← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Malachi
Thread ID: 4106 | Posts: 8 | Started: 2002-12-20
2002-12-20 00:43 | User Profile
[url=http://www.ncregister.com/Register_News/120802war.htm]Into Temptation[/url] Commentary & Opinion by J.P. Zmirak
My old high school friend sat across from me, nursing a Heineken. He didn't want to talk about the Gulf War, but I insisted.
He'd been a U.S. Army captain at the time, commanding U.S. troops that swept across the Iraqi front line trenches, quickly breaking the resistance of thousands of Saddam Hussein's conscript soldiers, who surrendered en masse - or tried to.
"They made it look like a video game on CNN," I began. "But I'm sure it wasn't."
He snorted, and took a gulp. "It was just about that easy. The fighting part, I mean - after we'd bombed the daylights out of them for months, then shelled them for more than 24 hours. We barely had to show up for those guys to throw down their guns and beg us to take them captive." My friend shook his head and looked away. "I wish we could have."
He took a deep breath, and waved for another beer. "After so many thousands of prisoners, the order came down that it was endangering our men to capture any more. There were so many at once - it seemed like a trick. So we called in the bulldozers." No one knows how many of those soldiers were trying to surrender, since U.S. forces stopped offering them the opportunity, as the Pentagon has admitted.
My friend, the veteran, shoved his empty glass away. "I had to give the order, order men who drove the earth-movers to just cover up the trenches. To bury those poor bastards alive."
"Try telling that in confession," he continued. Before he enlisted, he'd himself been a seminarian. "I had to. I said to the priest 'I buried hundreds of men alive.' And I told him why - how if I'd disobeyed orders I should have been shot for insubordination on the battlefield.
He didn't know what to say." The priest asked if he was sorry, and my friend said he sure was. He gave the soldier absolution.
I asked him if he would do anything like that again. He said, "Not unless they order me to." Then he waved for another drink. "That's war."
My friend was discharged honorably, and now leads a normal life. I won't vouch for his dreams. Thousands of Americans who fought for our country in World War I and World War II, in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War served with distinction, endured the anxiety, tedium and terror of military service and came out all right. They look back warmly on the friendships they forged, with pride in deeds of courage and self-sacrifice.
Good men, thrown into a man-made hell - the battlefield, where human beings are expected to butcher each other - can come out with their characters intact, even refined. Think of those veterans of Gettysburg, who put on their tattered uniforms 50 years later to cross the hallowed battlefield and greet their former enemies, shaking hands. (The moving moment was captured on silent film.) That reunion inspired another, held in 1994 at Normandy.
Not all soldiers do so well. Men with weak moral training, with fragile psyches or lousy luck may not emerge from the killing fields with medals and memories, then return to lives of peaceful retirement. We've all seen the media stereotype of the tragic Vietnam vet, tortured by flashbacks.
Still worse things can happen. In Germany after World War I, ex-soldiers still in love with war formed the nucleus of the Nazi party.
But it's not a "German thing," this intoxication with killing that can infect a human soul. We have our homegrown examples in Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh; in Gulf War graduate and urban sniper John Allen Muhammad; in the five veterans of the Afghanistan campaign who killed their wives at Fort Bragg, NC., this summer; in Robert Flores, the Gulf War veteran who on Oct. 28 murdered three faculty members and then himself at the nursing school from which he was flunking out.
There will be more. If the United States sends its troops to conquer Iraq, to bomb its cities, defeat its armies and disarm its dictator, some men will return physically sound but morally broken. Having crossed to the other side - to the place where killing is allowed, encouraged, demanded - they will not be able to return. They'll be a threat to their neighbors, their spouses, their teachers and themselves. Dispatched into hell, they'll bring it back with them.
Of the men who fight our wars, only a very small percentage are killed or wounded. Still fewer are psychologically ruined, like McVeigh. But who knows how many of our men (and nowadays, women) will be faced with the crushing temptation to abuse the awful power that comes to soldiers of a winning army - to obey immoral orders, wreak devastation on cities, to pile up enemy civilian dead if it might save our soldiers' lives?
