Reply to “On Violence”: We are Holier than Thou
“It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes… we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions – especially selfish ones.”-Alexander Solzhenitsyn
This is a reply to a post on a very interesting blog On Violence that I read occasionally.
The argument put forward in the post We are Holier than Thou is as follows:
1. Americans, and the West, must fight wars according to our moral, ethical and legal principles.
2. Terrorists–be they Christian, Muslim or other–twist ethics to justify their immoral behavior.
3. As a result, Americans and the West tend to fight wars more ethically, morally and justly than non-state groups acting out of zealotry.
4. And most importantly, this isn’t a bad thing.
These are apt points, if not for the reasons they were intended.
1. Americans, and the West, must fight wars according to our moral, ethical and legal principles.
The sentence itself logically makes sense, if one concedes that wars are in fact something that “must” occur. The next step is to define America’s “moral, ethical and legal principles”. Words are only that; words. So it is necessary to demonstrate America’s values through the submission and review of empirical evidence.
Without delving too far into the past, although this would only strengthen the point I am going to make, we can begin to establish American values by reviewing some of the deeds done by the late great “Ronald Reagan”, then some of the “leaders” that followed him .
Reagan has been placed on a podium so high in the psyche of America for one reason: So that his memory can avoid drowning in the rivers of blood split during this war mongers reign.
- 1983- Operation Urgent Fury-Reagan’s attack on the island of Grenada. The invasion was criticized by the United Kingdom, Canada and the United Nations General Assembly, which condemned it as “a flagrant violation of international law” .
- 1985-Reagan “strapped on his cowboy boots” and declared a state of national emergency warning that the “fearsome” Nicaraguan army was only “two days driving time” from Texas. So Americas “Ethical and legal” choice was to use the CIA to covertly and illegally sell arms to the revolutionary government of Iran and then use those funds to finance a congressionally forbidden insurgency against the elected government of Nicaragua.
- 1983 on- Reagan was a staunch supporter of the Salvadorian Military regime in El Salvador. Human Rights Watch reported: “During the Reagan years, in particular, not only did the United States fail to press for improvements . . . but, in an effort to maintain backing for U.S. policy, it misrepresented the record of the Salvadoran government, and smeared critics who challenged that record. In so doing, the Administration needlessly polarized the debate in the United States, and did a grave injustice to the thousands of civilian victims of Government terror in El Salvador.”
- 1985- Reagan decided to visit the Bitburg Cemetery in Germany. This is where all the SS soldiers are buried. Very Moral. Very Ethical, not to mention very sensitive.
- 1988- Saudi and American backed fundamentalist Islamists, favored by Reagan, using arms supplied (according to Amnesty international) by Saudi and the US, over threw the Nijibullah Government. The subsequent suffering was so extreme the Taliban were welcomed by the people.
On to Bush numero Uno….
- 1991- During the first Gulf war, Bush had the US military drop some 90,000 tons of bombs on Iraq in the space of 43 days, “intentionally destroying the civilian infrastructure, including 18 of 20 electricity generating plants, and the water pumping and sanitation systems.”
- 1989- Operation Just Cause, a cynical name if ever there was one, was launched. Manuel Noriega, a CIA asset, got out of line and it was determined he had to be taken care of. During the invasion, which the country of Panama to this day has a date for the national morning of the event, the US bombed the Chorillo slums and other civilian targets in Panama city killing thousands of poor people.
Moving on to Bill Clinton, one of the slickest players in the game.
- 1995- Suharto (you’ve heard of him. Indonesian president, killed about 500,000 people after a coup in 1965, responsible for 250,000 deaths in East Timor in 1975, thousands more since in various Indonesian provinces: that guy) visited the White House. After the meeting between he and Clinton, a top Clinton aid was quoted in the New York times as saying “Yeah, Suharto is our type of guy.”
- 1993- Clinton bombed Baghdad in retaliation for an alleged but unproven Iraq plot to assassinate former President George Bush. Eight Iraqi civilians, including the distinguished Iraqi artist Layla al-Attar were killed in the raid, and 12 more were wounded.
- 1999- UNICEF reported that “more than 1 million Iraqi children under 5 were suffering from chronic malnutrition, and some 4,000-5,000 children are dying per month beyond normal death rates from the combination of malnutrition and disease.” This was due to sanctions against Iraq set by Clinton and his cronies.
