We Can’t Win An Immoral War
George W. Bush and Gen. David Petraeus, the new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, both want U.S. forces to stay in Iraq, but for different reasons.
Bush wants to turn the oil and natural gas resources of Iraq over to his corporate sponsors. Mission Accomplished!
Petraeus is another story. His entire career has led up to this chance to show that he can win a counterinsurgency war. During the ’80s, Maj. David Petraeus was an adviser to Gen. John Galvin of the U.S. Southern Command. Speaking of “Low Intensity Conflict,” Petraeus told The Wall Street Journal in 1986 that “LIC is a growth industry.”
Low intensity conflict is the U.S. military term for “small wars.” These wars are fought in such places as El Salvador, Angola and Afghanistan. Low intensity conflict planners emphasize the importance of controlling the news (”the information dimension,” according to Gen. Wallace Nutting). That keeps Americans from being too concerned. But the term is misleading. For the people where those “small wars” are fought, it is just as intense as World War II, but in a smaller place.
When then-Major Petraeus referred to a growth industry he must have expected future economic opportunities for arms makers, counterinsurgency experts such as himself, and all those who profit from war.
There are some interesting parallels between Petraeus as a general and Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Both seem to be honest military men. Both commanded the 101st Airborne Division (to which I was assigned in Vietnam in 1968). And both men agreed to lead U.S. forces in wars that were started and maintained by lies told by civilian leaders.
Like most of us, Petraeus suffers from self-delusion. For most of us, self-delusion is a defense against some uncomfortable truth. But for ambitious men such as Petraeus, self-delusion can have severe consequences for other people.
Petraeus appears to be an honest man. But he was given a tempting offer by the president to fulfill his lifelong goal, and he accepted. To do the job, he must convince himself what he is doing is right. It is not. The general is trying to do an honest job in a dishonest situation.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have disastrous effects on the people of those countries and on our own country. I’m rooting for Petraeus; not for him to win this war, but to do what is right and to end his career with integrity. He should not try to achieve his life goal of winning a counterinsurgency war when it causes so much suffering for other people. There is no way to truly win an immoral war.
Petraeus does not have to end up like Westmoreland, whose fixation on defeating the “enemy” at tremendous cost to the civilian population led to his nickname, “General Waste More Land.” The real enemies we face are lies and self-delusion. Those are the enemies that Petraeus, like the rest of us, must struggle against.
Bill Distler lives in Bellingham.
© 2007 The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Concise, interesting and excellent points. War is always immoral, sometimes unavoidable many would say. The distancing from the effects makes killing easier. I think if Gen. Petraeus had to witness first hand the horrible reality of the physical and personal devastation his work produces the self-delusion would be much harder to maintain.
I am afraid General Petraeus will go down in history as “General Betray US” - sorry, just my feeling.
A General can’t end a political war. There are lots more starry eyed Generals than there are Smedley Butler’s. As long as war is considered good for business then we will continue to have it as part of our daily lives. Welcome to the United States of Everything.
Hoa binh
War is inevitable for America. The entire country is propped up by the good ‘ole Military-Industrial complex. Dwight. D Eisenhower would roll in his grave to see it has developed since he spoke about it. The machinery of state has been molded around the inevitability of war. Iraq is a debacle of the grandest scale but perversely, America’s economy depends on sustained warfare.
Only the grand scale and technocratic impersonality of the crimes conceived and directed by the [U.S.] ruling elite acting under cover of state authority distinguish them from garden variety killers.”
Darrell Hamamoto
“Americans cannot escape a certain responsibility for what is done in our name around the world. In a democracy, even one as corrupted as ours, ultimate authority rests with the people. We empower the government with our votes, finance it with our taxes, bolster it with our silent acquiescence. If we are passive in the face of America’s official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them.”
Mark Hertzgaard
“While vast sums of money are being siphoned off into hidden [military] coffers, Americas schools, hospitals and public services are facing cutbacks and closures.”
Representative Henry Waxman
“If the U.S. really believes that supporting terrorists makes you as guilty as the terrorists themselves, then it would have to put on trial most of its military and political leadership over the last handful of administrations, and more.”
Peter McClaren
Ezeflyer: as per the Hamamoto quote, it’s so very true; and since the perpetrators are hidden behind so many layers of power, sometimes rendered virtually invisible, it gives me a measure of solace to recognize that higher arbiters of justice prevail, i.e. in the form of the lords of karma. These homicidal maniacs are not going to enjoy eternal impunity. Sure, we’d prefer to see the jury reach a verdict on OUR time line, but the levels of malevolence are so fierce and pervasive, for the architects of these plots MANY lifetimes will be required (perhaps in other worlds of yet more cruel proportions) to work off their egregious debts to society.
