It is like the US only has one option - shooting. If we had a medical-industrial complex we could be air-dropping medical supplies and instead of the marines we could send in the doctor corps. There is a ton of things we could do to support the revolution without adding to the risk for civillians or having to worry about what anti-american fighters would do with the equipment afterwards.
We are already giving humanitarian & medical aid and have been for some time. The use of chemical weapons has been considered a particularly heinous war crime since before WW2. Destroying chemical stockpiles is about as limited an engagement as possible. We're not sending any marines in, or supplying rebels with arms - at least not yet, and I hope not ever.
>The use of chemical weapons has been considered a particularly heinous war crime since before WW2.
By whom? Certainly not by the US. America bombarded Vietnam with millions of gallons of Agent Orange. Vietnam estimates 400,000 people were killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects as a result of its use. It was the most massive use of chemical weapons in human history. Here is the US stance on chemical weapons in pictures:
Agent Orange was intended and used as a defoliant, not an anti-personnel weapon. The U.S. was at least reasonably consistent there; many Vietnam veterans came back from the war also maimed by Agent Orange.
As far as Iran-Iraq, many countries aided Saddam in his use of chemical weapons (on the battlefield and otherwise).
If you were looking for something to damn the U.S. in particular, this would seem to apply: "On 21 March 1986, the United Nations Security Council made a declaration stating that 'members are profoundly concerned by the unanimous conclusion of the specialists that chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian troops, and the members of the Council strongly condemn this continued use of chemical weapons in clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which prohibits the use in war of chemical weapons.' The United States was the only member who voted against the issuance of this statement."
Wikipedia discusses why President Reagan didn't seem to give a shit, but his opinion was hardly shared by the nation as a whole (who are, after all, still signed onto the 1925 Geneva Convention).
Agent Orange was intended and used as a defoliant, not an anti-personnel weapon. The U.S. was at least reasonably consistent there; many Vietnam veterans came back from the war also maimed by Agent Orange.
You are twisting words around (a tendency that has been growing on HN for some time).
Agent Orange was definitely used to gain the upper hand in the war.
As early as 1966, resolutions were introduced to the United Nations charging that the U.S. was violating the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which regulated the use of chemical and biological weapons.[46][55]
>>> Vietnam estimates 400,000 people were killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects as a result of its use.
>> Agent Orange was intended and used as a defoliant, not an anti-personnel weapon.
> You are twisting words around (a tendency that has been growing on HN for some time).
His clarification is valid. Agent Orange was not intentionally used to kill and maim children. Its intended use was crop destruction. However ill-guided that may be, it's not the same as trying to kill people directly with chemical weapons, which is what was implied.
> Agent Orange was definitely used to gain the upper hand in the war.
The point of fighting in a war is to gain the upper hand.
Many chemical weapons kill by making it impossible to breath. One of the primary intentions of Agent Orange was to kill by making it impossible to eat. I don't see how one is much more direct than the other.
Agent Orange was not intentionally used to kill and maim children.
Yes it was. Because, as you wrote yourself:
Its intended use was crop destruction.[...]
And from WP:
The goal was to defoliate rural/forested land, depriving guerrillas of food and cover and clearing sensitive areas such as around base perimeters.[49] The program was also a part of a general policy of forced draft urbanization, which aimed to destroy the ability of peasants to support themselves in the countryside, forcing them to flee to the U.S. dominated cities, depriving the guerrillas of their rural support base.[8][9]
Defoliants are used to quickly kill vegetation and deny its use for cover and concealment. It can also be used against agriculture and livestock to promote hunger and starvation.
How the hell was that policy supposed not to hurt children or farmers not participating in the war ?
"We destroyed their country and burned it but we didn't think it would starve anyone or people would die as a result". Do you use nuclear weapon to destroy infrastructure and when asked about human casualties then declare "Our intention was only to speed up the neutralization of city infrastructure, not to kill anyone." ?
> Agent Orange was definitely used to gain the upper hand in the war.
The point of fighting in a war is to gain the upper hand.
