The reality of war

bonkey

In a now-closed thread, I got given serious (uncivil) flameage by some of our more outspoken posters for the following :

Oh - and you lose credibility by talking about "preserving American lives". You went over there to protect Kuwait. Your job was to preserve Kuwaiti lives. American soldiers lives' were, to be quite honest, incidental once the US comitted to helping a foreign nation in a foreign dispute.

This led to me being called an American-hater, an ankle-biter (?) and a load of other slurs. I feel unjustly wronged here, and wish to clarify exactly what it is I was saying.

Kuwait was invaded by a foreign nation - Iraq. The US, amongst other nations, cane to the aid of Kuwait. From that moment, their aim was to protect Kuwait, its independance, its oil (for the cynics), its people. The aim was not, and could not have been to preserve American (or allied) soldiers. If you wanted them preserved, you wouldnt send them into a war.

No soldier's life is cheap, and it is a commander's job to keep his men alive. I was not demeaning the US soldiers efforts, nor saying in any form that their lives were worthless.

However, if you enter someone elses war, your aim (as a nation) is not self-preservation, it is the preservation of others. You honour those who die in the conflicts as having given their lives for a worthy cause.

However, to believe that Americans killed Iraqis to preserve American lives is doing those who died in the Gulf a major disservice. They went there for a reason - to help the Kuwaitis. They lived and died to help the Kuwaitis. While each individual soldier would obviously like to survive the conflict, and each killing of an enemy soldier is an act of self-preservation, those soldiers knew that they were not over there to save their own lives - they were over there to save Kuwaitis.

To those who slurred me...

1) Americans were not the only foreign troops in Kuwait. Therefore, I feel further justified in criticising the comment that the US soldiers killed Iraqisd to save American lives. This is typical "US-centric" thinking, which is what I was criticising.

2) If you truly believe the Americans killing Iraqis to save American lives, why didnt they just leave, and save American lives that way?

3) I apologise giving the impression that I felt the worth of any allied soldier who died in the conflict was "incidental". What I meant was that their lives were of secondary importance, and should have been recognised by you as such.

4) The only rationale I received, other than the typical invective I have grown use to from these outspoken posters was :

Our task was to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait, not to protect Kuwait. We couldn't protect Kuwaiti lives -- they were in the caring hands of the Iraqis at the time.

Which is effectively saying that the US (or the Allies) didnt care about the Kuwaitis, they only cared about Kuwait not becoming part of Iraq. So they came to the rescue because what? They hated the Iraqis? They love the oil-prices that the Kuwaitis gave them?

In other words, you would probably argue that Kuwaitis getting killed as collateral damage in order to take out the Iraqis would be far more palatable then the loss of Allied soldiers lives.

Which ultimately proves my point - you lose credibility by talking about saving American lives. You imply (as stated in the follow up) that you dont care about the Kuwaiti people, all you cared about was stomping Iraqis, and/or protecting the oil supply for the US. If you werent there to help the Kuwaiti people, who were you there for?

5) And finally...

Ya know -- I understand where you're coming from. However, when it comes to people so heinously biased, such as blade, I tend to call a spade a spade.

In this case, blade made a blanket assertion WITHOUT ANY SUPPORTING PROOF and that would take only a few seconds to check. The only motive behind making these blatantly FALSE statements is a certain anti-American fevor that I find predominates this forum.

Americans less than human

American lives "incidental"

I've seen some pretty foul crap here.

By the way, respectfuly -- what exactly is your problem with my post?

That I proved blade to be ignorant or that I asserted that blade has an anti-american bias?

Could you at least show that you have the intelligence to know who you are flaming? You attacked me, not blade. You were commented to by a mod about the abuse you were spewing, and again you referred to blade.

It goes to show how much attention you guys are actually paying to this whole thing, and how seriously you should be taken.

jc

Victor

As I have said before all war is about greed and money.