If one accepts the premise of the title of this article that the war is “immoral,” then by logical conclusion Petraeus is just another in a long series of American war criminals.
He and his ilk should be (but won’t be) tried at The Hague as such.
I don’t morality per se has anything to do with whether wars are won or lost. I think we are going to lose this war because ultimately those in the Muslim world are more willing to die in this conflict than Americans are going to be. We are already letting it be known that we are ready to end this conflict.
jon
Connecting the dots: from human behaviors to ecosystem decline
I don’t think morality per se has anything to do with whether wars are won or lost. I think we are going to lose this war because ultimately those in the Muslim world are more willing to die in this conflict than Americans. We are already letting it be known that we are ready to end this conflict.
jon
Connecting the dots: from human behaviors to ecosystem decline http://StudentsForTheEarth.org
Admittedly, it’s annoying. But until the discussion is reframed:
THERE IS NO WAR. There is an ILLEGAL OCCUPATION, the result of an ILLEGAL AGGRESSIVE INVASION. All aggressive illegal invasions are IMMORAL obviously. And the reason there are no metrics for “winning” is because there is NOTHING TO WIN from an illegal invasion. Any “winnings” would be ill-gotten due to the whole illegal-ness thing.
Why are we so scared to call an illegal invasion and occupation an illegal invasion and occupation? Can’t handle the guilt?
I apologize to those who read all the articles on commondreams, but I want to reach as many people as I can. This information has me completely freaked out.
A Presidential Directive was signed by President Bush on May 9th giving him unconstrained powers in case of a national emergency. In the case of a national emergency (terrorist attack), I don’t want that psychopath in charge of anything. How can he get away with this? It’s terrifying!!!
worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55825
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
President Bush has signed a directive granting extraordinary powers to the office of the president in the event of a declared national emergency, apparently without congressional approval or oversight.
The “National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive
” was
signed May 9, notes Jerome R. Corsi in a WND column
.
It was issued with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive.
The directive establishes under the office of the president a new national continuity coordinator whose job is to make plans for “National Essential Functions” of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments,
as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president’s directives in the event of a national emergency.
“Catastrophic emergency” is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage,
or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”
It says the president can assume the power to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over.
The directive says the assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, currently Frances Fragos Townsend
, would be designated as the national continuity coordinator.
Corsi says the directive makes no attempt to reconcile the powers created for the national continuity coordinator with the National Emergency Act
,
which requires that such proclamation “shall immediately be transmitted to the Congress and published in the Federal Register.”
A Congressional Research Service study notes the National Emergency Act sets up Congress as a balance empowered to “modify, rescind, or render dormant” such emergency authority if Congress believes the president has acted
inappropriately.
But the new directive appears to supersede the National Emergency Act by creating the new position of national continuity coordinator without any specific act of Congress authorizing the position, Corsi says.
The directive also makes no reference to Congress and its language appears to negate any requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists.
It suggests instead that the powers of the directive can be implemented without any congressional approval or oversight.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke affirmed to Corsi the Homeland Security Department would implement the requirements of the order under
Townsend’s direction.
The White House declined to comment on the directive.
Holiday Weekend thought:
“I renounce war. I renounce war because of what it does to our own men…I renounce war because of what it compels us to do to our enemies…I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. I renounce war and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another.”- DICK SHEPPARD
you are right the lord will open the eyes of the ones in the right..show them what and how to do it and the courage to do it…and he will darken the mind of anyone who is in the wrong(fearful,guilty)..the blind leading the blind so to speak..it is one of God laws and as immutable as any other law..gravity..etc
In this case indeed to win is to lose, especially for the general or those who take more lives, and woe to us all for the consequence of such loss. It must bring us quickly to the realization that we have to learn to get along and respond in turn.
pronounce peace
WHY DO THEY HATE US SO MUCH?? (the all-time most audacious question asked by supremacist xenophobic Yanks and their Fascist allies)
——————————————————————————–
Read that question w/ some whining noise added to it for fun!!!
This is a response from a world citizen to the all-time most naive question I have heard/read so much from the so-called analysts, writers, politicians, and hands of IMPERIALISM in your dishonest media.
In your undying, never-ending hatred for Iran and drowned in an ocean of narcissism, you simply have forgotten, or yet better, chosen to forget, the crimes, inhumane policies, arrogant attitudes, and pain inflicted by you “patriotic” psychos on many a nation, including Persians.