So... agent orange was used to win the war, which is my point. And yes forced and global defoliation qualify as warfare tactics. And so agent orange was used because of the warfare advantage it would give. It was used as a weapon against a resource (crop) without a care for the people on it. So yes it was used against people.
PS: My main point is that Agent Orange was used as a weapon on the ground of its intended consequences. That at that time they didn't fully consider the chemical effects on humans is highly convenient and suspect to me. Hence my reaction to the "it wasn't an anti-personnel weapon".
And to support that, from the first WP page:
Many experts at the time, including Arthur Galston, the biologist who developed and intensively studied 2,4,5-T and TCDD, opposed herbicidal warfare, due to concerns about the side effects to humans and the environment by indiscriminately spraying the chemical over a wide area. As early as 1966, resolutions were introduced to the United Nations charging that the U.S. was violating the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which regulated the use of chemical and biological weapons.[46][55]
There's a difference between weapons used to destroy enemy resources and weapons used to destroy enemy civilians and troops. Agent Orange is the former with a side effect of the latter, whereas something like mustard gas or the chemical weapons used in Syria are simply the latter. It's a siege weapon (like a catapult) instead of an attack weapon. I think the distinction is important. I agree that the use of Agent Orange was a travesty.
How are you defining "side effect"? It seems to be something like "effects which are not the stated goal", combined with "side effects do not define what a tool is". By that logic, we should just nuke all our enemies, since our enemies are in the blast radius. Deaths of everyone else nearby and fallout and all that stuff are just side effects, nukes are totally OK when they are used to attack, not siege.
I just don't think the US military realized the consequences of Agent Orange on the population when they came up with that terrible, terrible plan. Nobody is denying that Vietnam was a clusterfuck, but I believe Hanlon's razor applies.
Burning large areas of forest where you know people might be living (must be living, in the case of farms) can't be overlooked. Hidden from decision makers, but not overlooked.
The figure I heard in the press was that the Assad regime has thousands of chemical weapons stockpiles scattered about the country. Thousands. Not even the most optimistic of hawks believes that the coming bombing campaign will make a dent in the regime's ability to wage chemical war where and when it pleases. The rationale for this campaign is that it is necessary to take a symbolic stand against what we all agree is a heinous act. Yet if symbolism matters, why are we responding with a meaningless gesture which will ultimately weaken our standing in the eyes of the world and the enemy?
Obama: "How do we get attention away from Snowden?!?!"
Minions: "Bomb somebody!"
EDIT: I prefaced the above with "tin foil time". In reality, this is all just about bleeding heart, spend-my-tax-dollars-to-make-the-situation-go-sideways nonsense. Is it horrible what is going on? Absolutely. Are we going to make it better? No. Do we ever?
Since at the most base level the use of force is necessary to create laws, bombing is its own legal justification. We're making an international law that says don't use chemical weapons, although the amount of force probably won't be high enough to make it clear how serious an offense it is, meaning that it will probably do not much. Then again it appears slightly better than letting the use of chemical weapons slide.
False dichotomy. It is entirely possible to hold people responsible for war crimes without killing people. A good first step for the United States would be to ratify the 1977 protocols to the Geneva Convention, which explicitly define these actions as crimes against humanity and thus require certain legal responses.
Oh, I didn't mean that killing people was the only way to make laws. Locking them up or taking their stuff away works too. But upholding a law against people who don't want to comply always requires the use of force.
You missed the point. The United States has not ratified the Geneva Protocols. The first step in upholding international law in this case should be ratifying those agreements.
I am in favor of those responsible for these atrocities being tried in court. But if the United States does not believe this law applies to itself, it is hardly the appropriate agent for enforcing it on other countries which have not ratified it, especially since its solution (killing) is as morally problematic as the original crimes.
Okay, so agreed that the US is being hypocritical here. My point was only ever that regardless of morality, the use of force is always legal, and synonymous with establishing law, unless there is a greater force making it illegal. There is nobody that will punish the US for punishing Syria, so therefore the US gets to make the law.
If legality is nothing more than the will of the strong then the concept of "law" is meaningless as nothing can be illegal by definition. It is also senseless to argue that force "establishes" law, since you have already claimed that legality is at all times subject to the whims of the powerful.
