and above all, don't annex the country. If you ignore that advice, at least surrender- immediately. It works best BEFORE we start shooting.Right now we're wishing the "Highway of Death" had been a good deal longer. We spared way too many Republican Guard the first time around.
In a report submitted to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal, charges are made that those killed were Palestinian and Kuwaiti civilians trying to escape the siege of Kuwait City and the return of Kuwaiti armed forces. The report claims that no attempt was made by U.S. military command to distinguish between military personnel and civilians.
The charges were made by WHO, exactly? I'm skeptical since I know the charges that come out of an institution which puts Syria and Libya on human rights commisions is a joke.
The Rules of War do not require us to distinguish between military personnel and civilians being used as human shields- the responsibility for the presence of civilians, assuming there were any, is entirely on the Iraqis, as everyone knows.
Pictures taken after the attack show charred and dismembered bodies. Some of these photographs can be viewed by clicking on the link for Peter Turnley’s photo essay, "The Unseen Gulf War."
That's what happens if you screw with the US. Now, don't you wonder why we Americans are not allowed to see similar pictures of charred Americans what happened to our people on 9/11/2001? How about all the other cases like the USS Cole, etc? Do you think I CARE about the Republican Guard and anyone with them knowing what they allow to happen to their own people, much less to others?
Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. Attorney General under Lyndon Johnson,
Ramsey Clark, a devoutly anti-American communist and apologist for the most murderous regimes in history, including North Korea and Iraq... a man who has all the credibility of Goebbels...
suggested the carnage could only have resulted from the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs—anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols.
And he's wrong. But according to international protocols, retreating armies are legit targets and if they use human shields (civilians) they are the ones committing war crimes.
The killing did not stop with the Gulf War.
Te Gulf War didn't end at the Highway of Death; we had all the environmental damage Hussein caused to contend with, amid other things. Hussein went on to murder as many Iraqi dissidents and Kurds as possible. Hussein has invalidated the cease fire agreements and has chosen to continue the war indefinitely with both Iraqi intelligence agents posing as diplomats and through proxies.
Following the tragedy of 9/11, the American government dispatched its arsenal of deadly weapons to Afghanistan to quash Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaida network—but to no avail. And once again, there were reports of the indiscriminate killing of civilians by American forces where entire villages were wiped out and women and children lay dead on the cold earth of Afghanistan.
And yet, the Afghans are happier than they have been in decades... imagine that. Could it be that all those rumors your ilk start are lies and outright exaggerations? Of course that's the case. There were no reports of "indiscriminant killing" of civilians. In NO cases were civilians intentionaly or knowingly targetted or killed, as all investigations have proven.
We are once again preparing to wage a war that is questionable on many fronts.
Well, then question it, but don't lie about it or resort to the sort of nonsense you are pushing here.
Despite the violence we unleashed 12 years ago during the Gulf War and the more than 100,000 Iraqis who died,
Quit lying about the figures.
despite the fact that we have been unable to unseat Saddam Hussein,
Give us time
despite the growing opposition to military action against the Iraqi people at this time,
Dream on...there is no planned military action "against the Iraqi people" on our part, and you know this. That you even phrase things this way betrays you as ignorant. There is also no "growing opposition." The same losers as usual are out there protesting. And not very many - evidently the old red daiper babies are getting burned out.
the American government seems determined to unleash its awesome war machine once again.
It's about time.
Although the possibility that we are seemingly headed for war again has caused grave concerns, there is a much bigger issue here. That is the fact that modern technological warfare is turning human beings into non-feeling killing machines.
I am more concerned about what poor standards in education have done to stunt the minds of people like you.
This should cause us to tremble. Moreover, it has to make us question, and wonder, how far we have traveled down the road to perdition. We have placed others on the highway of death. In the end, however, it is we who are traveling the highway of death. May God help us all.
I doubt one such as you believes in God since you seem more inclined to wallow in deceit.
