Well, technically, war upon civilian populations is illegal, in other words a war crime, but the British and US justified bombing German cities during WWII in order to stop the Nazi menace, which was already in collapse at that point anyway, and have been galloping ahead ever since.
Recently Donald Rumsfeld made a statement regarding our bombing of an Afghani wedding party (the second wedding party we've bombed, incidentally) to the effect of 'when you're using this much firepower, civilian casualties are inevitable.' Last October it was repeated over and over again that we were going into Afghanistan to stop terrorists in order to prevent the loss of more innocent lives; the great political push for this came from grief and anger at the deaths of innocents. Now Rumsfeld is saying that we went into this with our eyes open; we knew we would be killing more bystanders. It was just somehow not mentioned at the time, possibly because the US population was very much against any action which would kill more innocent people. Now that we're nine months into the war and with civilian casualties mounting it's okay for Rumsfeld to admit that our rulers were bullshitting us. Or were we lying to ourselves? Did anyone really believe the might of the US arsenal could be brought to bear upon Afghanistan and no innocents would get in the way? It's very difficult to convince the rest of the world that we weren't intelligent enough to see this, just like it's hard to explain how we aren't responsible for the actions of our rulers when we have a democratic system.
A point I've made elsewhere is that when the US and its proxies disregard UN resolutions and commit what are essentially war crimes, the global political situation is destabilized. Weaker nations learn that they can't appeal to the UN for protection, and so take alternate routes of resistance, and stronger ones understand that if they can take what they want by force they might as well do so, as long as it doesn't incense the US. There is no deterrance to war, save US interests, and the US tends to ally itself with repressive regimes (and arm them) because it keeps populations under control.
It's interesting to consider our allies in the Middle East, the Islamic countries at least. The leadership generally supports us; it's just the population at large which despises us. It may be inferred that, for example, we are not allied with 'Saudi Arabia;' we are allied with the constituents of the family dictatorship which runs the country and which is in collusion with western oil companies. The large mass of the population is irrelevant and therefore does not count as 'Saudi Arabia' in our estimation. What this implies about our love of democracy is never examined; and when our rulers say, in so many words, 'they hate us because of our freedom,' nobody asks who is keeping it from 'them.' Everyone knows why Saddam Hussein's dictatorship is bad but no one asks why King Fahd's dictatorship is acceptable. The fact that most of the Sept. 11th highjackers were Saudis is not worthy of comment; the fact that al Qaeda is essentially a US/Saudi construction dating from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is rarely mentioned; the fact that a lot of the people in our current administration were also in power at that time mysteriously never comes up. [contd]
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2002-07-19 14:20 (UTC)Recently Donald Rumsfeld made a statement regarding our bombing of an Afghani wedding party (the second wedding party we've bombed, incidentally) to the effect of 'when you're using this much firepower, civilian casualties are inevitable.' Last October it was repeated over and over again that we were going into Afghanistan to stop terrorists in order to prevent the loss of more innocent lives; the great political push for this came from grief and anger at the deaths of innocents. Now Rumsfeld is saying that we went into this with our eyes open; we knew we would be killing more bystanders. It was just somehow not mentioned at the time, possibly because the US population was very much against any action which would kill more innocent people. Now that we're nine months into the war and with civilian casualties mounting it's okay for Rumsfeld to admit that our rulers were bullshitting us. Or were we lying to ourselves? Did anyone really believe the might of the US arsenal could be brought to bear upon Afghanistan and no innocents would get in the way? It's very difficult to convince the rest of the world that we weren't intelligent enough to see this, just like it's hard to explain how we aren't responsible for the actions of our rulers when we have a democratic system.
A point I've made elsewhere is that when the US and its proxies disregard UN resolutions and commit what are essentially war crimes, the global political situation is destabilized. Weaker nations learn that they can't appeal to the UN for protection, and so take alternate routes of resistance, and stronger ones understand that if they can take what they want by force they might as well do so, as long as it doesn't incense the US. There is no deterrance to war, save US interests, and the US tends to ally itself with repressive regimes (and arm them) because it keeps populations under control.
It's interesting to consider our allies in the Middle East, the Islamic countries at least. The leadership generally supports us; it's just the population at large which despises us. It may be inferred that, for example, we are not allied with 'Saudi Arabia;' we are allied with the constituents of the family dictatorship which runs the country and which is in collusion with western oil companies. The large mass of the population is irrelevant and therefore does not count as 'Saudi Arabia' in our estimation. What this implies about our love of democracy is never examined; and when our rulers say, in so many words, 'they hate us because of our freedom,' nobody asks who is keeping it from 'them.' Everyone knows why Saddam Hussein's dictatorship is bad but no one asks why King Fahd's dictatorship is acceptable. The fact that most of the Sept. 11th highjackers were Saudis is not worthy of comment; the fact that al Qaeda is essentially a US/Saudi construction dating from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is rarely mentioned; the fact that a lot of the people in our current administration were also in power at that time mysteriously never comes up. [contd]