Thank you, Brad, for saying this so clearly and unequivocally.

I would actually go so far as to say that believing “domination can be for the good of the dominated” is a mindset basically identical to the one that believes that a man sometimes needs to “smack a woman around so that she knows what’s good for her”.

Dr. Major General Gale also offered the excuse that perhaps the respondents were just angry because someone they knew had been killed or wounded.

“If someone killed or injured my husband, would I be angry? Yes,� Pollock said.

It’s reassuring to know that if this wasn’t one of those wars where soldiers get hurt, we wouldn’t have these problems.

It’s a good thing she wasn’t surveying Iraqi insurgents or civilians — that kind of thinking could make you sound awfully sympathetic to the IED-planters.

Anyway, I’m sure when all these guys get home they’ll leave their anger, stress, and pent up rage behind them instead of taking it out on their wives or the nearest university classroom full of students.

Yeah, I was going to use that analogy, but was too lazy to get too far into it.

There’s only ONE case where domination is good for the dominated, and that’s with parents and their young children. So in the very best case, we think of the Iraqis as our “children.” Very, very bad.

“Less than half of Soldiers and Marines believed that non-combatants should be treated with dignity and respect,� the Army report stated.

This is shocking! Someone should tell the Commander-In-Chief immediately!

It was necessary to destroy the populace’s ability to self-govern in order to save it.

The funny thing about that, Brad, is that is exactly how the British empire perceived its imperial subjects. If you google around enough, you can find lots of cartoons from the time showing Indians, Afghanis, people from various parts of Africa depicted as children, being watched over by a stern but smiling blond goddess in a helmet (Britannia herself).

Seeing as it was this sort of imperial action that (ultimately) created the slaughter in Rwanda and the religious fanaticism in both Afghanistan and Pakistan that help to make our world a dangerous place today, it’s not really a model we should be emulating.

But then again, America has always conducted its foreign policy as though it were a sadistic amnesiac.

Imperialism is OK for us because America is Good, the Best Country Ever, etc.

Some bigshot writer came to International Roundtable at our college a couple of years ago arguing FOR imperialism because it does things like “fix roads and build schools.” That kind of thinking just makes me think of, “well, Hitler was a bastard, but he made the trains run on time!” But it’s no secret that America’s priorities have always been stacked and shuffled like a Vegas blackjack deck.

The most important aspect of the report is this: “fewer than half of the troops agreed that ‘all noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect’.”

You need to dehumanize people to get over your objections to murder to start with. The more carnage they see, the longer you’re exposed to friends dying, the more comfortable you are questioning the “enemy’s” humanity. If there are more Hadithas this dehumanization answers the why.

Pollack: “What it speaks to is the leadership that the military is providing, because they’re not acting on those thought. They’re not torturing the people.”

What it speaks to is our values and tolerance, witch. Values we’re bleaching from our military with every extended tour.

Stanley Milgram, take a bow!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_milgram

What is it good for?

I’d go for the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Oh, you are so cynical.

If there’s anyone on Earth from whom you would expect to see an outpouring of care, love, respect, and empathy for brown-skinned Iraqi Arab Muslims, it would be American right-wingers.

Why, I can hardly find a column written by an American right winger that even mildly suggests anything negative about the people who live in Iraq and the wider Middle East. A man like Krauthammer’s heart must be simply full to bursting with his love for the freedom and welfare of the people of Iraq.

Of course they supported this war so that it could make the lives of Iraqis better. It is in no way their fault that the war had the complete opposite effect of making life objectively much worse than they suffered under the brutal tyranny of Saddam Hussein.

After all, you can deeply, deeply care about someone without actually thinking through how your own actions could possibly affect that person. No matter what about of pain & damage you bring to a person, as long as you explain that your love for him or her was in your heart, he or she should undertand perfectly.

You know? It’s like those people who go to jail for beating a child to death or wrapping him or her in a blanket until he or she suffocates and dies, even though all those people wanted to do was save the child from demonic possession.

Surely you would never be so cynical as to suggest that killing a child in order to save it from imagined demonic possession is somehow NOT an expression of deep and inner love?

The idea is to break the military entirely so the magical “privatize it!”fairy can come in and fix things. We do have as many contractors/mercenaries over there as we do military,and most likely this breakdown is in part due to contractors and the shit they can legally get away with(under US law at least,since all that sneaky shit about contractors not being subject to much at all). The rest is the chain of command simply not giving a fuck.

Of course not a one of these obtuse,souless,evil fucks realize what happens when we bring all these folks home(the ones who manage not to die that is).

Anangryoldbroad, may I ask of you a favor? Toss that word “contractor” right out of your vocabulary, please, unless you’re hiring a carpenter for a framing job.

“Mercenary” is a perfectly serviceable English word, and accurately describes the job that Titan, Blackwater, Custer Battles et al. do.

We’ve let the right wing take our country. Let’s not let them have our language as well.

Is it racist or ethnically insulting of me to have just the tiniest bit of fondness for the term “Hessian”?

I got your Empire right here

As a servicemember, I want to speak in defense of the soldiers for a minute here.

We’re NOT SUPPOSED to be nice guys. When you’re getting mortared and IED’d and the guy in Bravo company just got killed last week on the same route that you’re patrolling today, you tend to view the locals as suspect at best.

This is one of the reasons why the US military is not really the best one for peacekeeping operations (the Canadians are really good at that stuff). We aren’t trained for it. We are a combat force. And when you’re in combat, mentally it is quite normal to separate oneself from the enemy. That way you can kill them and still look at yourself in the mirror.

This is why states always resort to demonisation-of-the-enemy type propaganda in times of war. It isn’t right, it isn’t pretty, but it *is* war.

I view this post and comments thread as being the other side of the coin of a society which is allowed to live in ignorance of the war that has been unleashed in its name. Yes, I think that S,N! and most of the commenters are on the side of the angels (against the war), but I also think that there is a profound disconnect between the person in the street and the people ordered to upend their lives to fight this thing.

Rightly or wrongly, war does terrible things to people. It is one of the many reasons that a morally upright society avoids them at all costs.

We are once again spreading democracy with high explosives.

As a servicemember, I want to speak in defense of the soldiers for a minute here.

This is one of the reasons why the US military is not really the best one for peacekeeping operations (the Canadians are really good at that stuff). We aren’t trained for it. We are a combat force. And when you’re in combat, mentally it is quite normal to separate oneself from the enemy. That way you can kill them and still look at yourself in the mirror.

Oregon Guy- I understand completely that this is what soldiers are trained to do. The point of this post was not to portray the soldiers as inhuman monsters- if that’s what came across, then I apologize.

The point here was to show the complete fraudulence of the idea that America- or ANY country, for that matter- can somehow be a “benevolent empire.” The actions required to maintain imperial dominance over a civilian population are never benevolent. The criticism here is not of the soliders, but of the self-contradictory mission they’ve been handed- “Free the Iraqis… but occupy their country, even when they clearly don’t want you there.”

Also, I realize that soldiers are trained to dehumanize the enemy- it’s a neccessary part of fighting any war. But if you take that mentality and put it in a place where it just doesn’t belong- i.e., as the occupying force of a supposedly “benevolent hegemony”- then the results are disastrous.

