WRH is run by nutjobs. The link, though, just goes to an excerpt from Victor Ostrovsky’s book. (The same excerpt can be found elsewhere.) The real question then is, is Ostrovsky a nutjob?

>>T.J.Madison: Whilst I think the conduct of the Western Allies at the end of WW2 was horrendous (i.e. Operation Keelhaul), that does not change the ‘rightness’ of fighting fascism or latter opposing Soviet communism.

Certainly the USG has been useful for fighting tyranny in the past. My basic claim is that the usefulness of the USG as a tool for fighting tyranny and oppression is degraded significantly whenever the USG funds, arms, or otherwise sells out to tyrants and oppressors (scum).

The USG seems to do better when its own troops are on the ground fighting the tyranny as opposed to farming out the dirty work to puppet governments, CIA backed militias, etc. The USG seems to have a real knack for picking rotten people to back. USAF strategic bombing also historically has a bad ratio of military effectiveness/civilian devastation, although technology seems to be helping improve this.

Afganistan is a good example. I was (and am) all for Declaring War, Sending In The Army, and Occupying The Damn Place. Send in the legions of MPs and JAG guys it would take to deploy Rule of Law. What we did instead was pit one group of scumbags against the currently-in-power scumbags, using our airpower and limited ground troops to swing the battle where necessary. Now we have a situation where the capital is run by “our” puppet, and the countryside is controlled by various warlords who are fractionally less rotten (?) than the Taliban. The lack of Congressional Declaration of War continues to bother me as well.

What have we accomplished? At some point we’ll pull out entirely, and Osama’s Boys will move right back in, because the country hasn’t been Fixed(tm). This will be a problem for the NEXT administration, of course. I expect better results for my $350 billion.

>>If anything, it’s a reminder that trying to avoid war can be just as destructive as fighting one.

For sure. We just need to be sure that we really are The Good Guys before, during, and after the war. You’re right that much of the rottenness I keep discussing is a result of cowardice. One of the benefits of “Our words are backed by nuclear weapons!” is that we shouldn’t have to put up with the kind of crap we do from our supposed “allies”.

I’d be all for invading Iraq if we really did dig up Doug, declare war, and install Doug as the military governor to straighten things out with a proper liberation. I suspect, however, that we’ll just appoint a Saddam 2.0 (like Chalabi) to run the place — someone we’ll have to deal with later, and whose crimes we’ll be (justly) blamed for.

>>Also, did it escape your notice that Shatila and Sabrila massacres we carryied out by Christian Lebanese Militiamen?

It was my understanding that the militias were considered by the Israeli commission of inquiry to be under IDF control. This is why Sharon had to resign as defense minister.

Similarly, the Lebanese militias ran a torture facility in southern Lebanon until Israel left — but the IDF stopped by the facility frequently to check on how well the torture was going.

The possibility of a Third World War being started by nuking neighbouring countries doesn’t figure at all in their minds, no no.

A Third World War? How would that happen? Do you honestly think that the major world powers — China, Russia, the U.S., India — would somehow get into a conflict with each other over Arabs?? The only way for that to happen would be if Israel tried to militarily take possession of Saudi and Iraqi oil fields, but they don’t have the strength to do that anyway. Otherwise, far from any notion of a third world war, any conflict would be strictly between Arabs and Israelis, and it wouldn’t last long. The other countries would do what they usually do: stand around and issue limp-noodle condemnations “in the strongest possible terms.” Well, the Israelis are used to that by now, and the Arabs don’t care.

Errrr… yeah, and of course it’s only their wonderful (and unique in the area, according to your account) sense of morality,

Yes, it is, and it is most definitely unique, as demonstrated by Arab countries with all due clarity.

& not a sense of self-preservation holding Israel back. The possibility of a Third World War being started by nuking neighbouring countries doesn’t figure at all in their minds, no no.

A sense of self-preservation? Are you saying that Arabs are actually restraining themselves in a quid-pro-quo for Israel not wiping them off the face of the planet? That’s certainly a new one. Really, I’m confused as to what consequences Israel should fear.

This is a ridiculous argument. We all know that if any nation launched nukes against another country, the consequences would probably be atrocious, for the country nuked, the country doing the nuking, & the world in general.

This is simply false, and adding “we all know” to it doesn’t add to its credibility. Explain what the atrocious consequenses to Israel would be if it went ahead and nuked, say, all the major population centers in Syria. (No, I’m not advocating this.) Neither the U.S. nor Russia nor China would respond in any meaningful way, and no one else is of any significance.

Moreover, the destruction of the Palestinians would not require nukes (in fact, using them would be ill-advised at that range). Ordinary artillery and napalm would be quite effective.