Our record in Vietnam and Kuwait is not encouraging - not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Of course, it is not the soldiers who start wars. It is civilians, sitting in safety, far away. When men are ordered into battle, they do things that are inhuman. It is the men initiating the action, and the citizens who voted them into office, who are ultimately responsible.
That means us.
So as civilians it's our duty to enter war only regretfully, in obedience to "laws of war" that rigorously seek to spare civilians of enemy countries, treat enemy soldiers humanely and take as few lives as possible.
I'm not saying we shouldn't fight wars. I've read The Diary of Anne Frank, and I hope her ghost arises to haunt the pacifists out there. I've seen the footage of our men liberating the Nazi camps. I wish President Roosevelt had rained some of the bombs that annihilated Dresden on the rail tracks that led to them. Sometimes the refusal to fight comes from cowardice, from the selfish unwillingness to defend the innocent.
But a war is only just if it is the last resort, the sane alternative to conquest by tyranny, or to the imminent slaughter of civilians.
That Christian notion - often violated in Christendom - has since become the basis of international law.
President Bush deserves our gratitude if he takes steps to make any action against Saddam a last resort. Because with every war, however just or necessary, we deliver our boys into temptation - as my friend learned on the killing fields.
J.P. Zmirak is author of Wilhelm Röpke: Swiss Localist, Global Economist (ISI Books, Wilmington, Del., 2001).
The Bulldozer Assault
In one way, it's no different from the usual forms of warfare. But it reveals war's horror.
Between Feb. 24 and 25, 1991, thousands of draftee Iraqi soldiers may have been sealed in their trenches by U.S. Army vehicles to suffocate, according to an article in the Sept. 23, 1991 Time magazine: "Were thousands of Iraqis buried alive during the allied operation against their front line last February? U.S. Army officers say that as tanks equipped with plows and bulldozers punched holes in the 70-mile-long Iraqi defense strip, enemy soldiers who refused to surrender were trapped under avalanches of sand.
Col. Anthony Moreno, commander of a unit that followed the initial U.S. breakthrough, recalls seeing arms protruding from the sand. 'For all I know, we could have buried thousands,' he told New York Newsday."
This account was also covered in The San Francisco Chronicle, which reported that the decision to use bulldozers was later justified in a report to Congress by then Secretary of State Dick Cheney: "Because of these uncertainties and the need to minimize loss of U.S. lives, military necessity required that the assault ... be conducted with maximum speed and violence. ââ¬Â¦ There is a gap in the law of war in defining precisely when surrender takes effect or how it may be accomplished. An attempt at surrender in the midst of a hard-fought battle is neither easily communicated nor received."
PBS Frontline reported in an online article "Iraqi Death Toll," that "One infamous incident during the war highlighted the question of large-scale Iraqi combat deaths. This was the 'bulldozer assault' in which two brigades from the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized) - The Big Red One - used plows mounted on tanks and combat earthmovers to bury Iraqi soldiers defending the fortified 'Saddam Line.'
"While approximately 2,000 of the troops surrendered, escaping burial, one newspaper story reported that the U.S. commanders estimated thousands of Iraqi soldiers had been buried alive during the two-day assault Feb. 24-25, 1991.
"However, like all other troop estimates made during the war, the estimated 8,000 Iraqi defenders was probably greatly inflated. While one commander thought the numbers might have been in the thousands, another reported his brigade buried between 80 and 250 Iraqis. After the war, the Iraqi government found 44 bodies."
The Frontline article cited the original NY Newsday report, "Buried Alive" by Patrick J. Sloyan, Newsday, Sept. 12, 1991. Sloyan was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Gulf War. Sloyan's summary of the event may be found online at [url=http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0211/sloyan.html]http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0211/sloyan.html[/url].
2002-12-20 00:45 | User Profile
Just Following Orders
2002-12-20 03:31 | User Profile
Originally posted by Malachi@Dec 20 2002, 00:43 ** Still worse things can happen. In Germany after World War I, ex-soldiers still in love with war formed the nucleus of the Nazi party.
**
They weren't in love with anything. The had a bogus armistice shoved down their throats and were protecting themselves from communists, among other things. Free Corps volunteers may have become members of the Nazi party but that part came later. The Free Corps were actually defending Germany's borders against communist insurgents for awhile. I'd like to know how holding your country's borders mean you're in "love with war."