As my pop said, “The Army is there is kill people and break things.” This is all well and good when you have a mission with clear goals and an exit strategy. (Also, it helps if that mission is actually justified, as in self-defense, and not based on lies.) When you have an extremely long occupation with a hostile population trying to blow you up… well, like I said, it’s probably going to be disastrous. Again, the criticism is of the mission, not the Army.

It’s also true that rotation schedules exist for a reason, and it’s not to coddle the fighters, or to interfere with Rummy’s brilliant new Future Warrior vision.

You leave men simmering for tour after tour without a chance to reconnect to civilization and sanity and you create what is being mislabeled as PTSD, but is going to be much less reversible for many of these suffering saluters on return.

Dr. Gale ought to be reading The Forever War by Haldeman, or Heart of Darkness.

Oregon Guy–

I’d never heard of the distinction between peace-keeping and combat the way you present it.

V. interesting. My question is: Is the different suitability for the one versus the other between us and (say) the Canadians, a known thing in the army? Is it talked about and acknowledged? Do US soldiers drive down the street in Baghdad and say to each other, “Fuck, why are they asking us to do this?”

Are the Canadians considered wimps or pussies for their ability to peacekeep?

I hope I don’t sound facetious. I’m dead serious. It makes complete sense that, if invading and conquering are one skill and peacekeeping is another, then different armies (from different cultures) might have differing abilities to do either.

TIA.

Hey, it sounds like we’re on the same page.

I think that this war is getting to be Son of Viet Nam. There is no good justification for it, the ones that were given to us were crap, and people are just sick and tired of it and hope it will just go away.

As a soldier I’m very sensitive to any kind of talk regarding the attitudes of my fellow soldiers – because I know how they sound and how easily they can be construed.

Most soldiers right now are a pile of contradictions. They want to get out of Iraq… OR they want to be able to do “whatever it takes” to win. Of course, they can’t do “whatever it takes,” because “to win,” in a military sense, is impossible. But in the soldier’s mind there must be some possibility of victory or else why make the sacrifice? Why risk getting your arms or legs blown off or be blinded or killed? Why give away the best years of your life in 15-month chunks?

But since there is no coherent strategy, since there is no realistic plan for US forces to prevail in this thing (because “to win” in counterinsurgency means winning politically, which the White House is unwilling/able to do) – soldiers will use gapfillers… like:

torture should be allowed if it helps gather important information about insurgents,

and

Four in 10 [soldiers] said they approve of such illegal abuse if it would save the life of a fellow soldier

Hell, I’d probably approve of beating the crap out of someone if I thought it would save a soldier’s life, too.

If you haven’t read “War is a Force that GIves Us Meaning,” by Chris Hedges, then I highly recommend it to you.

Here is one of the rare times I agree with this man.

“Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly.” -Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)

MrWonderful:

I think that the difference is a product of the military culture + specific training. The Canadians get a lot of training on OOTW (Operations other than War) and I also think that as a 1st world country without the global baggage that we or the Japanese or the English or the Germans or the French or the Russians carry with them – they can present themselves as neutral arbiters of a given situation better than one of the former Great (Colonial) Powers can.

Yes, the distinction is known and noted within the US military. In fact, I have been driving down a street in a Humvee and had exactly that conversation.

Some people in the army will make jokes about peacekeeping and stability operations, but those jokes have started to go away now that the whole Army has been thrown into those ops now and we have learnt the hard way that such work is VERY difficult (previous to the “Global War on Terra ™, it was the special province of the Special Forces).

Re: imperialism and children

Here are a few turn-of-the-century political cartoons depicting Uncle Sam with his various wards: one, two, three.

The second and third are big images and might take a while to load.

Thanks, Oregon Guy. You are right, right and right again. There’s almost no need for me to weigh in at all. I think, however, there is an important lesson about where we are in this process right now in OG’s words:

But in the soldier’s mind there must be some possibility of victory or else why make the sacrifice? Why risk getting your arms or legs blown off or be blinded or killed? Why give away the best years of your life in 15-month chunks?

By 1970 we knew there was to be know victory. We KNEW our lives were being wasted, thrown away for a purely political calculation. We KNEW there was no reason for the loss, the waste, the horror.

We fought, not for our country, not for ideals, not for politics. We fought for each other. We fought to survive. We fought to get home.

And we did terrible things. We did things that forty years later still wake us up at night sweating and sobbing. We saw things that gallons of booze and pounds of drugs could not suppress. We felt things we would spend the rest of our lives trying to understand.

That’s where we were seven years into vietnam. OG helps us understand where we are four years into Iraq. We’ve already created another generation that will spend the rest of their lives trying to understand what the went through, to feel a part of the mindless society around them, to fit in, belong, just simply “be”.

Their lives will always be measured by the losses, the wounds, the scars. Eventually, with help, America will stop looking like an insane cross between a theme park and a movie set, people will begin to be real, 3 dimensional humans, and they will begin to be able to feel and appreciate the successes and joys of peacetime life.

Thanks, Mr. Bush. All the lives you have wasted are only a tick of the clock. The lives you have ruined, for the next seventy years, are on your hands. May you suffer some equivalent torment in your foul existence…

mikey

Thanks, Mr. Bush. All the lives you have wasted are only a tick of the clock.

Or some minor piece of punctuation.

Which puts me in mind of this:

“for life’s not a paragraph
and death i think is no parenthesis.�
~e.e. cummings

Smiling Mortician, an off topic moment of synchronicity… I was just sitting here glancing out at the flowers on my balcony and thinking “spring is like a perhaps hand”. I should read some e.e. this afternoon.

Dr. Gale, happily living in denial delta.

By 1970 we KNEW our lives were being wasted, thrown away for a purely political calculation. We KNEW there was no reason for the loss, the waste, the horror.

The arc of Vietnam was a bit more complicated than that. LBJ sold the intervention as a defense of global democracy & freedom, keeping the Godless communists contained, just like JFK pledged the country to do in 1961.

By 1970, mid-1969 really, the realities of the war — our feckless allies in Saigon, the grinding poverty of the countryside, the resilience and seemingly boundless material resources of the enemy, and, most importantly, (due to geography) the impossibility of isolating the South from the Northern infiltration and resupply, at least at a cost the US public was willing to bear in blood and treasure.

The war itself was being won in 1970-1972, sorta. The VC was a spent force and the NV were taking serious losses in their efforts. But by then the US public grew weary of the violence, to the region, and to our own soldiers, required to defend Thieu and his regime. So we bailed.

Other countries years ago realized that a “single purpose” army that worked well in the 1800s and earlier 1900s would not work so well for nontraditional conflicts such as we are seeing here. There are several Guard units around here so it is my neighbors are the ones shipping out again and again in some sort of bizarre neverending danse macabre.

If you survive in a combat situation, it is because your highest concern is for your unit and yourself. The most important guy in the world in at your right elbow and the next most important is at your left because they are the only ones you can depend on to get you out of DS.

