This thread reminds me of the whack-a-mole game in the penny arcade (a game I'm all too familiar with). Action speaks, talk is cheap. It doesn't matter how loud you shout when you are on the wrong side of history. A bad idea is like a bad piece of fruit; expose it to air and light for enough time and it rots all by itself.
typical behaviour of persons/nations suffering from a serious inferiority complex - like Dubya, Freddie N. and the U.S. of A.
To support Kymar Fye's statement on international law- (a subject in which I do not claim to be an expert===but I did travel to other countries to study it in law school and I loved it) The fundamental principle of international law can be boiled down to the old power theory. You know the guy with the gold or power makes the rules. Perhaps the next closest principle would be try to do what is consistent with natural law (again the guy interpreting natural law has the power). Next treaties, customs, consistent practices, what the countries say they do, persuassive writters, perhaps things like the UN and perhaps precedent. Not necessarily in that order. So while I am sure there a jurists with bigger names than I who/whom? could argue both sides of this quite eloquently, in the long run we know that history and law is written by the victor. (darkhorses' point). So you see it is really sort of bullshit to argue that the U.S. did have the right to go into soverign Iraq and free a repressed and tortured people. The U.S. had the power to make International Law in the First place, It had the power to determine when the concept of sovereignty should be overruled, and it had the courtesy and decency to look like it was willing to defer in some degree to world opinion and create a coalition consensus, (it shaped a consensus). So anyone appealing to the technical aspects of international law to stop the U.S. in this action really did not understand the rules of the game, or they wished to alter the rules like the French. Finally, the capper to the whole debate is that the U.S. had the courage to do what was right-- which was to save those people. (Which should probably the primary principle of international law --pragmatically it is still the power principle) It is sort of funny and perhaps comical to anyone who studies international to hear a guy like Scott Ritter on CNBC tonight to say the war was not justified because he needs to see due process. The U.S. "created" due process and shapes its meaning. THE U.S. and Britain and the rest of the coalition ARE DUE PROCESS and you know that is the dirty little secret about why we have all these people whining even though we did the moral thing. They hate to see our power even if we are doing the right thing. But the answer to those pacifists-- is that while it may be a crime to use your power - it is a bigger crime to have the power and not use it when it should be used. In short we have the parable of the talents applied to international law. And when it comes to the court of last resort, there are no appeals.
The fact that this war has been going well is due to an element of luck. Don't sneer at anti-war opponents yet. Recall an incident in WWII. When Hitler was planning to send their Luftwaffe to bomb the city of Coventry, Churchill knew about it by intercepting and successfully cracking the secret code the Germans were using. He didn't inform the residents there because he didn't want the Germans to know that the codes were cracked. As a result, many civilians lost their lives. If the Germans had changed their codes any way after they bombed Coventry, then the code would have become useless and the people died there for nothing. Churchill would have become a moral monster. But he got lucky. Don't cheer too much. There are so many ways this war could have gone wrong. Bush could have become a moral monster like Churchill.
"I don't like Saddam, I hate him; but when I see American soldiers I want to spit on them." The man had been dumped near the rubbish bins at the back, blood spreading across his chequered shirt. An orderly, who had been burying bloated corpses in a mass grave in the hospital grounds, recited the Muslim last rites. "Dead, dead, he's died, what can we do?" and returned to his shovel. But the man was breathing, in slow laborious gurgles, and his flesh was warm. Forty-eight hours after Baghdad was liberated - as President George Bush would call it - by American forces, the city yesterday was in the throes of chaos. Men with Kalashnikovs dragged drivers from their cars at gunpoint, babies were killed by cluster bombs, and hospitals that had carried on right through the bombing were transformed into visions of hell. Floors were coated with stale blood, and wards stank of gangrene. The wounded lay on soiled sheets in hospital lobbies, screaming with pain, or begging for tranquillizers. Orderlies in blue surgical gowns shouldered Kalashnikovs to guard against marauders. Ambulance drivers staged counter-raids on looters to reclaim captured medicines and surgical supplies. Amid such scenes of anarchy, it was not always clear who was responsible: US soldiers, unnerved by a spate