Well, the Northern Christian hypocrisy and self-love on one side; its harsh animosity and blood thirst for Iran is something else. It was evident in your clownish, arrogant President’s speeches and now it’s epitomized by the most blatantly hateful, Nazi pieces of propaganda which Goebbels himself would love you for ), there it comes, suck it and swallow it w/ AMERICAN (w/ a thick R the way you like it) pride and xenophobia.
By what I have read from the likes of you in your very “OBJECTIVE” media (no shortage in the ” objective, informed, and bright” nation of yours), you completely epitomize what the monstrous Northern Christian imperialism means to billions of impoverished, victimized, oppressed masses of the world and what it has done for the past several centuries only in order to secure its own filthy interests derived from your selfish, self-indulged, self-centered, egotistic, materialist, and Calvinist lifestyles and worldviews. If and only if you were interested in the truth and facts, you could easily find the answer by reviewing your friends’ list and also crimes’ list for decades or centuries (for those Euro liberals!!). It doesn’t take a genius, does it?
YOU are the epitome of unfairness, injustice, governmental terrorism and bigotry. These are some of the crimes against humanity committed by your patriotic asses all over the planet (the list would be only too long but I mention a few here):
U.S. sponsored coup against democracy in Guatemala in 1954 which resulted in the deaths of over 120,000 Guatemalan peasants by U.S. installed dictatorships over the course of four decades.
U.S. overthrew the governments of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and helped to murder 3,000 people.
1973, the U.S. sponsored a coup in Chile against he democratic government of Salvador Allende and helped to murder another 30,000 people.
1965 the U.S. sponsored a coup in Indonesia that resulted in the murder of over 800,000 people, and the subsequent slaughter in 1975 of over 250,000 innocent people in East Timor by the Indonesian regime with the direct complicity of President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
U.S. sponsored terrorist contra war (the World Court declared the U.S. government a war criminal in 1984 for the mining of the harbours) against Nicaragua in the 1980s which resulted in the deaths of over 30,000 innocent people (or as the U.S. government used to call them before the term “collateral damage” was invented–”soft targets”).
U.S. war against the people of El Salvador in the 1980s, which
resulted in the brutal deaths of over 80,000 people, or “soft targets”.
U.S. sponsored terror war against the peoples of southern Africa (especially Angola) that began in the 1970’s and resulted in the deaths and mutilations of over 1,000,000.
U.S. invaded Panama over the Christmas season of 1989 and killed over 5,000 in an attempt to capture George H. Bush’s CIA partner, now turned enemy, Manual Noriega.
U.S. sponsored a brutal coup that resulted in the deaths of over 70,000 Iranians from 1952-1978.
This doesn’t even mention the crimes in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Bay of Pigs and before that the support for and direct involvement w/ Batista’s regime in Cuba, the 8-year war against Iran -including chemical weapons usage- by (the former friend!!) Saddam, death squads in Central America, the 5 decades of Israeli crimes in Palestine and Lebanon (the veto policy), the “missing” in Argentina, and of course the “silent coup” in Algeria in 91 (w/ deceitful cooperation from the French bastards) that stopped the FIS from winning the elections thus plunging the country into a civil war for years…………….
We can never forget your crimes or undying sense of self-love and ego that make the Yankees and their NATO/G7 lovers the most detested nations on this planet, perhaps galaxy.
Now kill as many innocent people as you want. LAUNCH, LAUNCH as a bastard called JAMES WOODS declared on JAY LENO. Brag about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Beirut bombings. Brag about killing of the innocent family members of Kaddafi, all the countries’ leaders and revolutionaries who had the guts to say no to your Fascist Empire.
It matters not. The U.S. (and the British disgusting colonialism) will go where the Romans, German Nazis, Mongols, and the rest of the arrogant sorry excuses for humanity went. Now celebrate killing Moslems, Nationalists, and Leftists (not to mention nuns and priests), etc. in your never-ending fire of hatred, supremacy and ego.
Unlike many other foreigners, I am not simplistic enough to think you are just the minority and the “rest” are simply decent, nice, culture-loving individuals. The fact is it’s filth like you that votes for the criminals you call leaders (Reagan and Bushes, Blair, Merkel, Harper and Howard come to mind immediately). Also I don’t think, despite the popular belief, you are ignorant or just stupid; I think you know enough and simply choose to ignore because you are the most selfish, inhumane, robotic bastards this planet has seen for a long time. Your sense of “SELECTIVE MEMORY and JUDGMENT” is proof enough.