That said, the military has no business trying to undertake nonmilitary tasks. We are needlessly traumatizing our own guys to no end and increasing the likelihood of atrocities. In 1971 and 1972, at least in VN, we had search and evade where the two sides had an informal agreement not to find each other, if possible. That has not happened in Iraq. By the end of his third tour, the average guy in Iraq has seen more combat than my father in WW2 and my grandfather in WW1. I would hazard a guess that the only equivilent would be the horrible, grinding war of attrition from 1863-1865 from the Civil War.
The civilians have to keep in mind that combat draws your universe down to a very few individuals who literally hold your life in their hands and vice versa. To protect them, you would send the rest of the universe to flames gladly.

This response, Troy, may seem a bit technical, even pendantic, but, Troy, you’re full of shit.

Only the truly weak feel the urge to dominate.

Here’s a slight modification of that question:

“Would you (a soldier in Iraq) approve of torture of a non combatant, if you suspected it might save the life of an American Soldier, but also knew that it would result in an American soldier being tortured in the future?”

How would that change the answers?

Because that’s part of hte equation too, isn’t it?

As said so many times, this occupation -thx mikey- can’t be solved by tha army, just like your house can’t be fixed by the demolition squad.

We are a combat force. And when you’re in combat, mentally it is quite normal to separate oneself from the enemy. That way you can kill them and still look at yourself in the mirror.

But that’s a relatively recent development, and a deliberate product of US military training over the past half-century, as you note yourself. The selfish US perspective on this (and I don’t mean that pejoratively) is that the effects are a gift that keep giving once the troops come home.

Alternatively, a decade of dealing with Iraq may force the chiefs of staff to move in a new direction. That’s what the experience of Northern Ireland has done to British squaddies.

Whew. What a topic.
Kipling wrote that exact imperial sentiment in his poem “White Man’s Burden” in 1899 praising the US for taking up the responsibility of caring for those poor child-like Filipinos. It’s nasty stuff and head-poundingly stupid that people in power still hold to this view.

Oregon Guy- thanks so much for your comments, particularly about the fundamental unsuitability of the military for OOTW. You remind me of the way my head spun watching the MisAdministration deliberately keeping the State department out of the loop in this disaster, giving over their responsibilities to the Pentagon. It was nuts and everybody knew it was nuts. Certainly the Pentagon knew it was nuts, but it seems anyone with the guts to point out that it was nuts was punished.

I think that this war is getting to be Son of Viet Nam. This reminds me of a particularly poignant comment someone made, somewhere… I forget who or where, but the gist was: this war is different from Vietnam because even at the peak of Vietnam war, US soldiers could walk the streets of the capital city and have drink in a bar or a meal in a restaurant…

Back to the original post- how does this differ from the attitude of police? Has anyone done a survey to see how many police officers would inform on their fellow officers for brutality or illegal interrogations? It’s pretty well known that their exists a strong urge towards silence in defense of each other. It’s nothing new at all. Maybe I’m too cynical, but this report doesn’t surprise me in the least.

You also see the same thing in street gangs or organized crime.

Nobody, whether a soldier or a cop or a gangster, likes a snitch. Informing on one’s own is considered always dishonorable in all sorts of situations.

On domination, Jillian nails it in the very first comment. It ultimately comes down to the mindset there exists a heirarchy that must be enforced with violence. Too many people seem to recognize it as a problem if it involves race, or economic class, or imperialism, but refuse to see the fundamental heirarchy of gender. If you can accept a patriarchal heirarchy that dehumanizes everyone by forcing them to accept a role and enforces it with violence (including violence directed against men deemed insufficiently masculine- veterans, does that ring any bells?) then it becomes much easier to accept another hierarchy of domination.

IBTP. Yeah, I said it.

“Sex and race because they are easy and visible differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour in which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.” -G. Steinem

Actually, I’ve read Kipling’s poem a dozen times and still can’t tell if he’s being ironic or what. Any literary critics out there have an opinion?

“Actually, I’ve read Kipling’s poem a dozen times and still can’t tell if he’s being ironic or what. Any literary critics out there have an opinion?”

Kipling is a really sucky and grossly over-rated writer?

Ahem: But that’s a relatively recent development, and a deliberate product of US military training over the past half-century, as you note yourself. The selfish US perspective on this (and I don’t mean that pejoratively) is that the effects are a gift that keep giving once the troops come home.

This “mental preparation” is a common theme throughout countries and centuries. British royal and Bonaparte soldiers did not have an easier time literally hacking down people their bayonets. Going further back in time you have initiation rituals. Perhaps not in every society, but enough.

War is hell. You can get through it if you give yourself reason to believe you’re not going there after it is over. Is there a better way to carry on than believing the lives of your friends are in your hands, and the lives of Others don’t matter as much?

And yet you must defend the troops regardless of how how the troops behave. If you don’t support ’em, you’re not a patriot.

Hopefully the other two-thirds can knock sense into the idiots who would do to the enemy as the enemy would do unto them. Duh.

The real enemy of every soldier fighting in Iraq is the American government. I’d like to see the results of that poll.

After Kipling’s son was killed in WW I he wrote something along the lines of “The sons died because the fathers lied”.
Some things haven’t changed

Is there a better way to carry on than believing the lives of your friends are in your hands, and the lives of Others don’t matter as much?

It’s actually much simpler than that. It is a basic human survival instinct. We are tribal by nature. In extremis, we retreat into the tribe. I can’t begin to tell you how obvious this becomes after you’ve spent a night in a hole with another guy, fighting and screaming and crying and shaking with fear one minute, quivering with anger the next, sharing the savage joy of killing THEM and the deep sadness of losing one of US.

In the smoky grey morning light, sharing coffee and cigarettes and darvon, maybe a hit on a joint, policing up the dead, looking for souvenirs, loading magazines, getting the wounded on the choppers and the water and ammo off, you look in each others eyes, just a glance, really, but the bond there? You’ll never share it again with anyone. Not a wife, not a child. And that’s the real reason we fight…

mikey

Hey Oregon Guy,

This fucking war was not unleashed in “my name.”

Leave me out of your masturbatory fantasies about world domination through brainwashing of the young and stupid.

I don’t want to pay another cent of my tax dollars into the bank accounts of professional “can’t don’t” soldiers like yourself and wish you would all get stuffed.

Like all complete losers, you blame all your idiotic problems on other people.

Iraq and Vietnam were lost, not because of war-wimps, but because of the incredible incompetence of people like yourself who couldn’t win a war against the most pitiful bunch of ragheads I’ve ever seen.

Stop the pity party now!

Wow. That’s some frothing-at-the-mouth stupid. I’m not sure what Lambo is saying. It’s pretty hard to tell his position, except he seems to think that if they’d just give him an M4, an SAW and a couple thousand rounds he’d clean up this mess in no time.

Oh, in addition to depleted uranium stupid, Lambo’s also a bit of a racist. How is it that those pitiful ragheads have kept the mighty US at bay for four years, Lambo? Please elucidate…

mikey

I’ve used “White Man’s Burden” in history class. And I, personally, think Kipling was being sarcastic. But I’m a history teacher, not a lit teacher, and I don’t know enough about Kipling’s bio to say for sure.

I read the whole thing out loud in front of 120 students when I was lecturing on the Phillippine Insurrection, very sarcastic, and it worked.

Is it OK if I wonder if Lamb Cannon’s ever been in combat?

Or is that a “mean, humorless liberal” response?

