This column is written on the premise that it is wrong to kill innocent people. The principle underlying the war on Iraq is simple: It is righteous when we kill innocent people, but it is terrorism if they do so. This is applied to several aspects of the war: patriotism, freedom, democracy and troops.
Terrorism is defined in U.S. Army Field Manual as "the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious or ideological." To apply this verdict to America is inconceivable.
If we do apply this definition to America, then America is a far greater threat to Iraq than Iraq has ever been to the U.S. Thus, if we accept the logic of the supporters of the Iraq War, we should not only aid the insurgents' attacks against an occupying army (America), but, as the logic goes, also call on them to bomb and invade Washington. Furthermore, if we accept the doctrine of "preemptive war," then we should arm Iran, North Korea, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Hezbollah and Hamas and encourage them to attack us.
If you praise Sept. 11, you are insane; if you praise the invasion of Iraq, you are patriotic.
Our love for freedom and democracy is apparent if we look at facts and not rhetoric. Estimates range from 100,000 to 1,100,000 civilians that we liberated to heaven. A study by the Iraq Body Count found that of the people killed by U.S. air strikes, 46 percent are women and 39 percent are children ("terrorists").
While acknowledging the civilian death toll, people claim that intent does matter, as defined in leaders' rhetoric. If this is true, then the intent of the hijackers who drove a plane into the Pentagon was to establish a religious utopia in the Arab world. Similarly, Hitler was defending the people of Germany from the partisans.
After invading the country, we installed an American viceroy, who appointed a temporary government to hold elections. The Ba'ath party, which would be the chief political opposition to the occupation, is still banned from running in elections ("democracy"). According to the 2009 United Nations Arab Human Development Report, "it is a crime to insult any public institution or official. It is also a crime, under Article 227, to publicly insult a foreign country or an international organization with an office in Iraq."
The report concludes: "Bad as Iraq's economic legacy was, it does not compare to the economic breakdown that followed the U.S.-led invasion. ... Standards of living are still lower than they were before the invasion." Any commentator will acknowledge Saddam's brutality - and after six years, the lives of most Iraqis are worse ("free").
A reporter framed this as, "The presence of the American military has also been a significant factor in the nation's stability" in "Bomb Kills at Least 76 in Baghdad Market" (New York Times, June 25). Meanwhile, an article in the NYT on Oct. 2 ("China Is Wordless on Traumas of Communist Rise") lamented that China fails to acknowledge its culpability for a 1948 siege that killed 160,000 civilians.
To admit the war is for profit is still taboo. In a much-repeated campaign line by President Barack Obama, Iraq has a surplus of tens of billions of dollars. Despite this, last year the Iraqi government accepted a $744 million loan from the International Monetary Fund, which included the condition that Iraq would partially privatize its state oil sector.
Our country, one of the richest in world history, sometimes recognizes that it murders civilians and compensates families up to $2,500. As another measure of our generosity, of the 4 million refugees we created, we have allowed 17,000 to come here.
It is sheer ignorance to believe that the rest of the world does not see our hypocrisy or that our victims are unaware they are being abused.
One Iraqi reporter said he "was roaming throughout the past years of the war in our scorched land, and I was seeing with my own eyes the pains of the victims and hearing the weeping of the grieving women and orphans. Shame was chasing me, like an ugly name for my helplessness." At a press conference, he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush, shouting, "This is your farewell kiss, you dog!" He was tackled, beaten with pipes, electrocuted, imprisoned for nine months and released as reported in "Freed, Shoe-Hurling Iraqi Alleges Torture in Prison" (NYT, Sept. 15).
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Ignorance, thy name is Burke Thomas.
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Geez Alum, great point! That's sarcasm, by the way. I'll make a real point: please, for the love of God, can someone inform the citizens of the US that we are a REPUBLIC and not a democracy. We can't spread what we are not.
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Sorry. Didn't mean to insult ignorance.
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no mention of the Afghan war? I can take a guess why it wasn't mentioned. And I would say we are not being terrorists in Iraq because we aren't pursuing to achieve any goals. But perhaps next time a country will not kick out weapons inspectors or we might have to do this all over again
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Burke, great article. Sad, how anyone can defend the Iraq or Afghan wars as honorable or for "spreading democracy". Is it any wonder why people hate America? We go around the world invading innocent countries under the guise of helping them to look for weapons we sold them. Is Iran a threat? No. If they want to build nuclear weapons, go for it. They have a right to defend themselves from America or Israel, what they do is none of our business. Besides, they aren't building weapons but power plants to offset the large price swings in oil. We don't like the fact that they stopped using dollars to trade their oil, b/c it hurts our reserve currency status and reveals our inflation tactics. Unfortunately for us (or fortunately for the rest of the world) all empires fall apart, especially ones propped up by paper money.