of suicide bombings, who continued yesterday to open fire on civilian cars; the pockets of resistance by the die-hard supporters of the regime; the scores of armed Iraqis rampaging through Baghdad; or the unexploded ordnance strewn about the city. But Iraqis had a ready culprit: they blame America for toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein before it was prepared to deliver order to Baghdad. At Yarmouk hospital, once the city's main casualty centre, the unclaimed corpses were so badly rotted that volunteers wearing chemical warfare masks buried them in mass graves. Sixteen stinking corpses were heaved into the ground yesterday and 20 on Thursday, after collection from the local mosques. Some were Arab recruits to Saddam's cause, from Syria and Lebanon, with no one to mourn them in Iraq. Some belonged to families stranded in those pockets of Baghdad which remained outside the control of the US troops even yesterday. Others were so badly charred and bloodied, the doctors gave up hope of ever knowing who they were. "I am searching for my brother. He's dead since four days ago," said Thair Mohe el-Din, green eyes tired beyond exhaustion as he returned from the morgue of the Saddam children's hospital. On Monday the family home in the Beyaa neighbourhood of west Baghdad was bombed by American aircraft, wounding one of Mr Din's brothers, and killing another outright. He had visited seven hospitals and countless mosques searching for him. At each makeshift mortuary he had encountered dozens of corpses. None was his brother, and as he continued to search, edging his car warily through the columns of smoke from plundered buildings and the armed mobs who have taken over the streets, grief was making way for a powerful hatred. "It's my country, and I hate Saddam," he said. "But why are they allowing robbing, why are they allowing people to set fire to buildings? Saddam was right to put those kinds of people in prison. "I don't like Saddam, I hate him; but when I see American soldiers I want to spit on them." At Yarmouk hospital there was no time for anger yesterday - only the sad, sickening work of burying the dead. Rifle fire crackled, and the volunteer burial committees stolidly dug on. Then came the boom from an American tank shell, and the hospital guards - neighbours drafted into service with their Kalashnikovs - fled into the grounds. A young man, naked to the waist, ran in screaming, waving his bloodied hands in the air. A sedan with two flat tyres pulled up, with an entire wounded family, and the corpse of a baby girl. Her name was Rawand, and she was nine months old. When her family returned to their home for the first time since the war yesterday, she crawled over to a small dark oval - a cluster bomblet - which detonated, killing her outright, and injuring her mother, and two of her boy cousins. Only one doctor was on duty at Yarmouk yesterday - it shut down at the beginning of the week - and he left the grave diggers and went to try to save the family. Rawand's father, Mohammed Suleiman, was inconsolable. "I am going to kill America - not today, after 10 years," he swore. Battle at hospital By the rubbish bins, the unknown man was barely breathing. His eyes were closed, and he could not speak. After what seemed like an eternity, the doctor was brought, and he ran an intravenous drip into his arm from a trolley of supplies abandoned in the yard. The hospital ceased to function on Monday when it became a main battle theatre between US forces and Iraqi fighters. But there was no time to tell the wounded streaming in from other parts of Baghdad. "Many cars came from here and there. They didn't know there was a battle. When they came, the American forces shot them," said Mohammed al-Hashimi, a doctor at Yarmouk. A Volvo was hit directly opposite the hospital, a Volkswagen a few yards away, and an ambulance further down the road. "There were injured people in those cars, and we wanted to treat them. We were in our coats," Dr Hashimi said, tugging at his white doctor's collar. "We took a gurney to transfer the injured patients. They saw them, and they still shot them." He interrupted his story to beg a car to take Mr Suleiman's relatives to the nearest hospital - a paediatric centre. There was little the staff there could do. "We are working with no anaesthetic at all," said Iman Tariq al-Jabburi. "The doctors are exhausted. There is no water to wash our hands from patient to patient. But what we really need is security." She summoned an ambulance to move the family - and the unknown man - to yet another hospital, Saddam medical centre, once the finest facility in a city known for the quality of its medical care, and now the only hospital with a functioning operating theatre. Another doctor stepped out of the crowded ward, grabbing a cigarette from a passing ambulance driver. "Where is freedom in Iraq?" he said. "Where?"
History is an unfinished business. Nobody knows for sure who's going to come out on top eventually. Besides, do you call the might side of history the right side of history? If that's how you call it, tough luck for the world--indeed.