Oregon Guy, thanks for sharing your thoughts. (And Lamb Cannon, please feel free to get bent.)

I find this discussion rather interesting, as our (the Danish) government recently (just prior to Teh Great Adventure of Iraq) made the conscious decision to transform the military from a peacekeeping to a combat force. We were actually rather good at peacekeeping, but the powers that be wanted us to assume a more activist role on the world stage, in a desperate plea to get the attention of the mighty US.

I think the success at dehumanisation of the ‘enemy’ is a relatively recent thing, as in last century or so. My reason for this is a fascinating, but very disturbing, book called On Killing by Lt Col Dave Grossman.

He points out that in WWI, less than half the soldiers fired their weapons when they saw an enemy soldier. After that, the Army tried and trained and did all sorts, and increased that dramatically. Then there’s the fact that modern weapons make it so much easier: you don’t have to get within stabbing range, or even visual range, to kill someone (or some many). Dropping bombs from a height may kill huge numbers in a hideous way, but the executor of all that won’t even feel it.

In recent years, something like 90% of war casualties are civilians, whereas previously it was the reverse. This is partly because of the dehumanisation and partly because of that catholic tendency of modern weapons to kill boggins of people all in one go.

The really chilling thing about Grossman’s book was that he went on to demonstrate that the same factors used by the Army in their training were becoming pervasive in modern society.

Lamb Cannon is clearly a wingnut troll pretending to be an anti-war lefty who attacks the troops. His “goal,” such as it is, is to goad left-wingers into attacking the military. It’s a clever ploy, but it ain’t gonna work here, homey.

In recent years, something like 90% of war casualties are civilians

Mostly this is a consequence of modern combined arms doctrine. The VERY first thing you do when you make contact is you get on the horn and start lining up your assets. First local weps, mortars and rockets and such, next get REACT coming with armor, next call arty and see what’s available for air and gunships.

The days of infantry advancing on an enemy held position unsupported are completely a thing of the past, only existing today on “Band of Brothers”. This is the primary reason that no regular army can take the field against the US. Despite the propagand, our eleven bravos aren’t typically a whole lot better than his, but you can’t use armor and artillery if you don’t own the sky, and, well, if you own the sky you get to use that too.

The result is a huge amount of increasingly lethal ordinance being expended in front of American troops in contact. And if there’s any civilians around, that shit falls on them too…

mikey

Actually, I disagree and it’s easy to show that you are wrong. I think it’s a peculiarly American view that freedom is always the highest aim. But a quick glance at Roman Gaul will show that, like most absolutes, that is simply not true. Gaul was conquered by an unapologetic imperialist, with huge bloodshed and destruction, but the outcome was fantastic for the succeeding generations. The Gauls effectively traded freedom for prosperity, and it really worked for them.

Jillian, you need to rein in the hyperbole. The process of becoming dominated can be compared with being smacked around by your husband, but the endpoint cannot. The Romans did not continue smacking the Gauls around — they didn’t need to — but applied justice and kept the peace. You need to stretch your mind a little. Imagine a hypothetical society in which women had no rights at all, could not own property, could not work, were not educated. Being dominated by imperialists who insisted on equal rights would not be better for those women? Are you certain? You think they’d rather be “free” from foreign domination?

Qetesh: “The really chilling thing about Grossman’s book was that he went on to demonstrate that the same factors used by the Army in their training were becoming pervasive in modern society.”

I’m curious, such as, Mr. Kitty?

Gaul was conquered by an unapologetic imperialist, with huge bloodshed and destruction, but the outcome was fantastic for the succeeding generations

I have no doubt this is true. I also have no doubt this does not apply today. In a connected world with regional and global powers, the UN, NGOs, the press, television and the internet, you don’t have the luxury of waiting generations to see if your “experiment” worked out. I’m no scholar, but I bet somebody smarter than me could point to lots of times when the romans shed the same blood and destroyed the same cities and the outcome was nothing but the horror of the conquered.

Give us a modern example. Are the people in darfur going to be grateful in a few generations? How about the chechnyans? Or the Palestinians? Where can you show us that shedding their blood on a massive scale and wrecking their shit has actually been good for them?

Nope, Japan and Germany don’t count. Those were not wars of imperialism. In the words of m’man Eric Draven, “Try again. Try HARDER”….

mikey

[i]Imagine a hypothetical society in which women had no rights at all, could not own property, could not work, were not educated. Being dominated by imperialists who insisted on equal rights would not be better for those women?[/i]

Why hypothesize. Let’s look at Iraq! Under Saddam, women had many rights, could own property, could work, and were often well-educated.

Then an imperialist U.S., who ‘insists’ on equal rights when it suits them, took over, occupied the country and let a puppet-government tear down those advances and returned the country to a bleak, hateful mess.

[i]You think they’d rather be “free� from foreign domination?[/i]

Yes, fuckwit. They’re always going to want to be free of foreign domination.

You think they’d rather be “free� from foreign domination?

The answer is yes. Nobody wants to be dominated by a foriegn power. Nobody wants to be occupied.

F’instance, I like Canada’s system of health care. I think it works vastly better than our shoddy American system. However, I do not want the Canadian government invading and occupying Massachusetts just to give me their system of health care. Freedoms come from people who fight within their country for their own freedom. They do not come from outside powers who:

a.) Don’t really want them to be free.
b.) Don’t have their best interests at heart.

We did not invade Iraq for the benefit of the people in that country. To say so is a lie of the most despicible sort.

Dr. Zen: “The Romans did not continue smacking the Gauls around — they didn’t need to — but applied justice and kept the peace. You need to stretch your mind a little.�

Wasn’t Saddam the Romans in Iraq’s case already?

Dr. Zen: “Imagine a hypothetical society in which women had no rights at all, could not own property, could not work, were not educated. Being dominated by imperialists who insisted on equal rights would not be better for those women?�

Are you bringing women into this just so you can pretend to care? Do you think the U.S. cares about Mukhtaran Bibi’s movements being restricted by the Pakistani government while Musharraf brings in high valued terrorist targets?

About those imperialists insisting on better treatment for women, have you checked with the female benefactors? Western suffrage for Middle East women did not include giving them access to state-run jobs when men would do.

Troy said:

By 1970, mid-1969 really, the realities of the war — our feckless allies in Saigon, the grinding poverty of the countryside, the resilience and seemingly boundless material resources of the enemy, and, most importantly, (due to geography) the impossibility of isolating the South from the Northern infiltration and resupply, at least at a cost the US public was willing to bear in blood and treasure.

To say nothing of the moral and psychological costs.

The war itself was being won in 1970-1972, sorta. The VC was a spent force and the NV were taking serious losses in their efforts. But by then the US public grew weary of the violence, to the region, and to our own soldiers, required to defend Thieu and his regime. So we bailed.

If they were taking greater loses later in the war (I have no idea), I suspect the reason is that they were becoming increasingly bold as the war began to wind down. If they were really in danger of defeat, couldn’t they have simply dialed back the risk? Or change tactics just as we were attempting to change ours?

Dr. Zen said:

Actually, I disagree and it’s easy to show that you are wrong. I think it’s a peculiarly American view that freedom is always the highest aim. But a quick glance at Roman Gaul will show that, like most absolutes, that is simply not true. Gaul was conquered by an unapologetic imperialist, with huge bloodshed and destruction, but the outcome was fantastic for the succeeding generations. The Gauls effectively traded freedom for prosperity, and it really worked for them.