I think legendary Orwell got it right in this passage from Nineteen Eighty-Four, an account of the ultimate supremacist empire:
“And in the general hardening of outlook that set in . . . practices which had been long abandoned - imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions . . . and the deportation of whole populations - not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”
As a reaction to your actions, our (the South) hatred for you could only be compared to the feelings we have against Serbs, Nazis, Genghis Khan and Alexander the Criminal.
THE NEW ROME WILL FALL…… AND ITS FOLLOWERS, FRIENDS, ALLIES AND APOLOGISTS….. WE’LL MAKE SURE OF THAT. DEATH TO THE U.S. and EU!!!
There is a tightening noose whose nature is an irony that is too big for us all to see. We, still thinking we were the valiant, pure and honorable GI’s and Rosie the riveters who “rescued” the world back in the 1940’s, somehow swaggered into this perversion. Now, we find ourselves in one of the most militaristic cultures ever, our industrial might being hollowed out by the day, our vanity preventing us from admitting that we have lost the glory we never really had. I see the bumper stickers “power of pride,” and I think, is that not one of the seven deadly sins? Pride is a kind of blindness, and we have followed those blind men into a morass. Bush and his puppetmasters thought this was going to be an easy war, a feather in their caps, proof of America’s enduring hegemony. Instead, what they created was a nightmare, the beginning of the end of America’s glory days. I consider myself a patriot, and I love this country, but we have to face reality and take responsibility for what we have done. If that means admitting defeat, then so be it.
The title of the article says it all. Would that some of our bloviating commentary could be so brief and to the point.
you said it bill (apologies, my caps are not working right now).
I imagine many americans are still trying to figure out what “moral” means. The closest they can come is to drop cluster bombs into crowded markets full of women and children, then write it off in their minds using some kind of semantical twist.
america: you have lost. If you win, your victory is empty and will cause you further defeat. The world has you pegged, as the gung-ho soldier - without brains.
saladin
They are a sorry excuse for a people. a fat, and smirking people who believe they are immune from their militaristic posturing. They think they can get away with it. They’ve been attacking innocent peoples since the inception of their nation. Remember, they also did in the buffalo. It’s not people they’re after, they just enjoy seeing blood. It’s a bit like cigarette smoking, it’s an addiction that just goes on and seems OK-ish. It gets out of control. Their heads cannot contain it, cannot analyze it. Killing is the only thing. Lots of explosions and american flags. Rah rah rah. Kill and maim, women, old men, whomever (call them insurgents). They are global pricks. Just kill them back, I guess. but, it takes a fool to start it all off, and more fools to follow (which they are, dutifully).
I would bet, there’s another fool on his way to the recruiting station this very minute. a fool who never gave thought to his real purpose in life, or never discovered it.
The same fool has only himself to answer for when the final breath comes. And when that final breath comes, it would be well to answer the question: did I think and act correctly in this siutation. For most, the answer should be: no, you did not. and for that you must answer.
It is an immoral war, and I don’t think Petraeus or anyone else can “win” it. If he is an honest man as the article maintains, hopefully he will give us an honest assessment in a few months. But more likely he will try to please his boss, like Colin Powell, selling out in the name of “loyalty”.
But that doesn’t do anything to solve the very real threat to western values that is radical Islam. We must remember that there is a significant group of people who are inflamed by religious and ethnic passions who really do want to kill us all. We need to consider the impact of anything we do in Iraq - leave, stay, or something in between - in light of that conflict, which will not be resolved by our abandoning Iraq to whatever comes after we leave.
Sometimes I think that in our desire to flagelate our country, our leaders, and ourselves for the mistake that is the war in Iraq, we forget that our own survieval might be at stake. I have not seen much intelligent discussion of what is likely to come after a precipitous withdrawel from Iraq. We are of course rightfully skeptical of the dire predictions that would result from withdrawel coming from President Bush and his supporters, but what would a more reasoned and informed expert opinion project? We should have never gone into Iraq, but there we are. What to do next is the question. We can’t afford to make another big mistake.
The longer we stay in Iraq, the worse it becomes. It is difficult for the US to accept the possibility that we are unable to achieve victory, but such is our reality. Because our motives for this war are unpure, we are unable to even define victory or have a side to be on. The President understands very little about the Middle East; he should have known he was knocking over dominoes.
Saladin even as harsh as you sound it has more truth than the american media and Bush combined. It should be completely ovious why America is so disliked in the rest of the world, it is not because they are jealous of their freedom as Bush claims. Why do they hate us so much has to be the most profound question of the twenty first century, which the american public media will never answer. You have summed it up very well, but you could have been a little more diplomatic.