As one who readily admits to being cynical and sarcastic, I think the Gulf War was primarily about the stability of the price of oil. That price was being protected by ensuring that Iraq did not control not only Kuwait's, but also Saudi Arabia's oil (remember that Iraq had a marginally bigger population and much bigger army than Saudi Arabia, which is spread over a much larger area - www.cia.gov World Factbook). The rule of international law and preservation of life were secondary.

American expectations were of 14,000 fatalities in their forces. In the event it was closer to 500. An estimated 250,000 - 300,000 Iraqis died as a direct result of the war, although an exact figure is impossible to gauge given the subsequent civil war. To quote from http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1991/s91/s91fotion.html

Some mistakes occurred during the war; the U.S. Air Force hit Public Shelter No. 25 in Amiriya, a suburb of Baghdad, and a British "smart bomb" missed a bridge and hit a shopping area in Falucha. Surely there were other unpublicized errors of judgment and execution.

In each of these incidents approximately 200 civilians died. However, they were the exception. Much more lethal were the large numbers of individuals and smaller groups to die from a myriad of weapons.

To say "American soldiers lives' were ... incidental" would be harsh, even when judging by the standards that you would use against the Pentagon (and Baghdad and Moscow and Kinshasa and ...) hawks . However, right through the American chain of command, Iraqi lives were "incidental". While, the collapse of the Iraqi Army and the emergence of a vast number of Iraqi POWs saved hundreds of thousands of lives, the primary objective on the ground was the preservation of American lives by the "over-kill" taking of Iraqi lives.

Blade

Americans less than human

American lives "incidental"

I've seen some pretty foul crap here.

By the way, respectfuly -- what exactly is your problem with my post?

That I proved blade to be ignorant or that I asserted that blade has an anti-american bias?

Again I never said any of those things and you certainly didn't prove sh*t about me cause you didn't even know who the hell you were quoting in your posts!

Keeks

Can I ask u on equestion Smedley.
Why, in your opinion, did the US and allied nations enter into the Gulf War?
This is only to staisfy my own curosity and give me an insigt into your thinking if you want to know why I've asked it.

Shinji

I fully say better a thousand invading Iraqis die than a single Allied soldier be him American, British, Egyptian or whatever.

By the same token, it's only fair for those on the other side of the conflict - including many in other Middle Eastern nations whose population supported Iraq - to prefer the death of a thousand American, British, French etc forces to the death of a single Iraqi, yes?

Let's not forget as well that every American in the theatre was a soldier; the majority of Iraqis were civilians.

Extending this, it's only fair to realise that for a neutral nation or a neutral people, many of whom are of the opinion that Allied actions in the Middle East were heavy-handed and showed a short-sighted policy based purely on self-interest, not to actually care about whether it's American or Iraqi lives lost, as long as it's as few as possible overall?


I'm also amused by your constant claims that you've been accused of being less than human. You do seem rather adept at reading personal insults out of comments. Of course, it's all somewhat ruined by then turning around and claiming that the life of one American soldier is worth the lives of 1000 Iraqis... Obviously a firm believer in equality yourself then I take it?

bonkey

Originally posted by Smedley

Respectfully -- No! The purpose in war is NOT to die for your country, if possible. The purpose is to make the other sonofabitch die for his. Yet one more deplorable truth!

I was not so much talking about the purpose of war. I was talking about a soldier's job. Put simply, while self-preservation (and the preservation of your fellow soldiers) is indeed a fact, so is the expendability of soldiers. If a general needs men to go on a "suicide mission" where they will probably die, he does so - as long as the cost/risk is worth the potential gain.

Soldier's do not have the luxury of stepping back and saying "no, I wont do that, it will get me killed".

Hence, my comment, that if necessary they will die for their cause.

As you so rightly put it.....a deplorable truth.

I fully say better a thousand invading Iraqis die than a single Allied soldier be him American, British, Egyptian or whatever.

On this, I also agree, given that the Iraqis were the agressor. However, I still maintain that the reason American's killed Iraqi's was not to preserve American life, but to gain the objectives they were sent there for, which was the liberation of the Kuwaiti people and nation. Seeing their own preservation as the most important aspect (which is how I read the initial comment) is therefore misleading.