Alternatively, one might say that a Roman elite largely displaced the Gaulish elite and the poor masses went on being as they ever were. I’m not sure there was much loss of freedom or much gain in prosperity. I will agree that was huge bloodshed and destruction.

I think the success at dehumanisation of the ‘enemy’ is a relatively recent thing, as in last century or so. My reason for this is a fascinating, but very disturbing, book called On Killing by Lt Col Dave Grossman.

Wait, what? Total war, genocide, and dehumanization are 20th century things? (buzzing noise) Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

The only difference is that in past centuries, nobody was at all shy about describing the “other” as being non-human animals. “Nits make lice” was the excuse used to slaughter enemy children, then and now. The more modern version is the paternalistic, “we’re only dominating you because we care about you” version. It’s paternal domination, but it does at least have the surface recognition of the humanity of those dominated.

Read David Neiwert’s excellent series at Orcinus titled “Eliminationism in America.” It starts with Spanish colonization and follows it right through the native genocide, slavery, nativist discrimination in current times… and that’s just in the Americas.

Gaul was conquered by an unapologetic imperialist, with huge bloodshed and destruction, but the outcome was fantastic for the succeeding generations. The Gauls effectively traded freedom for prosperity, and it really worked for them.

They traded nothing, Dr. Zen. They were defeated after a long war. And didn’t succeeding generations sweep down and destroy the Roman empire, motivated by resentment of their culture’s destruction?

The process of becoming dominated can be compared with being smacked around by your husband, but the endpoint cannot.

The endpoint being that they finally learned their place and shut their traps, so the beatings stopped? And this was the best outcome for them? Nice.

The Romans did not continue smacking the Gauls around — they didn’t need to — but applied justice and kept the peace.

Wow. Kipling lives. Stretch your mind around that. Knob.

Gaul was conquered by an unapologetic imperialist, with huge bloodshed and destruction, but the outcome was fantastic for the succeeding generations. The Gauls effectively traded freedom for prosperity, and it really worked for them.

No argument about the “huge bloodshed and destruction”. The figure of one million deaths is often quoted for Caesar’s campaign in Gaul — a third of the Gallic population. Seems to me that the subsequent ‘fantastic outcome’ was enjoyed by succeeding generations of Roman settlers, and what the Gauls thought about it is not recorded. This being the reason why the current inhabitants of France speak a version of Roman rather than a Celtic language.
It’s a bit like arguing that the English conquest and devastation of Ireland is justified by the subsequent prosperity enjoyed by the Protestant settlers.

Orcinus series here on eliminationism. The process BEGINS with the dehumanization of the enemy.

Oops, Dakota Blue and RobW got there first.

It’s a bit like arguing that the English conquest and devastation of Ireland is justified by the subsequent prosperity enjoyed by the Protestant settlers.

Why, look at how well the Indian casinos are doing!

I have less of a problem with Jillian’s “hyperbole,” as it’s been called, than I do with Dr. Zen’s rather facile sophistry.

Niall Ferguson fan, are you?

Ferguson’s great contribution to punditry is absolute proof that a PhD is no defense against blatant, indefensible douchebaggery.

(Not that Thomas Sowell hasn’t made great contributions in this area. But Sowell is more famous for his ignorance of how to construct a cogent argument. Ferguson has at least mastered cogency.)

The Roman Conquest of Gaul was a Good Thing, since without it there would be no Asterix and Obelix.

Wait, what? Total war, genocide, and dehumanization are 20th century things? (buzzing noise) Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Nononononono! Sorry, I didn’t make clear what I meant.

What Grossman was talking about (and bear with me, because it’s years since I read it first) was the willingness of soldiers to fire their guns. In the First World War, something like only 20% of soldiers were willing to fire.

Now if you’re running a war, that’s a Bad Thing (TM). You want your soldiers to shoot whenever they see movement, and to kill on command. But those soldiers in WWI saw some poor bugger wearing an uncomfortable uniform, getting ordered about by nobby officers, and getting the rough end of the pineapple generally, and saw the enemy as not that much different from themselves. So they were reluctant to fire.

Which, slightly off topic, reminds me of the story that WWI nearly ended the first Christmas. The shelling stopped, and the Germans and English on the front lines got together and shared whatever Christmas cheer they had. In the process, of course, they discovered that the other side was just like them, and the war would have been quite over, except that the English High Command (I think) ordered some shelling, just to get things moving again.

Anyway, back to Grossman. There’s a reluctance in most humans to kill another human: I don’t know why, but there it is. So the Army had to desensitise their soldiers, otherwise they might have to give up war altogether. So they used all these techniques to desensitise the soldiers to the act of killing.

That, combined with demonisation of the enemy (which has been done throughout history) and the increasing distance between the soldier and the results (ie killing with a sword puts you in danger, killing with a gun gives you some distance, killing by dropping shit from a plane makes it an academic exercise) has greatly increased the willingness of soldiers to fire.

But Grossman goes on to point out that these desensitising techniques are common in the non-military world, too. Things like video games, increasingly realistic violence in movies, and stuff like that, gradually desensitise people to the act of killing. Grossman argues that this is one of the reasons for an increase in the murder rate, although I’m not sure I agreed with that. It’s certainly worrying, though, that people are being conditioned to be more likely to kill.

One other thing I think he talked about was that the rise in shooting was associated with a rise in PTS. Quite understandable: when you train someone to kill without thinking, there’s a whole lotta guys who come home to find that they’ve killed a lot of people, even though they didn’t really want to. They’ve seen things that no-one would want to see.

Personally, I don’t think we should be doing that to people. But personally, I think war is a completely bad idea, so what do I know.

domination are never good for the people being dominated.

Ah, but sometimes it are!

Fer example, were liberal to completely dominate wingnuts, the wingnuts would benefit in spite of themselves. They’d live in a civil society where *everyone* would have access to a reasonably well maintained infrastructure, under a balanced budget that would pay for it. Nuff said?

Thomas Sowell wrote another “Random Thoughts” column.

This confuses me.

Aren’t all his columns “random thoughts’?

Random sentences.

Random words.

What a waste of a PhD.

Oh. It’s in economics, you say?

Then it’s not a waste. Just average usage.

Kipling is a really sucky and grossly over-rated writer?

Go read BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP, or STALKY & CO if you have a delicate stomach. Kipling was a writer forever torn between his precarious “high status” as an educated middle-class white male and his viceral understanding of being a victim. He spent his earliest years mostly with the Indian servants he loved, was shipped ‘home’ to an abusive foster family in England at the age of five, and thereafter decanted into a British military boarding school. His poor eyesight kept him out of the military, so he ended up as an overseas correspondent, and the embodiment of Didion’s aphorism: “This is one thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.” He did churn out reams of pulp and doggerel — it’s what reporters on deadline do. But he is remembered for a handful of stories and poems that celebrate wild animals, small children, exotic foreigners, expatriates gone native, civil engineers, and life among the lowest ranks of an occupying army… all the details that “respectable” Victorian writers were careful to ignore. And, yes, “The White Man’s Burden” was intended sarcastically — it caused quite a scandal at its release, when it was considered Angry & Uncircumspect (the Victorian adjectives for ‘dirty effing hippy’).