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Part 1: Thomas, I applaud your ability to stretch and distort the truth. The world isn’t as black and white as you portray it; you can’t just simply quote manuals and definitions and conclude the most extreme interpretations as doctrine. If you want to simplify war then here is a better cliché “war is hell and the innocent dieâ€Â. Innocents die because armed and violent militants hide behind them. That is why our soldiers are viewed as honorable because they strive, no matter how imperfect they are, to live by a code of honor; they fight in the open while trying to distinguish friend from foe. The drastic difference between Americans and terrorists is that on the whole America fights for freedom for all, terrorists fight for world domination of their ideas. You may be correct in saying that the 9/11 hijackers were trying to create a utopia in the Arab world, but you fail to mention that they wanted the entire world to be an Arab world ruled by their ideas and view of utopia. Thomas also lies to his audience in saying that these resistant fighters, terrorists, fight for their own country which is not true. Terrorists have no country, they are soldiers of NO country, and they aren’t even militias of any country. They are criminals, outlaws, and murders; there is no sugar coating the world ‘terrorist’.
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Part 2: Terrorists seek to kill the innocent because they are defenseless; a soldier seeks to kill these men to protect the defenseless. As I said in the beginning, it is not this clear cut but this is a closer account of the generalized truth then what Thomas has portrayed. It is people like you, Thomas, who bring dishonor to your country when you try to romanticize terrorists.
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Part 3: To Alumnus, Iran has consistently declared how they plan on erasing Israel and America from existence - it is usually with a lot of flair and a nuclear explosion.
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Ford - "The drastic difference between Americans and terrorists is that on the whole America fights for freedom for all, terrorists fight for world domination of their ideas." So i guess invading countries to install a democratic government is not enforcing its ideas on the world. To the writer, obviously war has its faults. But to say that killing civilians during a war is a terrorist act is inconceivable. I urge you to go back and find a war that was fought without a single civilian casualty when fought with live ammunition or missiles. The people we are fighting may be Iraqi's, Pakistanis, etc., but they are also people who have severe hatred for Americans and as a country we don't stand for that. Do I agree with this war, no, but I also look at it from two sides. On one, you don't let someone come onto your turf and kill thousands of people. On the other, at which point do you admit that you bit off more than you can chew.
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Ford, The leader of Iran has never said it wants to wipe Israel off the map, those quotes were taken out of context. Iran is not a threat, their president doesn't even have final say on such matters even if he wanted to do such things. Obama does and Bush did, which country has more of a democracy? Not us, that's for sure. To which code were American soldiers abiding by when they torture prisoners or dress them up and take pictures with them to embarrass them? I missed that part of the honor code. Where is it in the code where we can bomb and murder innoncent civilians just because it's part of war. The war is pointless, it is not justified. Why can we have nuclear weapons and Iran not have them? Iran should have nukes so they can prevent what happened to Iraq and Afghanistan and the threat that Israel poses to them as well. We gave Pakistan nukes, India has nukes, why aren't we up in arms over that. We gave Israel nukes, they are a religious nation, should we bomb them b/c they threaten to use them? That sounds like terrorism when we threaten to invade an innocent country just b/c Israel doesn't like them.
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Alumnus, you're delusional. You really think Iran is more democratic than the United States? Really? And as for your puerile comments about American soldiers, get a clue. The soldiers who "torture[d] prisoners or dress[ed] them up and [took] pictures with them to embarrass them" didn't follow our code. And they went to jail for it. It also isn't part of the American way of war to "bomb and murder innoncent civilians just because it's part of war." We never target civilians. Our enemies target them almost exclusively. Or was the World Trade Center full of soldiers and I missed it?
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Alumnus, from your probable Bible, the New York Times, 27 OCT 05: "TEHRAN  Iran's conservative new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Wednesdaythat Israel must be "wiped off the map" and that attacks by Palestinians would destroy it, the ISNA press agency reported. Ahmadinejad was speaking to an audience of about 4,000 students at a program called "The World Without Zionism," in preparation for an annual anti-Israel demonstration on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan."
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which army field manual defines terrorism that way? there are plenty of FMs out there. writing "US Army Field Manual" makes it seem like there is only one. so get to know some FMs.
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Excellent article. Very well done.
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Sounds like we could use more good people like Burke in our military to uphold our values of not hurting innocent civilians. He could actually institute change from within and really make a difference.
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He writes as if we step off the plane and line civilians up for executions. We are fighting an army not a people. Of course 99% of people think that killing innocents is wrong. Good thing we aren't there to do that. Innocents die in war, that's what happens. If you are trying to tell me that killing innocents is bad, well then you have nothing to say that everybody doesn't already know.
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