April 12, 2003 Ali 'dead in days' if he stays in siege hospital From Janine di Giovanni in Saddam City THE world of Ali Ismail Abbas has shrunk to four dirty walls and a polyester blanket. Burns cover more than 35 per cent of his body. His arms, blown off in an American rocket attack on his house two weeks ago that killed his parents, stop just below his shoulders. His body has been so ravaged by war that even he cannot bear to look at it. He asks his aunt, Jumeira Abbas, to cover his torso with a towel. âOh God, I want my hands back,â he whimpers, his face â the only part of his body untouched by injury â crumpling in tears. The room where Ali lies on a dirty bed is unsterile and his burns are at risk of becoming infected. Mowafak Gorea, the director of the hospital, says wearily that if the child is not moved within days he will die from septicemia. But Ali is at risk from another, more imminent danger. The hospital where he lies in agony â there are no painkillers strong enough to reduce his pain â is under siege from looters and rogue militias. There is an iron gate in front of the hospital, but it is not strong enough to protect the patients in the hallways whose bodies are peppered with shrapnel. Outside, the streets of Saddam City â now renamed Revolution City â are full of looters, Fedayin and foreign fighters and it looks more like Mogadishu or Beirut than a city under American control. Earlier in the day, a fighter from Syria was dragged into the hospital from the street by enraged locals after being found at a checkpoint with an explosive strapped to his body. His fate hung in the balance. âNow we donât know who is fighting who outside,â Dr Gorea said. A handful of civilians have banded together, armed with Kalashnikovs and long knives, to protect the hospital, the last functioning vestige of this chaotic slum. Their commander is a local sheikh who was imprisoned and tortured for nine years under Saddam Husseinâs regime and who cannot remember how old he is because of his âlost yearsâ. The motley defenders stand guard, watching as lorries unload more casualties inside the gates, but hour by hour the streets descend further into anarchy. Checkpoints, armed by whoever has a gun and decides to control that portion of the turf, spring up suddenly and without warning. âWhere are the Americans?â screamed one armed civilian who now controls a checkpoint near the hospital. âWe thought they were coming to help us!â It is a complaint that is heard frequently in Revolution City, the home of nearly a million Shias who have not forgotten that they were badly let down after the last Gulf War, when they tried to rise up against the Iraqi President. A small group of US Marines said that they were trying to secure the hospital, and a few tanks were moving in. But trying to control the volatile neighbourhood in the wake of Saddamâs downfall seems a Herculean task. Revolution City hospital is now the only functioning hospital in Baghdad. The others, including al-Kindi, where Ali was first taken two weeks ago after a rocket crashed into the house where he was sleeping, have been gutted. It is believed that al-Kindi has now been taken over by a Shia sheikh from Najaf who is using it as a base. Some of the drugs that have been stolen from al-Kindi and other wards were handed over, ironically, by looters to Revolution Hospital. âBut I will not touch them; they are stolen goods,â says Dr Gorea, a surgeon who has not left the inside of the hospital for 23 days and who has not seen nor had word of his own family for a week. For more than 300 patients, many of whom were taken by double-decker bus as the other Baghdad hospitals were stripped, he has only 22 doctors and 120 staff. It is a third of the staff that he had before the war. While he says that they have enough medical supplies and a generator pumps electricity and water, those staff are nearing exhaustion. Some of them, such as Ali Ismailâs devoted nurse, Fatin, continue to work through the madness. She tends Ali, wiping his brow and trying to help him to sleep at night when the pain is the worse. Sometimes he accidentally calls her Hannan, then apologises: âMy wounds hurt so much, and I feel like I have a brick on my brain,â he says. âI canât remember much of anything.â He does, however, remember his dead parents: his mother, who was five monthsâ pregnant when she died, and his father, a taxi driver. He remembers his six sisters, most of whom were injured in the rocket attack and whom he has not seen since. He weeps when he thinks of his favourite brother, Abbas, who was also killed when the missile struck. âWe used to play football together,â he says. âWe used to fish together. Now how can I do that without my hands?â Dr Gorea says that Ali seems to have improved, but is doubtful that he will make a full recovery. Unless he is moved, the doctor believes that he could die within days. Médicins Sans Frontières, when contacted by The Times about Ali, said that it could not help. US Marines, also contacted by The Times, said that even if he were removed, his injuries were so devastating that he probably had only a one in five chance of survival. âIf he were in the US, with excellent medical treatment, he would have a 50-50 chance,â one said. âI know itâs sad, but given the fact that he has 35 per cent burns, it is probably around 20 per cent.