Quite seriously, you might want to read The Republic if you haven't yet. Thrasymachus and Socrates have an exchange somewhat along these lines over whether might makes right, and Thrasymachus does not end up the better for it.
I don't really understand. Why can nothing be illegal by definition? The use of force is only illegal if there is somebody stronger stopping me. Can you point to an instance where this is untrue? If there isn't such a person, I'm creating a law. For example, if I spank my children for swearing, I'm making a law against swearing, and if there's no local, state, or federal law prohibiting it, then nobody will initiate force against me. Depending on how a law is made, it may be inconsistent, unjust, totalitarian, etc.
I also don't understand why it is senseless to say that force establishes law. That's what law enforcement officers do, they use force to establish / enforce the law. Of course legality is subject to the whims of the powerful; in a democracy, "whims of the powerful" approximates majority rule.
A "law" is just a rule that is punished when broken. If there is no punishment, it is a guideline or moral.
By definition, if the actions of the powerful determine what is legal, then the acquiescence of the powerful to the status quo defines legality as much as their embrace of force. And that leads you into Panglossian absurdity: there is nothing in the world which is illegal because everything which happens has been implicitly permitted to happen.
You can get around this by saying that sometimes the powerful do not act in their own interest (perhaps they lack foresight to take preemptive action, or misperceive their own interest), but this puts you in the same paradox that Thrasymachus found himself in his debate with Socrates.
The core problem is that you are making a very cynical argument that there is no law or morality which can or should prevent us from killing other people, but then use words like "legal" and "law" to try to disguise the moral bankruptcy of this position. Yet you cannot have it both ways. Either law and morality exist or they do not. And if law does not exist as anything except the interests of the powerful, then you are either trapped in Thrasymachus' paradox, or forced to the conclusion that this is the best of all possible worlds and nothing is by definition ever illegal.
It feels like you're taking what I'm saying and trying to shoehorn it into an old story you know. What you're saying about Socrates doesn't really match what I'm saying, as far as I can tell. I also don't see how my arguments are cynical, morally bankrupt, paradoxical, deceitful, meaningless, senseless, or as you started this whole thing, a false dichotomy. Like, I get that perhaps the character of Thrasymachus was like this, but I'm not that guy.
So, to be clear, I'm not arguing against the goodness of governments, democracy, laws, morals, or keeping people alive. I'm just trying to clarify the facts about how force, law, and morals are related to each other, in practical terms as they apply to all power structures.
> there is nothing in the world which is illegal because everything which happens has been implicitly permitted to happen.
Where did I indicate that I believe this? The illegal things that happen get punished, at least some of the time. In the other direction, if something gets punished at least some of the time, it is an illegal thing. It's a stronger law if it gets punished more often, but punishing only a percentage of offenses is still enforcement in general. If it's a law that is never upheld, it's a law in theory but not in practice. If it's a law in practice but not in theory, something like "don't be impolite to the cops" or "don't make Daddy angry when he's drinking", it's an unwritten rule. Why is this an incorrect perception?
> The core problem is that you are making a very cynical argument that there is no law or morality which can or should prevent us from killing other people
First, morality and law are distinct. Anyone can say we should or shouldn't kill people on the basis of their own morality. Morality is converted into law by the use of force. For example, natural / human rights, which correspond directly to morals, are not guarantees, they are ideals about how we would like things to be. However, they are converted into legal rights by the use of force, or the threat thereof. This provides some semblance of a guarantee about things.
At the international level, there are no hard laws stopping the US from doing a lot of different things, because there is no world police. As such there is only really morality, no guarantees, and so by using force we are effectively making laws out of our own morality, in the same way that a dictator does.
And, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be prevented from killing people, nor in this thread am I arguing that it's morally okay for the US to attack Syria (it seems slightly better than doing nothing, but it could be a big mess), I'm really just stating the fact that bombing Syria is its own legal justification because there is no higher authority making laws that will stop the US from doing so.
I personally like the idea of one world government to stop this kind of ad hoc lawmaking, but that doesn't stop it from being ad hoc lawmaking. I even agreed with you that it would be better if the US ratified the Geneva Protocols first, but I don't see that's inconsistent with my understanding of what's actually happening here.