And I just want to say, on behalf of all the Sadlynauts who have refrained from cracking Teh Funny about “never having Kipled”, that we all deserve prizes for self-restraint.

This thread should be required reading for all who think — scratch that– just required reading for all, period.

Heehee…….I think I just got told to not complain if my husband smacks me around sometimes, as long as he continues to buy me nice things and takes me out nice places.

Wanna know what? I can buy myself nice things and take myself nice places, thank you very much. And if I can’t do that, and if you really care about me (instead of just making noises about how lucky I am to have a husband who buys me stuff) maybe you could, y’know, help me get to a place where I can be independent enough to do those things for myself, instead of being forced to rely on a husband who smacks me around all the time.

Wow….who’d have thunk it would be this easy to extend an off-the-cuff metaphor? Apparently, anyone whose brain has not been addled by extensive exposure to Niall Ferguson (you nailed that one, Retarded Donut!) would have thunk so.

Oh, and yeah – I hope nothing I said on this page made it sound like I was blaming the soldiers for being in the position they’re in. I don’t blame them. I blame their CinC.

They’re kids thrust into an environment with no clear objective, attempting to achieve a mission they aren’t trained for, amongst people who don’t want them there. It is a textbook recipe for disaster. But they’re not the ones who created it.

Oh, they have a clear objective Jillian. It’s to get home in one piece. Like a fractal of the larger, sometimes it just cannot be done…

mikey

Gaul was conquered by an unapologetic imperialist, with huge bloodshed and destruction, but the outcome was fantastic for the succeeding generations

I have no doubt this is true. I also have no doubt this does not apply today. In a connected world with regional and global powers, the UN, NGOs, the press, television and the internet….

Given the lack of mobility, immediate communication, education; given the geographical isolation and differing dialects and languages used by all the people living in what the Romans called “Gaul”, I doubt very much that there was a sense among the conquered peoples that they were a large homegenous region invaded by a powerful imperialistic force.

I don’t think there was a very strong sense of Gaulist identity amongst the conquered people.

I imagine it was more like a case of people knowing their village had been invaded and pillaged by Outsiders who then allowed them to live as long as they did what the Outsiders said. I seriously doubt anyone wondered put that together with what the Outsiders were doing in the village on the other side of the hill, much less up the coast several hundred miles.

Nor was there a strong sense of Roman homegeneous identity among the conquerers. The forces were multicultural, mercenaries and multiethnic. They identified with Rome as sort of a corporation, not as an ethnic and cultural identity.

One of the things that made it work for the Roman empire was that they brought trade, technology, and prosperity to the conquered. Also, there was intermarriage, there was adaptation of the local culture going in both directions, and it was possible for non-Romans to have a career in the Roman hierarchy. The idea of “the Other” didn’t last very long before people got absorbed and adapted – Rome itself had been multicultural in the same way.

We are there to support the Iraqi government so that they can come into a true position of dominance and keep down the nutbars who want to dominate the rest of the country with their own brand of militant Islam.

Oh, look, it’s annie. Hi annie!

We are there to support the dominance we like, not the dominance we don’t like.

BTW — a side topic – did anyone notice how during the Republican debate several of the candidates just blithely went on with their ideas of how to change the Iraqi constitution, as though it was something that an American president could do? None of this kind of talk was challenged by other candidates or by Tweety.

Is this an indication that they don’t believe Iraq is a sovereign nation? Or is it that they all share an unspoken agreement that the government of Iraq is a puppet of the US?

You believe pollock is a nurse. The first time I heard her speak I swore she was a surgeon. But i was just wrong she has just internalized the politicians mindset that infects the militaries senior officers.

Brad, the entire reason government exists is to dominate. […] The fact of the matter is we are not dominating in Iraq. That is part of the problem, there is no one dominating in Iraq right now.

“We’re not fascist enough.” Thanks Unseen Hind!

Unseen Hand is shoelimpy’s latest attempt at trying to seem both relevant and sane. Pay it no mind.

Particularly cruel moniker in light of the Gaul campaign references.

What is the sound of no hands clapping?

Unseen Hand is shoelimpy’s latest attempt at trying to seem both relevant and sane

Jeez, it is? Man, that’s just sad that he’d fail so terribly at two relatively simple undertakings. Jeez, dude, put on your plastic helmet before you go outside…

mikey

Someone here as already said it but, not Unseen Hand, but The Stranger

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=the+stranger

Unseen Handjob might have more success with the relevant-and-sane thing if he took just a minute or two to consult with some fairly available resources about that “entire reason government exists” idea. Hint: a simple starting point might be reading up on that wacky concept of governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

I don’t know who said that, Mort – but I can tell whoever they were, they were commies.

One dirty fucking hippie, coming right up.

…aaaaaaaannnnd the level of self-ignorance pegs the meter!

people long to be dominated. Read up on someabnormal psychology . . .

Damn typos.

OK. No. I thought I could slip away after commenting only on the abnormal-psych angle, but the grammar of the above comment is noteworthy as well. Everything until the last sentence is in the third person, purporting to explain “the people.” The giveaway comes in the last sentence, when suddenly it’s the royal first-person plural. So the Invisible Wank and his pals want to be dominated by some daddy-in-a-codpiece? Great. But they shouldn’t assume the rest of us share their pathology.

Government exists to dominate.

And here was silly old me thinking they were there to handle repairing the roads, care for the less fortunate, policing of anti-social violence, that sort of thing. Silly old me.

Of course the governed consent to this domination, people long to be dominated.

Oooh, baby, dominate me.

Read up on some psychology, Smiling Mortician.

Read up on some politics and history, The Unseen Wankstain. Read about why various forms of government were invented.

How do you think that dictators like Hitler or Chavez can be elected into power?

Hitler: because Teh People were having a rough time and were afraid?
Chavez: because the US puppet governments throughout South and Central America had brutalised the people so much that Venezuelans were willing to risk their lives by voting for Chavez and demonstrating. Note also that Chavez was the first indigenous president, unlike his elite predecessors who came from the ruling class and oppressed the people brutally.

Do some reading on the School Of The Americas, tossbag. Learn what your government has been supporting. Then try and convince me you’re being dominated.

Because the people want to feel like there is a strong man controlling them and their lives. It makes them feel safe and secure. We vote for the people who dominate us.

Oooh, this is Bush to a T. All the Americans who voted for Bush, and who support him, do/did that because they’re terrified of some magical Muslim bogeyman who’s gunna get ’em while they sleep.

We vote for the people who dominate us.

By “We,” you mean “conservatives,” and by “dominate us” you mean “repeat the lies conservatives want to hear.”

Got my “Big Golden Book of Deciphering Conservative Drivel” right here.

Read up on some psychology,

By “Read up on some psychology,” you mean “I got nothing substantial. Here, have a serving of facile sophistry.”

Yummy sophistry! I like it with horseradish!

Wanker Rebuttal Part I:

Who tells us what speed we can drive on the roads?

A combination of social conscience (ie society doesn’t want squillions of tragic senseless deaths of innocents caused by selfish ignorant yokels) and the basic laws of physics and physiology (nerve transmission time limits, stopping distances, etc).