â Civil affairs officers based at the Palestine Hotel did begin making inquiries about airlifting Ali, but had to make sure that the area was secure before they could go in. âWe canât send a chopper in there unless it is safe,â one said. One thing is certain: Revolution City is not yet safe. As Aliâs fate was being decided, he asked for one small thing â a kebab. The hospital cannot supply food and Ali has been eating only rice and milk. The thought of the sandwich brought a slight smile to his face. Outside, the streets of Baghdad were full of smoke, shops were closed, looting was widespread and there was less chance of finding a kebab than of the Americans securing peace within a few days. âYou have seen one Ali, but there are thousands of Alis in this city,â Dr Gorea said. âHe has been promised so much. He will die before those promises are fulfilled.â How to help The appeal set up to help Ali Ismail Abbas has raised £50,000 in four days. The picture of Ali, 12, lying badly burnt in a Baghdad hospital became a focus of concern for casualties of war after its publication this week. On Tuesday the Limbless Association started Aliâs Fund for the Limbless of Iraq to provide prosthetic body parts for him and other victims of the war. A spokeswoman said that the response had been âabsolutely phenomenalâ. To make a donation to Aliâs Fund: contact the Limbless Association on 020-8788 1777 or www.limbless-association.org. The British Red Cross, on behalf of the International Committee of the Red Cross: 08705 125 125 or www.redcross.org.uk/iraqcrisis. Unicef is also raising money for the 12 million children of Iraq: www.unicef.org.uk/emergency or 08457 312 312.
Make a bad call, and get shot? Max, are you and MondoTrader one and the same? Treason! And Hart's being a Democrat should mean he should have already been in prison for sedition before he even made his statement. Peace, my Brother Max, Rs7
Quote from max401: Great post! Hart and Ritter should be shot at dawn; no blindfold, no cigarette. After Ritter's tirade last night on Fox, hell, why wait until dawn.
Didn't you say that you're a philosophy professor? According to what moral philosophy can a subsequent event turn someone who has made a moral decision into a "moral monster"? Churchill was either acting in a morally questionable manner at the time he made the decision, or he wasn't. The situation is akin to Kant's definition of a lie, to paraphrase: If you see someone running in a certain direction, are then queried about it, and reply truthfully, the fact that that same person turned around without your knowledge does not turn you retroactively into a liar. Churchill made a reasonable, fairly conventional if difficult military decision. No subsequent event could have turned him into a "moral monster" on that basis. As for your larger point about the role of "luck" in warfare, it's certainly true that the war might have gone worse in any number of ways, but there was never any likelihood that isolated instances of bad luck would have affected the eventual outcome. In addition, the fact that so few of the doomsayer's predictions came true - from environmental disaster to hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties to Baghdad as Stalingrad - is in large part the result of the effective execution of a versatile and comprehensive war plan that included many elements few in the major media were aware of or whose importance they would understand even if they were aware of them. I could quote you - and have previously posted elsewhere on ET - the views of numerous military experts and other informed observers who repeatedly tried to explain to the quagmire/ Vietnam redux club that they didn't know what they were talking about. John Keegan, who I suspect knows more about warfare than the entire 10,000+ members of ET put together, recently summed up the purely military equation - which was evident to those with any understanding of the matter before and during the conflict. You may find his entire discussion of interest - click on the link below if you like - but his later comments on those who were so flagrantly wrong about what was happening are most relevant to this discussion: From "The allies got it so right: how did the pundits get it so wrong? By John Keegan Filed: 11/04/2003 http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml Keegan's remarks, though cutting, are more kind than those offered by many. In short, Galbraith's views - like the views of so many others - were and remain exactly as laughably ill-informed and miserably hysterical as they look. It's very likely that those in the anti-war and anti-American camps who return to such sources for political and military judgments will continue to make the wrong calls, be disappointed by events, and look ludicrous to everyone else. One can hope that some will begin to "question authority" on their own side - if only because a democratic society functions better when the opposition retains credibility and respectability. Not much sign of it yet.