- 1998-1999- Clinton had advanced knowledge of the Indonesian plans to interfere with the referendum and eventually to take revenge for any ensuing defeat, but did nothing whatsoever to prevent this criminal performance. Tens of Thousands dead and tortured due to Clinton’s “Moral” and “Ethical” weakness and inability to act.
Bill Clinton is a tough act to follow, so George W. Bush really had to up his game, and he did.
- 2003-the decision to invade Iraq made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Falluja and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on. George W. Bush is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation. We all know that the sad constantly fluctuating pretenses that this military invasion were based on turn to dust and blow away with the breeze after a single moments criticism.
Bush required only one point, although there are many more that I will spare you the details on in this post.
President Obama is currently involved in War Crimes. He has authorized the attacking of civilian targets, sanctions that are starving people, and is likely pushing the United States towards a very unnecessary war with Iran. I will not go into further detail at this time because I think I have firmly illustrated what Americas “Moral, Ethical and Legal principles” are based on ACTIONS and EVIDENCE, not just words and rhetoric.
2. Terrorists–be they Christian, Muslim or other–twist ethics to justify their immoral behavior.
This is true, and America (I suppose we fall into the “other” category) uses the same principles to justify its terrorist actions abroad. We used the first Atomic bomb, a weapon of mass destruction, clearly against the laws of war as we targeted civilian population centers, and we did it because “in the long run we were saving American lives”. In reality we were testing out the new toy and trying to intimidate Russia. That was a Terrorist action.
American Exceptionalism blinds us and we can’t understand that to a large part of the world, we are the bad guys. We are the terrorists. It isn’t our might that makes people angry, it is the way we use it.
3. As a result, Americans and the West tend to fight wars more ethically, morally and justly than non-state groups acting out of zealotry.
If you define Morals in any way that are somehow imperative and universal than based on the empirical evidence, this is a patently FALSE statement. If however you define morals based on what you want, need and can physically take from another person then sure, this is just fine.
4. And most importantly, this isn’t a bad thing.
What a convenient thought; if you are the one wielding the club.
Gaijinass 
I’ll just say this, the post was an attempt critics who say America should act immorally in war. I’m sure you disagree with that, right?
Oops, mis wrote that. Meant: I’ll just say this, the post was an attempt to rebut critics who say America should act immorally in war. I’m sure you agree with that, right?
Eric-
I would be caught there. I was in the military and I have a place in my heart for Warriors and what they do is bring death. That is what they train to do. I think that in itself is pretty heavy, possibly immoral depending on your point of view. I am not in a position or place personally where I feel comfortable discussing morals. However I do feel very comfortable discussing truth. My reply to your post was mostly regarding truth.
I really enjoy your blog by the way.
Let me say this, My brother and I do not agree on everything.
I’m a pacifist, and as a pacifist I have trouble syaing one country or nation is superior to another. your post, in many ways, points this out.
But what I will say is that our post was about encouraging moral behavior, I think we agree on that. The old saying, actions are louder than words, comes to mind.
Just found your blog, but let’s keep this conversation going. Please pass along any thoughtful posts like this one.
Uhm… regarding the Bitburg cemetery you are a bit wrong. There are more than 2000 soldiers buried (WW1 and WW2), almost all of them regular German soldiers. Less than 50 of were in the SS, and most of them were drafted, not older than 20 years.
Cheers. However, the international outcry that his visit provoked had nothing to do with normal soldiers. As a politician, you have to be aware of the details. Good comment though.
hm… i think, for the purposes of addressing Michael’s post, it would have been better to focus on things like this:
“intentionally destroying the civilian infrastructure”
and this
“the US bombed the Chorillo slums”
in order to critique the assertion that america’s military fights morally and legally.
most of the rest seems to me more a criticism of american foreign policy and politics. related, to be sure – in the right book, but not on the right page.
i’m interested to know what you think of the military’s explicit reasoning for the two aforementioned quotes. what was the stated purpose of bombing the Iraqi infrastructure and the Panamanian slums (if you know it / where to find it)?