2002-12-26 22:40 | User Profile
Ragnar,
Great Post.
Malachi,
The more you know about the Bushies...
The Bulldozer Assault
Between Feb. 24 and 25, 1991, thousands of draftee Iraqi soldiers may have been sealed in their trenches by U.S. Army vehicles to suffocate, according to an article in the Sept. 23, 1991 Time magazine: "Were thousands of Iraqis buried alive during the allied operation against their front line last February?...
PBS Frontline reported in an online article "Iraqi Death Toll," that "One infamous incident during the war highlighted the question of large-scale Iraqi combat deaths. This was the 'bulldozer assault' in which two brigades from the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized) - The Big Red One - used plows mounted on tanks and combat earthmovers to bury Iraqi soldiers defending the fortified 'Saddam Line.'
"While approximately 2,000 of the troops surrendered, escaping burial, one newspaper story reported that the U.S. commanders estimated thousands of Iraqi soldiers had been buried alive during the two-day assault Feb. 24-25, 1991.
2002-12-29 19:52 | User Profile
**I asked him if he would do anything like that again. He said, "Not unless they order me to." Then he waved for another drink. "That's war." **
This shows the moral caliber of the US military today.
They have the nerve to talk about the Nazis---the SS were disciplined cadres unlike the Soviets and their Bolshevik masters and unlike the farce we see since 'Nam.
2002-12-30 01:15 | User Profile
**I'm not saying we shouldn't fight wars. I've read The Diary of Anne Frank, and I hope her ghost arises to haunt the pacifists out there. I've seen the footage of our men liberating the Nazi camps. I wish President Roosevelt had rained some of the bombs that annihilated Dresden on the rail tracks that led to them. Sometimes the refusal to fight comes from cowardice, from the selfish unwillingness to defend the innocent. ** I wonder if he was reading the parts written IN BALL POINT PEN -- you know, the pens that were not available in WWII?! :huh: Are you-all aware that it seems great parts of "her" so-called diary were false?!
I suppose he's NOT suggesting that pacifists should be afraid of forgery?
2003-01-03 00:36 | User Profile
**Our record in Vietnam and Kuwait is not encouraging - not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Of course, it is not the soldiers who start wars. It is civilians, sitting in safety, far away. When men are ordered into battle, they do things that are inhuman. It is the men initiating the action, and the citizens who voted them into office, who are ultimately responsible.
That means us.
So as civilians it's our duty to enter war only regretfully, in obedience to "laws of war" that rigorously seek to spare civilians of enemy countries, treat enemy soldiers humanely and take as few lives as possible.
I'm not saying we shouldn't fight wars. I've read The Diary of Anne Frank, and I hope her ghost arises to haunt the pacifists out there. I've seen the footage of our men liberating the Nazi camps. I wish President Roosevelt had rained some of the bombs that annihilated Dresden on the rail tracks that led to them.
Sometimes the refusal to fight comes from cowardice, from the selfish unwillingness to defend the innocent. **
The greatest butchery in Vietnam was at Hue during the 1968 offensive and was perpetrated by the North Vietnamese. The atomic bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki [color=blue]saved the lives of American soldiers[/color]. That Japanese had to die is not significant.
The Diary of Anne Frank is virtually an entire fraud. Americans did not liberate Nazi camps. Their personnel had long fled as they knew what would be done to them. The camp victims were too cowardly to flee and believed what their treacherous leaders told them.
2003-01-03 01:43 | User Profile
One has to be careful in evaluating tales brought from the front by vets-as any vet can tell you. Bullshit stories fly thick and fast, particulary in the presence of admiring friends and of the credulous. The buried alive Iraqis story is hard to believe, doing so would have been following an illegal order, and officers and men are very careful to cover their asses in violating rules today. Much battlefield journalism is also distorted and slanted for political reasons. The history of this is voluminous and happens in every war. The reasons behind this vary from age to age, but now the anti-military claque seem to be in control of much of the mass media, and are wont to give news with a left spin the fullest exposure. To be sure the military gives them much to write about.