Who takes money out of every one of our paychecks?

I assume you enjoy having water, power, etc delivered to your home on demand? I assume you enjoy being protected from all The Dirty Hippies who’d otherwise invade your personal private property without any punishment? I assume you enjoy having roads maintained, law courts staffed by competent (ish) professionals rather than just any old bugger who’s got a spare wig?

Who tells us how much we can water our lawn when we are in a drought?

God? I think you’re a selfish twat for having lawn in the first place, but that’s just me.

Who won’t let us get drunk and drive a car?

All of the people who’d prefer not to have their children slaughtered by some completely selfish cunt who thinks he has the right to do whatever he wants, regardless of how many people he kills.

Who tells us what we can build and how we can build it on our own property?

All of the people who might subsequently purchase your house. Anyone who might enter your house and be damaged by falling masonry. And how does it become your property? Oh, that’s right, by the same social contract-inspired legal agreement that gives you the building code.

The list goes on and on and on. We are so dominated in our daily lives by our own government we can’t even see it for what it is any more.

You are such a complete sack of porridge. You’re bleating about being ‘dominated’ just because you are forced to curtail your actions by the teeniest smidgeon. You fail to see the vast benefits that are conferred by membership of the society to which you belong, and for which you pay the very small price of adherence to laws and payment of tax.

Domination. When was the last time you visited your family to find them slaughtered at the dining table, with the charming detail of having their heads cut off and placed on their dinner plates? The baby’s head wouldn’t stay still, though, so they ingeniously nailed its hands onto the head to stop it rolling about. When was the last time that happened to you?That’s just one glorious example of the South American death squads paid for, supplied, trained, and supported by your government.

If you want to complain about your tax dollars funding that, then go right ahead. If you just want to whine about having to obey laws and pay your share of infrastructure maintenance, then shut the fuck up, because I have no patience with the likes of you.

You see, Qetesh, we consent to the School of the Americas, just as we consent to everything the government does to assert its dominance. Government is a dominating force. Government can only govern if they dominate. That is why we have a police force. That is why we have an army. That is why we have the National Guard. And so on and so forth. It ain’t that hard to figure out.

Class, here is a perfect example of blatant, shameless sophistry. This is a very childish way to make a point, it taints everything else you will ever say when you use nonsensical tactics like this, it also taints everyone who agrees with you.

Class, just say no to sophistry.

Wanker Rebuttal Part II

The fact of the matter is we are not dominating in Iraq.

No? Then what’s with all those guns and tanks and shit? I thought massive application of force of arms was a pretty clear sign of dominance (as opposed to not being allowed to kill pedestrians at will).

You’re not winning, that’s true. But you’re dominating.

That is part of the problem, there is no one dominating in Iraq right now.

No. The entire problem is caused by an illegal and immoral attack, invasion, and occupation based on lies. Part of that problem is that the occupiers have, either by intent or incompetence, allowed the situation to deteriorate to almost complete chaos.

We are there to support the Iraqi government so that they can come into a true position of dominance

Oh, Jesus wept (or at least so I’m assured). You don’t give a toss about the ‘Iraqi government’, as evidenced by the fact that your government refused the solutions proposed early on by the Iraqis themselves; held off on allowing elections in that ‘sovereign’ country until forced; contrived the form of elections to force your own puppets into power; refused countless Iraqi attempts to govern themselves; overrode the Iraqi puppets when they didn’t do what you wanted, and so on and so forth.

Tell me, are you a paid apparatchik, or are you really ignorant enough to believe the crap you spout? If you’re not getting paid for this, you’re really missing out.

and keep down the nutbars who want to dominate the rest of the country with their own brand of militant Islam.

Ignoring completely the nutbars who want to dominate the entire country with their own brand of militant imperialism.

Please, let go of this outmoded notion that the whole thing is about religion. Do some reading. Learn some facts from people who know what they’re talking about. I’m happy to suggest some readings to start with.

Don’t you even know what we are doing there, Brad?

Clearly you don’t. Clearly you can’t tell the difference between invading and being invited in. Clearly you can’t tell the difference between resistance to occupation and terrorism.

And clearly, quite clearly, you can’t tell the difference between right and wrong.

Now you see the man who supposedly was bashing domination attempting to show his own dominance. This is another part of the domination game: one longs to be dominated but always wants to dominate others also, which is why domination so often takes a hierarchical form.

anyone whose brain has not been addled by extensive exposure to Niall Ferguson (you nailed that one, Retarded Donut!)

Shucks, tweren’t nuthin’, Jillian. I only use one-tenth of my brain when I start ridiculing conservatives. I find it relaxing because it’s so easy.

Note to conservatives: If you don’t like being ridiculed, stop being ridiculous.

ok, you pussy, for or against torture?

thought so, soldier…

Hmmm. I’ve seen a lot of Right Wing idiots, trolls and water carriers (try to) make the case that these authoritarian methods are necessary in defense of freedom and liberty. But when one comes along and claims that we, as a people want an authoritarian government, that strikes me like the belligerent drunk who walks into a bar and yells “You’re all a bunch of pussies”. He’s not trying to take a position, he’s trying to stir up shit and get noticed. He doesn’t believe it, and neither do we. But he’s hoping we’ll rise to take the bait…

mikey

Dr. Friedrich von Frankenstein: Igor, would you mind telling me whose brain I did put in?

Dr. Friedrich von Frankenstein: Do you mean to tell me that I put an abnormal brain into an, 8 foot tall, 300 pound, GORILLA?!!!

Someone had to post it.

What is sophistry?

I am too lazy to look it up. So I want one of you liberals to do the work for me and tell me what it is.

Then I will berate you for being elitists because you saw through my lame tactics.

OMG a comment has been moderated.

And I, for one, am grateful…

mikey

So, apparently, some soldiers think noncombatants should not be treated with respect.

Well gee whiz, no kidding. That’s how a guerilla war WORKS: the reason insurgents are able to disperse and disappear among the civilian population after attacks is because most people in the neighborhood are in on it. Wouldn’t you, as a soldier, want to deal a little payback when members of your squad are blown up by an IED?

And the reason torture is used in a war like this is because torture WORKS. Sooner or later, everybody talks. Information, not “shock and awe,” is how a conflict like this is fought. Torture isn’t an abnormality, it’s almost essential to the ability to fight.

But…and here’s the big BUT here…Bradrocket hit a bullseye when he said that it just isn’t clear WHY we’re THERE. There are certain things that just must be done in a hellish, upside-down asymmetrical conflict, including torture, especially in a region as screwed up and factional as Iraq. Now we start to realize why Saddam was such a bastard – he HAD to be.

But WHY? That’s what I don’t get. What’s the ultimate objective toward which all these tragic actions are undertaken? I mean, no coherent strategy is bad enough, but no coherent GOAL? This is the difference between killing a man to save a baby, and killing a man for unclear, spooky Edgar Allen Poe “Cask of Amontillado” motives.

I can tolerate torture. But I can’t tolerate lies, corruption, excuses and bumbling inadequacy, which is what Cheney and the rest have given us.

And the reason torture is used in a war like this is because torture WORKS. Sooner or later, everybody talks.