Basically, I feel like we are talking at cross purposes.
P.S. I realized after some thinking that maybe the problem is this: I'm claiming might makes legally right, whereas you seem to think I'm claiming might makes morally right, which I'm not.
Maybe you can look at it this way: if you take your original post and re-write it so that it doesn't contain the words "legal" or "moral" or reference any abstract principles other than the interests of the powerful, you'll have the same argument you are making, except it will come across as absurd:
> Since at the most base level the use of force is necessary to [exert force], bombing is its own justification [for using force]. We're making a [use of force] that says [we are using force]....
The words "legal" and "international law" make your argument sound more reasonable, but only because the reader assumes they mean something like a codification of moral or social principles.
My goal is not trying to be argumentative. It's that I'm reflexively pacifist and deeply skeptical of arguments which seek to justify violence, especially when made from a position of relative power or hypocrisy, and in a way which glosses over the moral problems in killing people.
> The words "legal" and "international law" make your argument sound more reasonable, but only because the reader assumes they mean something like a codification of moral or social principles.
I think the assumption that laws actually correspond to widespread morals and social principles is the fundamental problem here. It's not a valid assumption. I think it's actually immoral to believe that because something is lawful it must be good. In other words, if somebody actually does have "legal justification" to kill someone else (no greater authority will stop them), that doesn't necessarily make it a good thing, e.g. in the case of capital punishment in the US, or in the case of using chemical weapons in Syria absent some kind of foreign intervention, or in the case of the US bombing Syria.
Morals are relative, and not everyone will agree with a law. Illegal things can be moral, immoral things can be legal. In the best case everyone's morals contribute to the law, in the worst case it's only the lawmaker's morals that truly matter. None of that changes the fact that for something to be a law there has to be a punishment for breaking the law, and that punishment for doing something makes it into a de facto law. It's unpalatable but there it is.
I'm a pacifist too, for what it's worth; I believe violence is only a good idea when it prevents even greater violence, I believe it's a good thing for power to be concentrated by governments, and I don't like the current state of international relations where rich countries tell poor countries what to do. But, I'm not an anarcho-pacifist.
Fair enough. My complaint was with the statement that bombing is its own legal justification. As above, it is always ethical or moral considerations that "justify" action (make them just). To the extent that law is simply an expression of the interests of the powerful, the argument for use of force becomes absurd.
1. Laws are a system of agreements that a community agrees to. The "law" created by this action will be weakened because it is the outcome of political circumstance, not a defined and objective system.
2. Intervention by the U.S. may backfire by incentivizing dictators to stockpile chemical weapons. One of the major reasons that a boots-on-the-ground invasion is not an option is the presence of these weapons.
Hate to say it, but international "law" has as much actual basis as the scare quotes I give it. Much of it is built more on custom than on ironclad stricture, and the parts that are very strict the U.S. has never bothered to ratify, so claiming that the U.S. must comply with Russia's demands makes as much sense as saying that Minnesota should enforce Saskatchewan's legal code.
The Kosovo bombings in the late 90s were also not sanctioned by the U.N. and yet the world didn't fall apart then (and in fact, can be argued that it was indeed instrumental to bringing peace).
And really, it's hard to argue that there's ever a persuasive strictly legal basis to employ the use of force against nations in a role other than self-defense, which has very interesting corollaries of its own. For example, was the U.K.'s and France's opposition to Germany's war in Poland even legally just? Especially in the U.K.'s case, they almost certainly could have made a separate peace with Hitler but chose to declare a state of war for some other nation entirely. Don't talk about treaty obligations either, they certainly demonstrated they were willing to part ways with that given their treatment of Czechoslovakia.
As for your second point, it's pretty apparent that dictators are already incentivized to stockpile chemical weapons. Dictators have had (and used) chemical weapons for war for decades and if anything, should be more incentivized to use them after seeing the tepid world response to thousands of non-combatant fatalities in Syria.
Hey, this is a tangent, but I have two questions since I like hearing your thoughts on these matters even if I don't always agree. 1) Is it accurate to see international relations today as anarcho-capitalism? 2) What do you think of world federalism?
