|
I think that Jim Henley is missing part of the point here. The hard left, as exemplified by Herold, the Guardian, et al., has tried to establish a crude moral equivalency in terms of numbers of civilians killed ("you got one of ours, we got one of yours"), on the implicit theory that our actions against al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, etc., are not and cannot be motivated by justice, or even pre-emption, but only by revenge. It is this theory that causes them to constantly inflate the numbers of the dead, so that thy can call for an end to the war on the grounds that we've killed enough now, and should therefore go home. It is true that warbloggers and other pundits outside the blogosphere have and continue to point out that the numbers are grossly inflated, from causes ranging from sloppy methodology to outright lies intended to wrest back the moral upper hand. But this is merely fighting the Red Fascists on their own ground, in a manner of their choice. Certainly, the day will come when the civilian causality figures in Afghanistan and elsewhere will equal the number killed in the WTC and Pentagon atrocities. If we have accepted the fascists' definition of morality, we will have no choice but to lie as grotesquely as they have done, or to acknowledge the point and stand done. Henley is correct in saying that the fake morality of the left should be ignored completely, that civilian casualities (and the military operations that cause them) should only be looked at in the context of, "How does this sort of thing make us look?" The whole question of civilian (and military) casualities should be answered by saying, "As many as necessary, but as few as possible" (the exact number still needs to be determined, of course; the devil is in the details). On a vaguely related, Henley says that
Maybe warbloggers also always fight the last war. Well, that's because we know how to fight the last war; our knowledge of how to fight the next one varies from "none" to "not very much". It was only in the 1980s that the U.S. managed to establish realistic (and expensive) training programs for its troops, and no one has ever managed to establish a realistic testing program for new weapons. In the past, these failings were generally concealed by a mixture of callousness (you gave the newbies a spear, a musket, or a Springfield, and told them, "Try to take one of enemy with you" -- this kind of on-the-job training is hard on the green recruits) and confidence that the pace of military technology was so slow that a new weapon would be in service for decades, if not centuries -- more than enough time to refine it by observing how many troops got killed in trying to use it. Contrary to leftist parodies, military officers are generally not interested in expending thousands of troops in meaningless slaughter. That's why they are reluctant to send the regiments out with what has been advertised as the latest death ray, but may turn out to be a badly balanced club.
John "Akatsukami" Braue Wednesday, July 03, 2002 |
|