Uh, actually, you’re half right. Sooner or later, everybody talks. Only, what everybody says isn’t always reliable, or useful, or productive. So torture doesn’t really WORK all that well, other than to terrify people.

g is entirely on the money, as even the CIA has acknowledged: information obtained from torture is rarely reliable. Torture is used to cow the population–that’s why it was a main feature of the Phoenix Program, that’s why Roberto D’Aubuisson’s death squads in El Salvador used it, and that’s why prison guardslike it. Once you’ve shown the population at large a few torture-addled people (Jose Padilla comes to mind) or a few mangled corpses in public places (a favorite trick of Ferdinand Marcos’ thugs), dissent tends to wind severely down–but only among the law-abiding.

Terrorism, on the other hand, takes a big uptick, Visigoth. The soldiers wanting payback for an IED were themselves receiving payback in the form of that IED, and are just askin’ for more such payback with each reprisal. You want to talk about what WORKS: guerilla warfare against occupiers WORKS. You get new recruits and sympathizers daily, and the more the occupiers retaliate, the more opposition they breed.

Time to pull the plug on that show.

It occurs to me: The very same people who claim that they would, if the US were ever occupied, be in the hills with RPGs howling “WOLVERINES!” seem to be mystified when the citizens of a country that our military (and mercenaries) are occupying are at all put out by their situation.

I canna splain it. Utter lack of empathy, perhaps.

I think there’s a term for that, Doc.

Now don’t go getting all technical on me, Mort.

Rereading the Visigoth, I’m moved to scribble another few things:

Saddam Hussein (our former ally and client, remember) did indeed use torture to keep Iraqis in line–but he didn’t have to do it, regardless how screwed up and factional Iraq may be. History gives us many examples of diverse groups of people with equal factionalisms working out their differences to create a society–Switzerland comes to mind, and if you think I’m joking, do a little reading about the Hundred Years’ War and the bloodletting between Catholic and Protestant Swiss. The Swiss were so legendarily gnarly that they were much sought-after as mercenaries–that’s why the Pope is protected by the Swiss Guard.

Amazingly enough, if groups of people are left alone by empires, they usually form societies of some sort–and then often follow that up with countries (y’know, with laws and stuff) and do reasonably well.

Clearly this survey needs to be sent to Gitmo…for unpatriotism.

Doubleplustorturegood!

Since “the Visigoth” refernced a soldier… me?

Um, no, torture isn’t ever okay. The Army’s FM on interrogations explains pretty clearly why this is the case. Torture does not produce reliable intelligence and alienates the population in an insurgency to the point where you can never prevail. Yes, torture works in a very short-term way. The French used torture to break the leadership of the FLN, as depicted in the film “The Battle of Algiers.” About two years later, the FLN reappeared, stronger than before, with all-new leadership, and the French were evicted from Algeria. Some 2,000,000 people were compelled to move across the Mediterranean back to France.

Now, had the French adopted different tactics, they might not have “won” the first Battle of Algiers. But the French people might have been able to stay in Algeria, and that country might now be in better shape for it. Losing the entire educated class in one fell swoop is never good for a country. And if you hadn’t noticed, Algeria has been on the verge of chaos and Islamist government for about ten years now.

To win an insurgency, you have to gain the trust and support of the people. COL H.R. McMaster did a decent job of this in Tall Afar during the 3d ACR’s deployment to that area in 2005-6. Basically he realized that the town was being abused by Al-Qaeda in Iraq who were terrorizing the (largely Sunni Turkmen) population of the town while using it as a transit point for people and materiel flowing over the nearby Syrian border.

The 3d ACR formed alliances with the locals and helped them to establish self-government. In turn they offered their support against the Al-Qaeda elements which had been using the town. The key bit was stability. Prior to the 3d ACR’s deployment, anyone cooperating with the national government in even the smallest way would be assassinated by the AQ guys. The 3d ACR started with the local sheikhs and tribal leaders and gradually they assumed responsibility for local governance.

This entire (very successful) strategy was fucked up when the next US unit to rotate in billeted two battalions of Iraqi national guard forces in the town: 1 Shiite Arab, the other Kurdish peshmerga. Tall Afar is back to square one. And it has everything to do with dishonoring our word and nothing to do with torture.

Yes, in a battlefield sense – I would condone beating the crap out of someone if I thought it would save the lives of my fellow soldiers but that is something that ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS. Making ethical and moral decisions predicated on that kind of scenario is akin to getting dressed in the morning and planning how I might respond if the VT shooter visited my office.

Torture is used to cow the population
There’s more to it than that. I mean, it’s an obsession with your right-wing columnists — they’ve been going on for decades about the regrettable but manly necessity of stooping to torture. Always with the ticking-time-bomb scenario, and how we are all weakened by our soft squishy liberal inhibitions against torture, and how the public needs to be desensitised. The GWOT is merely the latest excuse.

It’s been a recurring theme in Krauthammer’s essays for Time for as long as he’s been writing them. You might have thought that they would have been satisfied by their success during the Reagan years in popularising torture-by-proxy across Central America, but that was seemingly too remote.

Though it is tempting to speculate about the psychological causes of these obsessive thoughts, I’d rather leave that to Krauthammer; he’s better at it.

Re: Krauthammer’s psychologic makeup:

Ever been to an optometrist who didn’t wear glasses? While I’m sure such people exist, they seem uncommon. Methinks Krauthammer gravitated toward psychology for what one might call deeply personal reasons…

Or as Arthur Koestler was fond of pointing out, some of the worst ratbags he knew were the children of child psychologists.

Methinks Krauthammer gravitated toward psychology for what one might call deeply personal reasons…

Time for a Nietzsche quote! (blame the ‘existential threat’ philosophy-with-a-hammer jokes in a previous thread):

“This man is a human psychologist: what does he really study men for? He wants to gain little advantages over them, or big ones too — he is a politician!… This other man is also a human psychologist: and you say he wants nothing for himself, that he is ‘impersonal’. Take a closer look! Perhaps he wants an even worse advantage: to feel himself superior to men, to have the right to look down on them, no longer to confuse himself with them.”

Always with the ticking-time-bomb scenario,

Yes, this is the myth, isn’t it? Breaking the fingers of the terrorist to get him to tell you the combination of the locker in the bus station where the plastic explosive is stored.

The reality, as we have learned from the prisons of Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanomo, is to torture the taxi driver who dropped off the brother-in-law of the bodyguard of Osama bin Laden’s fourth in command’s accountant at his home so that you can raid the brother-in-law’s home and detain his son so that you can ransom him for another target to interrogate in order to find out who changed the tires on Mullah Omar’s sister-in-law’s Range Rover. Because maybe someday you can track someone down to the safe home which used to be the sister-in-law’s neice’s apartment in Khandahar.

It’s all cumulative knowledge, after all, intelligence. So whether you’re using human intelligence to drink mint tea with an informant, or throwing cold water on someone in an airconditioned cell, you’re still trying to find out when Osama bin Laden takes his car to the carwash, NOT how to stop the bomb from blowing up at the last minute.

[…] job, Jonathan. The idea that the Iraq war was an imperial action was completely bloody obvious to most sane people, but I understand it takes a while for mainstream press folk to catch on, so I […]