I'm not quite in tune enough with my inner PoliSci to give a good compare/contrast argument between anarcho-capitalism and international politics, at least not without re-reading the Wikipedia.
However it's an insightful argument. Certainly there are the similarities that in both systems there is no central force-monopolizer that adjudicates disagreements, there is only whoever has the bigger stick in a given area.
Likewise countries can choose their own economic adventure in many ways by choosing which currency to use, what fiscal policies to set, and what major ideological alignment they will fall in with (which has large implications for things like trade). Here though the U.S. has been fairly successful in trying to standardize a lot of the economic interplay amongst the nations (e.g. the Bretton Woods accords), but again other nations could do something different if they wished.
As far as world federalism, I'm assuming you mean some type of world-wide central government that has specific delegated responsibilities and authorities and that would operate "on top" of the existing national governments.
There's a lot to be said for the idea... you'd finally actually have "international law", ways of resolving conflicts amongst nations (since there will be actual "world police" of some sort), etc.
Certainly the normal example in the U.S. is the slightly wiser Federal government sometimes have to lead state and local governments to Do the Right Thing by the nose if necessary (e.g. voting rights for minorities).
But on the other hand such as system tends to accrete power towards the top over time, and you would thus tend to end up with the needs of the many (i.e. China, India) outweighing the needs of the rest, or (more likely) the needs of the already rich (U.S., E.U., etc.) outweighing the needs of the rest of the developing nations.
Either way I can see that going poorly for nations like the Philippines or Malaysia, who could over time be gerrymandered right out of resources that would otherwise contribute to their economies.
I used to be real idealistic about such Star Trek-style world governments but at this point the idea would probably introduce more worries for me than potential benefits.
My guess is that if it were to arise, the path to world government would first see all nations governed by unions like the EU, and then from there a union of unions. But seeing as the EU is really struggling now, we have quite a ways to go.
1. Dictators can make laws without the agreement of a community; enfranchisement is not required for lawmaking. The only thing that establishes a law is the use of force as a punishment for breaking it. There is no other condition, although other things may be involved in the process.
2. I have no real idea whether the outcome of this will be good or bad, it seems like it could go either way. I'm mostly just clarifying that the words law and force go hand in hand; this is neither good nor bad, it just is.
Examples, which have been widely discussed in Syria decision talk, include Libya (2011) and Kosovo (1999). Bosnia (1995) would seem to qualify. 90's Gulf war and subsequent events have some relevance.
I'm not saying I'm unquestionably in favor of bombing Syria. But I am in favor of intellectual honesty and to claim that Syria (2013) would be Iraq/Afghanistan seems outrageous. Jonathan Chait put it best: Syria Isn’t Iraq. Everything Isn’t Iraq.
We aren't destroying chemical stockpiles, because it might release toxins and also it might make them available to looters. We're launching missiles at some military targets as a punitive measure for using chemical weapons.
I don't just mean humanitarian aid, which I think is dwarfed by the costs of whatever attacks are being considered.
I'm talking about direct support to the revolutionaries - combat hospitals and the like. We could do more than just medical support too without risking blow-back, things like robust communications links and battlefield intelligence from drones, vehicles, spare parts, mechanics to work on the vehicles, food, and other supply-chain type stuff. Pretty much everything we do for american troops except providing weapons. We just have this mindset that the support we provide to the people doing the fighting must itself be directly offensive which is itself a risk to us because of terrorism. Those blinders have caused us to sit it out and let the conflict drag on.
And then there is the question of what comes after. By providing direct support we would be building personal relationships with the revolutionaries so that when it came time to put together a new government, they would be much more receptive to our input on what it takes to make a stable and american-friendly government.
I'm talking about direct support to the revolutionaries
The problem is that the revolutionaries are worse than the Assad regime, which is bad. If the Obama is serious about getting involved, regime change and nation building is the only viable option - and that's a pretty ugly option.