relevant are the atomic bomb drops, as you mentioned; also dresden and tokyo. i believe the military had at least nominal military targets associated with each of these 4 locations (feel free to correct me). the general paradigm as i understand it was, furthermore, that it is civilian support that enabled the German and Japanese armies to participate in WWII at all, and that in order to “win” the countries in question had to be defeated – government AND governed.
have we moved past this understanding of warfare? if yes, then a moral judgement of past circumstances would certainly inform contemporary american war fighting, but it alone would not condemn it. for that we must fast forward to Chorillo and Baghdad… were these “civilian” targets attacked for the same reason tokyo was razed to the ground? or were there different reasons? were the contemporary reasons justified? if not, have we continued to refine our standards for morality, or are we repeating past mistakes? or perhaps these were morally acceptable attacks after all?
“So it is necessary to demonstrate America’s values through the submission and review of empirical evidence.”
agreed. now that we’ve refocused what evidence is relevant, lets get to the reviewing!
also, a concession: i’ve made a few broad points here that probably require me to do some researching. unfortunately i haven’t the time (and hence, haven’t my own blog). i think you’ve started a potentially interesting discourse, however, and hope my input may focus/develop it.
Thanks for the comment.
To get right to the point…
Imperial Japan and the Iraq Nation under Saddam Hussein were brutal and totalitarian. Opposition was not allowed, it was crushed. The people of Japan were taught to believe the Emperor was god. Saddam played one trick after another to keep his people controlled and regulated including adopting a religion, Islam, and torturing the hell out of anyone possessing a dissenting voice. To expect these people to somehow pull themselves up by their bootstraps and dethrone insanely powerful political/military tyrants during a time in which they have all been convinced that an invading horde is coming to rape their virgins then murder them all, which was often used propaganda, is absurd. The people, civilians-normal people, in these places bear no responsibility.
On the flip side of that coin, the USA is a Democracy, in theory anyway, and the people elect, again they CHOOSE their leaders. This a country founded on power to the people and it is assumed that we choose our officials because they represent us, the people and our desires. By this logic, the American people are in fact, guilty of aggression abroad and are much more worthy targets simply because we have a choice, whether it is voiced or not. Yet, when 9/11 occurred everyone cried up a hell storm about how cruel and inhumane the Islamic attackers were because they went after civilians. Supposedly in America, people have the power to change things without fear of torture and execution, yet attacking our civilians was out of the question, while we aggressively targeted civilians abroad because they should stop their repressive and violent dictators. They could not stop those Political military machines anymore than a normal American today can stop its government from flushing American civil liberties down the toilet.
The thought though that we are somehow more moral is classic American exceptionalism.
If we do it its OK; if they do it its terrorism and evil. Just slow down, be moral and logical for one moment and think: Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, MILITARY targets because America had shifted Bombers to Pearl Harbor and other areas in preparation to begin attacking Japan.
Our final answer to that was to decimate massive amounts of civilians to prove a point, not only to Japan but also to the world. It is in the literature. Look it up.
America is not a gleaming city on a hill and more and more the qualities that might have made it that are stripped away by the people in power.
I think that war is in and of itself always gruesome and innocents die. It is disgusting and pathetic however, that our military institutions have to lie about their activities, that our “media” tacitly support it, in order to keep everyone convinced that what they are doing is right.
War is never right. It might be necessary (our current ones are not) but it is never moral.
Bombing civilian targets, although strategically sound in a war waging since is NEVER, EVER, NOT EVER right.
The whole situation and the general American’s ignorance of it is summed up well in an excerpt from the courageous and hard hitting blog “Baghdad Burning” (link on the blog page under friends)”
The unidentified Iraq woman writes in 2004….
I think we should be able to all agree that the US Military SHOULD fight according to universally accepted moral standards. That being said, it would be naive to think it has always done so and will continue to fight in that manner at all times. I think gaijinass is righ to keep in mind the idea of American exceptionalism and not put ourselves on too high of a pedestal.
Cheers. In short form what I am saying is this- Waging war is messy business and each individual solider is ultimately responsible, despitde the threat of court marshal for his actions because the institutions do not care about morality. Conversely, I understand the warriors ethos and killing is what it is. Ones own moral code is the only thing that will matter. But at the least, lets be honest. Lets not try and hide behind a veil of cynical platitudes that do not stand up to a moments introspection.