Once again, I am not advocating this, nor am I trying to be callous and flippant. I’m just calling things as I see them, without mixing emotion into the discussion. Please point out where my view of the situation is mistaken — i.e., what does Israel really have to fear from its enemies if it starts using their own time-honored methods against them?

Errrr… yeah, and of course it’s only their wonderful (and unique in the area, according to your account) sense of morality, & not a sense of self-preservation holding Israel back. The possibility of a Third World War being started by nuking neighbouring countries doesn’t figure at all in their minds, no no.

This is a ridiculous argument. We all know that if any nation launched nukes against another country, the consequences would probably be atrocious, for the country nuked, the country doing the nuking, & the world in general.

So how exactly are the R.O.P.’s supposed to go about fixing their wretched countries? Imagine you wake up tomorrow as Some Random Peasant in Afganistan. What do you do to fix things? I suspect Ahmed Q. Muslim has just barely enough resources to survive, much less try and fix his government.

Quite true, and a valid point, but it doesn’t invalidate mine. The reason there is such lawlessness in Afghanistan is in large part because of how the society is put together — which, in Afghanistan, as in much of the Muslim world, is based on clans. A single human being can’t change things (where can one, really?), but that doesn’t absolve the entire group from all responsibility. They built the society, they face the consequence — or change the society, which will likely require much violence on its own, with more regular ordinary people killed. Sorry I don’t have any easy answers, but that doesn’t mean that you just deny these people their humanity, and act as though they are just bacteria responding to stimuli, who can’t help it.

For what it’s worth, though, I was thinking more along the lines of countries such as Iran and “U.S. friend and ally” Saudi Arabia, who have functioning governments and enforcement structures, that aid and abet terrorists.

This makes blaming Ahmed when his wedding party gets wasted by Puff the Magic Dragon seem rather despicable. (In that case the Ahmeds in question were actually our ALLIES.)

In this case, their killing was a mistake. But a justifiable one: the pilot saw a lot of muzzle flashes, and thought he was being fired on. Besides questioning the need for discharging firearms during a wedding (surely that can’t be an ancient Muslim tradition!), I might point out that doing this in a warzone under any circumstances is not a bright idea. In the end, though, it was a tragic misunderstanding, not deliberate U.S. policy, and you tossed a nice juicy red herring into your argument.

It’s funny you mentioned the Libya incident. Seems that Libya might have been on the receiving end of a Mossad frame-up — at least according to this ex-Mossad agent [at what reallyhappened.com]:

Please tell me you’re not serious. WRH is a lunatic site run by a known Jew-hater, whose “sources” are nothing more than his own fevered dreams. According to him, the Mossad was responsible for everything from the 9/11 bombing to Murphy’s Law. Thank you, drive through.

Is that “all” Arabs? Most Arabs? I’m sure all the Christian Arab Palestinians are pleased that certain loud fundamentalist Muslims are their official spokesmen. We can play this game both ways. I can dig up all kinds of horrific quotes from the Israeli leadership — this does not mean that all, or most, or even many Israelis/Jews are demons.

And I’m sure that if you went to Berlin circa 1941, you’d find some nice German pacifists. Irrelevant — those in charge advocate this, and arm and aid those who actually carry out such atrocities. The Arabs inflict as much damage on Israel as they can. If Israel did that, there would be no Arabs.

That said, I haven’t heard any calls from the Arab world for anything resembling normalization. The argument seems to be with the lunatic fantasists who want to kill Jews no matter what, the “moderates” who support the “martyrdom operations” until Israel concedes to all their demands, and a few “progressives” who oppose “martyrdom operations” because they are counter-productive. No one seems to have a problem of principle with deliberate killing of civilians to carry the point across — or, at any rate, they are so marginalized that it’s clear they speak for no one. That not all Arabs have the same viewpoint is little more than a useless tautology.

Let me put this as succinctly as possible: If any Arab country was able to nuke Israel off the map and get away with it, do you think Israel would be anything other than a glowing ember by now? Because Israel can do this to most Arab countries. It simply chooses not to, regardless of what its own lunatics say.

Ah, yes, the Kurds — were these the same Kurds who lost 30K people to Turkey, which was using “counterinsurgency” equipment supplied by the U.S.? Remember that when the Kurd-gassing incident originally occurred, the USG didn’t have much trouble with it, because Mr. Hussein was Our Loyal Buddy (for messing with the Iranians.) We even let him get away with “accidentally” hammering one of our warships!

Hey, I didn’t bestow the mantle of sainthood on the U.S., did I? Mr. Pivetta claimed that U.S. bombings had higher casualty rates than Iraq’s; I disputed the claim.