The goal of a war is to win, and to win the opposing army must die. Napoleon demonstrated that. Most warfare in the preceding centuries was focused on winning battles rather than killing armies. But then Napoleon demonstrated how frighteningly effective it was to win a battle and immediately chase down and kill the opposition. Along with the invention of the standing army, warfare changed forever. We've been mainly focused on killing people ever since, because the people who wouldn't focus on that were swiftly debased.
If America chooses to support this conflict, I wish we would do it quickly and efficiently, and then immediately leave. Setting aside the question of morals, the primary reason Iraq and Afghanistan were such disasters is because we stayed. Actually, I wish we would bow out of the Middle East entirely and leave people alone, but that's unlikely to happen in the current political climate.
It's important to always remember the goal of modern warfare. When you choose to support war, you are choosing to kill other people, even if you're not doing the killing directly. There are no half measures. Either your side wins, and therefore the other army is dead, or yours is. So if you're going to support the war and endanger your countrymen, you want to win. Otherwise what's the point?
To win, the opposing side must lose its capability to wage war.
One way to accomplish that is to kill the opposing army, but that's not the only way. Other ways include destroying warfighting equipment (say, aircraft that are still on the ground), decimating the manufacturing base (thereby denying the opposing army the ability to rebuild lost capability), denying the opposing side critical resources such as fuel (why do you think the US has such a large "strategic oil reserve"?), or destroying the morale of opposing forces.
Granted, all of those methods generally involve killing people on the other side... but the implications are different than your assertion, wherein winning wars requires the slaughter of opposing forces. A careful study of modern warfare would show that the majority of wars were not won because the opposing army was mostly dead, but because of equipment and materiel and logistics and morale.
Midway is probably the best example in support of your claim. Its outcome is generally accepted as the reason Japan lost.
And yet it's interesting to note that the war was not won until their army was effectively dead: they believed so fiercely in the war that they would not yield until they believed imminent death was unavoidable. I'd like to paste an interesting excerpt from 100 Decisive Battles:
"When Okinawa was finally declared secure, the cost had been horrific. Some 150,000 Okinawans died, approximately one-third the island’s population. An additional 10,000 Koreans, used by the Japanese military as slave labor, died as well. Of the 119,000 or so Japanese soldiers, as many as 112,000 were killed in the battle or forever sealed inside a collapsed cave or bunker. Aside from the human cost, most of the physical aspects of Okinawan culture were razed. Few buildings survived the 3 months’ fighting. Collectively, the defenders lost more dead than the Japanese suffered in the two atomic bombings combined. The United States lost 13,000 dead: almost 8,000 on the island and the remainder at sea; another 32,000 were wounded.
The loss of life on both sides, particularly among the Japanese civilians, caused immense worry in Washington. New President Harry Truman was looking at the plans for a proposed assault on the Japanese main islands, and the casualty projections were unacceptable. Projections numbered the potential casualties from 100,000 in the first 30 days to as many as 1 million attackers, and the death count for the Japanese civilians would be impossible to calculate. If they resisted as strongly as did the citizens of Okinawa—and the inhabitants of the home islands would be even more dedicated to defending their homeland—Japan would become a wasteland. It was already looking like one in many areas. The U.S. bombing campaign, in place since the previous September, was burning out huge areas of Japanese cities. How much longer the Japanese could have held out in the face of the fire bombing is a matter of much dispute; some project that, had the incendiary raids continued until November, the Japanese would have been thrown back to an almost Stone Age existence. The problem was this: no one in the west knew exactly what was happening in Japan. The devastation could be estimated, but the resistance could not.
Thus, with the casualties of the Okinawa battle fresh in his mind, when Truman learned of the successful testing of an atomic bomb, he ordered its use. This is a decision debated since 6 August 1945, the date of the bombing of Hiroshima, and even before. Just what was known of Japanese decision-making processes before that date is also argued to this day. Was the Japanese government in the process of formulating a peace offer, in spite of the demand for unconditional surrender the Allies had decided upon in February 1943? If they were doing so, did anyone in the west know about it? Who knew what, when they knew it, and what effect that knowledge had or may have had on Truman’s decision making is a matter of much dispute. Whatever the political ramifications of the atomic bomb on the immediate and postwar world, Truman’s decision was certainly based in no small part on the nature of the fighting on Okinawa. Truman wrote just after his decision, “We’ll end the war sooner now. And think of the kids who won’t be killed.” Horrible as the effects of the two atomic bombs were, the number of casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as compared with the potential number an invasion could have caused is small indeed."