WPK,
That’s exactly the point. I am not a diplomat and never have been! We are fed u being nice to you people and your cultures, etc. And I know this is supposedly a “liberal, anti-war site”, but it really means nothing to us, for you and your allies simply have too much blood on your hands for forgiveness (not that most Northerners would even for one minute contemplate that)
Every minute, every day we are paying the price for your criminal, Fascist regimes and the so-called “voter inaction” or the silent approval, a much better term, by you people in the North that cost our women and children lives, suffering, torture, and mayhem. Trust us, my side said goodbye to being kind, diplomatic, and other BS. We have seen the napalms, cluster bombs, tortured and violated bodies way too often. Your freakish bastardly right-wing zealots, ironically, have gotten it right for once!
The lines have been drawn in centuries of your crimes, and hell we are sick of you. You have declared war on us and nothing can turn the clock back. I love physics: “for every action, there’s a reaction equal and as DEADLY AND RUTHLESS”!! Sorry Newton, it’s my version.
And you know what, a thousand Khatamis and other liberal, two-faced snakes like him and other Gorbachev-like filth can’t save the “EL NORTE” this time. Await us, dear self-appointed, civilized rulers of the planet!!!!!!!
Saladin: Many of us truly feel pain for the suffering of your people. There are people in every culture who recognize that identification with “lines” between lands, religions, races only lead to violence. It’s not that my nation deserves forgiveness, but the spiritual prophets of all great religions teach that the one who elects to forgive is the one who is lifted to grace. In other words, it’s not a gift that you bestow to other, but to yourself. In some ways, our planets wounds will only heal when ALL lay down their weapons. Of course currently with the US making a killing ON killing that is NOT going to happen. (Please understand, ours is now a corporate state and the corporations that are profiting from war do NOT necessarily reflect the will or intent of this population. MANY people have been fed lies, some by their religious institutions, just as sadly, some young Arab men believe a martyr-death will please Allah. Religion has been deluding people for centuries. If we can’t agree on an interpretation of the Deity, does that mean we please the great Spirit by killing one another? Can you think of a belief more inane? And yet it’s common to fundamentalists of ALL religions–primarily Christian, for they ARE the aggressors in this war. Too many were made to believe that Iraq played a role in 911, a very dark fabrication on the part of those who wanted war.) Einstein saw the trajectory of weapons, and realized that if mankind does not learn to get along and ACCEPT cultural and religious and racial differences, the NEXT war will be fought with sticks and bones. In other words, as the hatred escalates and those who feed on it find in its call a reason to explode the Middle East further, we could see weapons used that set mankind back and eviscerate populations. What a travesty, and what proof that human beings have learned precious little over the centuries. When the path of war is taken, it is evidence of the worst in human understanding, a complete failure of reason. There are a lot of thinking people in every culture, people who value life, not just slogans that allow leaders to speak in glowing terms while giving themselves false permission to plunder others. Keep in mind, whether we call it Allah or Jesus or Moses or Buddha, there IS a universal accounting system best understood as karma. NO ONE can harm another without a rebound; but all this harming now only means this planet continues with wars. HEALING begins with forgiveness and compassion. I have none for Bush or his junta right now, and perhaps that is where my spirituality wanes. I think of Jesus saying with respect to forgiveness, “Go and sin no more.” I don’t think we can applaud or forgive the individual who continues harming… only when that individual recognizes the error and begins to make amends. THIS end of an Age is a time of such massive testing. Like a great wave, we are all encountering the sum of karma produced singularly and collectively over the past 2200 years, the span of the current AGE. How to know you pass your exams? Move on? The Egyptians believed at death the heart is measured on a scale against a feather. A light heart is one that can let go of the myriad trespasses it must endure while on a planet of such tortured learning. God (by any name) bless you.
Do you want first hand accounts of the devastation of the American War Machine? Talk about Low Intensity Conflict, visit an Indian Reservation, the propaganda on most is so successful that the once proud protectors of families now travel around the world destroying them and come home expecting honor and dignity to be bestowed upon them, all this in the name of the oppressor. We indigenous people of Turtle Island (North America) had an inside joke when the invasion of Iraq begun officially in March 2003, when observing the exploitation of natural resources and the political system being forced upon the Iraqi people we stated that the Bureau of Indian Affairs had now changed it’s name to the Bureau of Iraqi Affairs (BIA).
uh, LOVE IS THE ANSWER.
Duh.