And yeah, the Kurds lost quite a few to Turkey. That’s what happens when you fight a war for independence against a stronger neighbor. It’s too bad, but doesn’t put Turkey on the same moral plane as the guy who dropped poison gas on entire villages.

As for U.S. support for Iraq, yes it made American hands dirty. There were larger strategic goals at the time, like containing Islamists in Iran. The U.S. chose to support one odious dictatorship against another, instead of having the Iranians double their power, double their fun. Sometimes shitty situations leave you shitty choices, and the U.S. went for the less shitty of the two: to pit two hideous regimes against each other, in the hope of weakening them for a while. And it worked. (I’m curious as to what you would have suggested. Just remember: inaction is also a choice, and you’d be responsible for its consequences, as surely as America is responsible for supporting Iraq in the past.) Now the situation is different, and we can go back and try to contain (and maybe undo) the damage.

As for Eastern Europe after WW2, go read up on Operation Keelhaul — the forced repatriation of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Eastern Europe back to Stalin’s control and certain death. I’m still trying to figure out what the purpose of this was.

It was abhorrent, and I’m sure the purpose was (ironically enough) to avoid war and conflict with Stalin’s U.S.S.R. — a craven European gesture that would become part of a much larger pattern of such gestures from the “sophisticated” leadership of the Continent. I’d be willing to bet that the progressives of the time supported it, fans of “uncle Joe” and the workers’ paradise that they were. Besides, it avoids war, right? If anything, it’s a reminder that trying to avoid war can be just as destructive as fighting one.

Also, did it escape your notice that Shatila and Sabrila massacres we carryied out by Christian Lebanese Militiamen?

And please, are you serious about quoting Whatreallyhappened.com? We also link to these barking moonbats on our external links page, under the heading ‘Havens of Fluorescent Idiocy’ (see bottom of links page sidebar). They are bunch of tinfoil hat wearing, black helicopter fearing, too-many-episodes-of-X-Files watching conspiracy theorist fruitloops.

So how exactly are the R.O.P.’s supposed to go about fixing their wretched countries? Imagine you wake up tomorrow as Some Random Peasant in Afganistan. What do you do to fix things? I suspect Ahmed Q. Muslim has just barely enough resources to survive, much less try and fix his government. This makes blaming Ahmed when his wedding party gets wasted by Puff the Magic Dragon seem rather despicable. (In that case the Ahmeds in question were actually our ALLIES.) It’s similar in many respects to Al’Qaeda faulting the WTC occupants for failing to “fix” U.S. foreign policy — it’s something over which the individual victims have basically no control.

>>There’s no arguing that some American actions abroad were ill-advised (Somalia comes to mind), but to claim that the bombing of Libya (after they sponsored a murderous attack on Americans in Berlin)

It’s funny you mentioned the Libya incident. Seems that Libya might have been on the receiving end of a Mossad frame-up — at least according to this ex-Mossad agent:

http://whatreallyhappened.com/deception.html

>>Arabs want to commit genocide against Israelis, killing every last one. They say so in sermons, on television, in speeches, and on the web.

Is that “all” Arabs? Most Arabs? I’m sure all the Christian Arab Palestinians are pleased that certain loud fundamentalist Muslims are their official spokesmen. We can play this game both ways. I can dig up all kinds of horrific quotes from the Israeli leadership — this does not mean that all, or most, or even many Israelis/Jews are demons.

>>You forget the Kurds. Remember them? They got to play guinea pig to Old Mustache’s poison gas.

Ah, yes, the Kurds — were these the same Kurds who lost 30K people to Turkey, which was using “counterinsurgency” equipment supplied by the U.S.? Remember that when the Kurd-gassing incident originally occurred, the USG didn’t have much trouble with it, because Mr. Hussein was Our Loyal Buddy (for messing with the Iranians.) We even let him get away with “accidentally” hammering one of our warships!

As for the S-named Scum, it just sorta happened that way. There are lots of other scum with different names who the U.S. has backed, like Noriega, Pol Pot, Pinochet, and Mubarak. And yes, Sharon is scum — something about the Shatila and Sabrila (damn more Ses) massacres comes to mind.

As for Eastern Europe after WW2, go read up on Operation Keelhaul — the forced repatriation of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Eastern Europe back to Stalin’s control and certain death. I’m still trying to figure out what the purpose of this was.

“We must avoid doing business with SCUM (like Saddam, Sharon, Suharto, Stalin, the Shah, and the Saudi Royals)”

Oi, what about all the others whose names also begin with ‘S’? Gerhard Shroeder, John Sununu, South Africa, Safeways Supermarket, Subaru Motors, Jean Shretien (alright I cheated on that one)…all SCUM

As I understand it, the Japanese offered to surrender on more than one occasion; but Truman wanted *unconditional* surrender. One alternative might have been to negotiate a conditional surrender.