It's noteworthy that in order to win vs Germany we had to kill the vast majority of their army. Right up until Hitler shot himself, their morale remained high. A post on AskHistorians recently delved into that topic.
Vietnam would be a good example of losing without an army being mostly destroyed. The war was effectively over right when mainland America lost the will to keep fighting, even though we had just scored major military victories. But most Americans weren't tied to the negative consequences of losing, so their morale was perhaps a special case.
I can't think of any modern decisive conflicts that resulted in political change that didn't also require destroying the majority of the opposing army except Vietnam. And since Syrians will be quite invested in the negative consequences of losing, their morale will probably remain high until one side is mostly dead, if history is to be our guide.
The American firebombing campaigns over Japan caused massive damage and losses. Some of these attacks were as great or greater than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki with regards to damage and loss of life.
Prime Minister Baron Kantarō Suzuki reported to U.S.
military authorities it "seemed to me unavoidable that
in the long run Japan would be almost destroyed by air
attack so that merely on the basis of the B-29s alone
I was convinced that Japan should sue for peace."
I can't think of any modern decisive conflicts that resulted in political change that didn't also require destroying the majority of the opposing army except Vietnam.
In WWI, the majority of the army of the defeated was alive after the war. Likewise WWII. Spanish Civil War. Falklands War. On and on and on and on, decisive conflict after decisive conflict in which the majority of the defeated army is not dead.
Those statistics say that there were 11,568,000 German casualties out of 18,200,000 total. And while blowing off a leg isn't quite the same thing as killing them, it has the same effect for the purposes of war. The stats show about 1 in 3 Germans killed and 1 in 4 Japanese killed vs 1 in 50 Americans killed and 1 in 25 British killed. The focus of modern war is causing physical harm to the enemy troops, not merely destroying their capability for making war.
The focus of modern war is causing physical harm to the enemy troops
That's just so untrue. The focus of modern war is removing the enemy's will and ability to fight. One way, amongst many, to do that is to cause physical harm to people; it's an inefficient and difficult way that is massively dwarfed by far more competent and effective ways to wage a modern war.
The focus of modern war is causing physical harm to the enemy troops, not merely destroying their capability for making war.
You've got that the wrong way round. The focus of modern war is destroying their capability (and will) to fight.
"Wounded" does not necessarily mean "out of action permanently". My grandfather was wounded November 19, 1943 and was back in action before the new year.
The focus of modern warfare is destroying capability for making war -- which usually includes wounding or killing enemy troops, but also destroying equipment, engaging in misdirection to get enemy troops to commit to the wrong place, etc. It's much more sophisticated than you make it sound.
> Napoleon demonstrated how frighteningly effective it was to win a battle and immediately chase down and kill the opposition.
What a gruesome, ruthless and inhumane methodology. Killing every petty soldier just coz he happened to be in the army (for whatever reason).
Do you really think enemy soldiers (who are also human beings after all) deserve to all die even after you've won? Seriously? That sounds more like it'd be Adolf Hitler's or the Japanese Imperial Army's idea -- not that of some civilization that has even a bare bit of humanity in it.
Human beings do not generally see their enemies as other human beings. And if you really don't care about the morality of it, then it can be an effective strategy of making them fear you or preventing them from ever fighting you again (not to mention not having to deal with prisoners.)
I do care about the morality of it. I don't believe in fear. You should earn the respect and love of the people. Not instill fear in them. Even if you've conquered them, I believe this is still possible, if you treat them as fellow human beings and treat them nicely.
IMO no self-respecting democracy should follow this disgusting condemnable tactic of fear..
I would say morality is something that is ingrained in every human being. While it's true that some cultures had less of what you might call "modern morality" -- the fundamental things like forgiveness, compassion, empathy, love, etc. and finally the sense of what is right and wrong. These, I believe are ingrained in every human being. While some might choose to be more loving and compassionate, and other might choose not to -- the sense of one being good, and other being bad is crosses cultural and historic boundaries.
