The carpet bombings of Germany and the carpet bombings and atomic bombings of Japan killed civilians beyond even what many advocates of that policy expected. And yet, though we won the wars,

… not “though we won the wars” but those policies were instrumental in TRULY winning the wars. i.e. totally obliterating the threat from those enemies and turning them into strong, productive, trustworthy allies for more than a half century – something that none of our half-fought wars has ever achieved, but I guess you would consider that a minor point …

we didn’t then change the laws of warfare to say that the intentional killing of civilians (which is what both those policies were about) is now to be standard policy backed by law.

Drum on December 18, 2008 at 1:41 PM

We have a strategic nuclear arsenal – to this very day – that is made to do nothing but incinerate civilians, when necessary, and our strategic defense doctrine is predicated on the extermination of the enemy. Grow up. It does no one any good to pretend that that is not our standard policy, though it makes some silly people feel good about themselves. But, intentional ignorance, and political correctness applied to war, never serves anyone but our enemies. For many lefties, of course, serving our enemies is exactly the point behind their positions. Self-hate and illusory guilt tend to do that.

Charles Martel on December 18, 2008 at 7:45 AM

Thanks, Charles. I’ll tell you, I use the term “progress” in the classic sense. It is a shame that the left has stolen the term and abused it for their own purposes – which tend to be anti-progress and organized more towards the stagnation of civilization – but I am trying to put the old meaning back into the word.

My view is that the progress of Man, the technological and intellectual progress – our growth – should be our highest priority, bar none, and thoughts of peace are secondary considerations, at best, especially as we have no control over enemies deciding to threaten us and drag us into war. This means, for me, that victory certainly becomes the main goal in any military campaign, once our progress is threatened and war is engaged. It is unfortunate that, post-WWII, the US switched from this view, which just about all used to hold, to one of “not losing” as our main military doctrine – yet another piece of emotional fallout from the traumas we (Truman, specifically) suffered fighting WWII.

progressoverpeace on December 18, 2008 at 3:35 PM

seanrobins on December 18, 2008 at 5:26 PM

Well said. I particularly love the arguments they give to show that “torture doesn’t work”. For some reason, they think that they can reasonably argue that the information gotten from someone nicely is more dependable than the information gotten from someone under duress who knows that the info will be checked and he will suffer greatly if it is a lie.

But we all know that lefties argue that torture doesn’t work specifically because they know it works (just the threat of torture, frankly) in the vast majority of cases. That is what really scares the libs.

I would add to your points on the first argument, lefties love to look at actions taken out of context. I always tell them that I don’t condone biting people’s ears off, as that can generally be considered uncivilized behavior, but if I get mugged the situation could easily arise that biting the mugger’s ear off is the best, and most civilized, action. That doesn’t mean that I will then go around biting ears off, but will return to my normal behavior in normal contexts. Liberals don’t understand this, because they hate having to take context into account. It hurts their pea-brains and strains their hyper-fragile, always-near-collapsing emotional states.

progressoverpeace on December 18, 2008 at 5:43 PM

Considering what a recruitment poster events like Abu Ghraib are for al-Qaeda,

Spc Steve on December 18, 2008 at 9:10 PM

This is a lie thought up by the liberals that bares no relation to reality. The only thing about Abu Ghraib that helped recruitment for Al Quaeda was the way the left attacked our soldiers and showed the arabs that we would tie ourselves in knots over college frat pranks and were more interested in prosecuting our own soldiers than winning the war. Apologizing for Abu Ghraib did more to help Al Quaida recruitment than anything else. Once the arabs saw our weakness in this, they were motivated to fight us, because they thought they had a chance of winning. When they see that we tie ourselves up over such idiocy, they see a chance of defeating us. Their cultures have been this way for thousands of years and are not likely to change anytime in the near future.

Anyone who thinks that the average arab thought what was happening at Abu Ghraib was so terrible has no idea what usually goes on in the arab world and how they think. Frankly, I get tired of hearing this line over and over again.

progressoverpeace on December 18, 2008 at 11:31 PM

The biggest problem we have when discussing these issues is that our law (and much of our thinking) doesn’t take cultural differences into account, and in war, cultural differences are huge. Our ROE needs to change, based on the cultures who are fighting us. When we are in a war with tribalistic cultures, we cannot treat them as if they were individualistic, as we are. What works fighting against us doesn’t work fighting against a tribalistic culture and vice-versa. But our law identifies no such differences, though we all feel it.

We know, for example, that while MAD worked with the USSR, it would not work with Iran, since their cultural views are radically different. For another example, 100 years ago, everybody had to experience intense pain at various points in their lives – having dental work was usually one of the most painful. Everyone who was alive had to suffer through this. The level of pain that such people view as normal, and are able to withstand, is much higher than modern people can even contemplate. What we call “torture”, they would call “relief”. But our law would dictate our behavior towards such people, without any regard for the differences between them and us, when the differences with respect to “torture” would be almost unimaginable. Since we start from blanket rules that are built for individualistic cultures, there are bound to major flaws when trying to apply these rules to non-individualistic ones.

It is interesting that our left loves to point out these cultural differences and carve out spaces in our law, but they only care when these differences lead to “rights” that must be given to the aliens – e.g. provide Korans and point them to Mecca (for a tiny example). But they refuse to acknowledge such differences in the opposite direction, and conservatives don’t tend to argue these cultural points.

progressoverpeace on December 19, 2008 at 10:52 AM