Simply put, they were there to do a job, and ideally not die doing it. However, getting the job done was what they were there for. So, from that respect, the sanctity of their own lives was secondary. Secondary, of course, being the word I *should* have used instead of incidental.

in·ci·den·tal (ns-dntl)adj. ... Of a minor, casual, or subordinate nature.

Oh - one last thing...there's no need to post dictionary definitions - I know what the word means, and anyone who wasnt sure could check it themselves.

I admitted to a poor choice of words, but when I used it, I was thinking in terms of the "subordinate nature" definition - which is effectively the same thing as "secondary". Unfortunately, unlike secondary, incidental has other meanings, and is usually taken to mean "of no importance". I never meant to imply that...I simply meant "of lesser importance.

jc

nesf

Originally posted by Smedley

This is a fair question.

we went in for a number of reasons including, but not necessarily limited to:

(1) To secure a great percentage of the world's oil resources from a ruthless despot.

(2) To repel an invasion of one nation on another.

(3) To stop the rape, murder and pillage of the Iraqi soldiers.

(1) You have your own oil supplies, you aren't dependant on the middle east supplies, only countries that yu trade/export or have economic interest in do.

(2)So you invaded on country to stop the invasion of another, you can't justify that. I don't disagree with the need, but that reason doesn't justify the deaths caused in Iraq.

(3) Technically more were killed by US operations than in the invasion of Kuwait. One could speculate, it wa the escalation of the conflict by the US and her allies, created a far higher casualty figure.


It was cycnacism that got the US involved in it. It wasn't any pretence of freedom.

WhiteWashMan

didnt more allied soldiers die from friendly fire than were killed by enemy soldiers?

\nd i think its niave to say that americans went in for the good of the kuwait people.
the americans were afraid of not only losing kuwait oil, but that saudi would be next.
plus, it gave then a lovely little launch pad into the middle east by being allowed to have bases in saudi.

if you hadnt noticed, the mericans are continually bombing iraq. just no one really gives a damn anymore.

bonkey

Originally posted by nesf


(1) You have your own oil supplies, you aren't dependant on the middle east supplies, only countries that yu trade/export or have economic interest in do.

I thought part of GWBs new "natural resource exploitation" plan was to look for and/or open up more oil platforms within the US so that it was no longer so heavily dependant on foreign supply - most notably from the ME.

The US are an oil importer. They use more than they produce. The ME and its oil supplies are key to the US economy - they are very much dependant on it.

(2)So you invaded on country to stop the invasion of another, you can't justify that. I don't disagree with the need, but that reason doesn't justify the deaths caused in Iraq.

Actually, the US didnt invade anywhere.

They offered assistance to a foreign nation (Kuwait) who gave them permission to act on Kuwaiti soil. AFAIK, The US were vary cautious about any activities which involved crossing into Iraq, and once the Iraqi's had withdrawn from Kuwait, the US did not push on into Iraq.

(3) Technically more were killed by US operations than in the invasion of Kuwait. One could speculate, it wa the escalation of the conflict by the US and her allies, created a far higher casualty figure.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. The US killed more Kuwaitis than the Iraqis did? Even if this is true (I dont have the figures) it is an unfair comparison. Had the US not intervened, the casualty numbers would have continued to rise, as would the rape and pillage of the people and nation, as would the oppression and brutality to ensure the nation became acquiescent.

To say that the cost was higher because of the Allied intervention is unfair, as even if true, it ignores what would have happened had the intervention not taken place.

Finally, we should all remember when pointing fingers about the Gulf War that while the US had the largest presence, they did not go in their alone. Many European nations were also in there with the US. So, while you can claim that France, Germany, GB etc. are all in the US pocket (which pretty much means the EU is), you still cant say that the US were in there for cynical/self-serving reasons without honestly saying the same about every other nation who came to Kuwait's aid.

jc