Regarding the book: you can use Amazon's "Look Inside" feature to read the first chapter (The Law of Human Nature), which covers the question of right-and-wrong/morality as a universal human thing. Although written from a Christian perspective (I'm a believer), its arguments are valid from a secular viewpoint as well.
The author makes some good points, but I still disagree. If you look through history, people did barbaric things. Slavery happened. Genocides happened. In wars, the winning side would sometimes rape all the women in the conquered village before killing them. Don't even get into medieval torture devices.
This quote from HPMOR is a bit long, but relevant and completely sums up the problem:
"A few centuries earlier - I think it was definitely still around in the seventeenth century - it was a popular village entertainment to take a wicker basket, or a bundle, with a dozen live cats in it, and - roast it over a bonfire. Just a regular celebration. Good clean fun. And I'll give them this, it was cleaner fun than burning women they thought were witches. Because the way people are built, the way people are built to feel inside - is that they hurt when they see their friends hurting. Someone inside their circle of concern, a member of their own tribe. That feeling has an off-switch, an off-switch labeled 'enemy' or 'foreigner' or sometimes just 'stranger'. That's how people are, if they don't learn otherwise.
You grew up in a post-World-War-Two society where 'I vas only followink orders' is something everyone knows the bad guys said. In the fifteenth century they would've called it honourable fealty. Do you think you're, you're just genetically better than everyone who lived back then? Like if you'd been transported back to fifteenth-century London as a baby, you'd realize all on your own that burning cats was wrong, witch-burning was wrong, slavery was wrong, that every sentient being ought to be in your circle of concern?"
Why did we move away these forms of societies? It's because someone listened to their inner voice and conscience -- they felt deep inside there was something wrong with what was going around them. Few act on these things, but those who do, brought change about in the world.
The goal of a war is to win, and to win the opposing army must die.
That kind of thinking is the problem. It may be the goal of the various groups in syria - but it is not the goal of the USA. The way the USA wins is to have Syria become a US-friendly country that we can trade with without making ourselves into hypocrites about things like human rights and representative government.
Define "win". The goal of war is to gain or maintain power. Every war ever fought was to assert power.
This does not necessarily require that those over whom you wish to assert power must die, but in reality most people prefer not to have someone else come in and tell them what to do, so they fight against the invader, thus requiring the death of those that oppose.
Other armies will throw up a white flag and welcome the invaders in exchange for their lives, disproving your point that "the opposing army must die".
A more practical measure I've heard discussed is destroying or majorly disrupting Syrian air forces, which are concentrated within 6 or so major fixed installations, all of which can be targeted from standoff distance by U.S. ships and aircraft.
In theory it would manage to deliver a firm "ouch" to incentivize more acceptable behavior without risking much in the way of escalation (as Syria has nothing they could strike the U.S. back with), and without meddling too much with the civil war proper (which is increasingly turning sectarian in nature).
Of course there's still the large concern for Israel, but I don't see how pissing off the IDF helps Assad's chances either, and I think he recognizes that as well. But I don't think they are seriously considering targeting chemical stockpiles, as to do that properly would requires at least some ground-based forces.
I second that. I'm also not a supporter of air strikes.
This is sectarian violence. If the Saudi's want to support the rebels, let them. I, however, refuse to support us getting involved in yet another Sunni vs Shiite fiasco.
Except the US is not supporting the revolution or to bring peace and democracy. There are no indications to support that. You have to look at US interests here. Those interests are in the chemical weapons that Syria possesses. Those CWs are more devastating than any conventional weapon by an order of magnitude. If they were used as reported, then something must be done to hinder the usage.
I actually think we are learning from our mistakes (Iraq).
I don't see the general public supporting engagement. True, Kerry gets top headlines in the papers, but there is usually a very critical article right below (case on point, the WSJ this week talking about the rebels in very negative light with links to Al Qaeda).
EDIT: And every time Kerry talks, he has to preface his statements with "this isn't going to be like Iraq". We're all thinking otherwise.
fortunately, the US will soon be bombing Syria to bring back peace and democracy to the country.