Oh? And which conditions should we have honored? Would the Japanese get to keep their militaristic government and society, biding their time and rebuilding their forces, to strike again 20 years later?

Why is the full burden on us, anyway? Why aren’t you faulting the Japanese leadership for stupidly wasting so many of their own people’s lives, in service of some moronic ancient tradition? I mean, maybe they didn’t see Hiroshima coming — but surely they could have surrendered before Nagasaki, right? What were they resisting for?

And, of course, even the possibility of conditional surrender could only exist after Japan was militarily defeated — which necessarily meant the bombing of their industrial centers, killing all those unfortunate civilians.

Furthermore, I’m sure if you interview Islamic terrorists, they’ll throw the same argument in your face. What choice do *they* have, given the Israeli occupation and the West’s imperialism?

Well, why not surrender? Surely Islam isn’t worth all that killing, right? (See, that’s the problem with moral equivalence — it can be turned against you in a flash.)

And tactically, this argument makes no sense. Nothing in what bin Laden or Hamas have done to Americans or Israelis would prevent “occupation” and “imperialism” (which are of course way worse than clitorectomies and ignorant murderous fundamentalism). If the Americans or Israelis were in any way equivalent to the Islamist scum that oppose them, the desires and grievances of bin Laden and the Palestinians would be academic questions now, because they all would be dead. So not only do the terrorists have an alternative choice — peaceful Ghandi-style protest, for example — but the lousy choice they did make only gets them farther away from their stated goal, and brings needless suffering on the heads of people they claim to want to help. Sorry, but this argument doesn’t wash at all, and the equivalence you imply therein is simply revolting.

I’m not justifying terrorism. Somebody has to start setting an example in these matters, and I don’t see it coming from the West.

No? Let me put it in very short sentences:

Arabs want to commit genocide against Israelis, killing every last one. They say so in sermons, on television, in speeches, and on the web. The only reason Israelis live to see another day is that the Arabs can’t kill them: their very backwardness and incompetence prevent it.

Israel can kill every last Palestinian within a few days, trivially. It would suffer minimal consequences from doing so, and any Arab country that tried to help could be similarly obliterated. The only reason Arabs live to see another day is that Israelis won’t kill them: their own morals prevent it.

Ditto for Islamists vs. the West. Al-Qaeda has tried desperately to get the largest bomb they could find, and detonated it in an American city. Americans have humongous bombs that can wipe out al-Qaeda and every country that hosts them. They’d like to use nukes, but can’t. We can use nukes any time, but won’t. Learn the lesson.

We can’t affect outrage at the slaughter of civilians in some cases (i.e., when it’s perpetrated by Islamic terrorists) and shrug our shoulders at the collateral damage inflicted by the West’s democracies.

I see. Unavoidable, unintentional killing of people while trying to repel aggression is totally equivalent to deliberate targeting of unarmed civilians in office buildings, buses, and their beds — killing is killing, ethics, morals, and context be damned. Thank you, drive through.

And finally, this gem of Enlightened Reasoning:

Hitler du jour Saddam Hussein has bombed three countries over the past 20 years: Iran (with a nod and a wink from the U.S.), Kuwait (likewise) and Israel.

You forget the Kurds. Remember them? They got to play guinea pig to Old Mustache’s poison gas.

The U.S. over the same period has bombed Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Yugoslavia, the Sudan and Afghanistan. The American campaigns of humanitarian bombing have left thousands of slaughtered innocents in their wake.

Really — thousands of innocents? I’d like to see some real proof of that (and don’t even try to reference Marc Herold). I’ll lay ten-to-one that the number of casualties from Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds would dwarf all the victims from all U.S. bombings over the last two decades.

There’s no arguing that some American actions abroad were ill-advised (Somalia comes to mind), but to claim that the bombing of Libya (after they sponsored a murderous attack on Americans in Berlin), Iraq (after they murdered thousands of Kuwaitis in an attempt to expand into a united Arab empire), Yugoslavia (the only way that Milosevic’s genocides were stopped), and Afghanistan (after they sponsored, aided, and protected the organizers of the mass murder of 9/11) is somehow equivalent to Iraq’s genocidal attacks against the Kurds and wholly unprovoked launches into Israel — well, that’s just jaw-droppingly stupid.

I’m naive for advocating a negotiated peace with Saddam? I’d say Saddam is naive in hoping for a negotiated peace with the U.S.

Yes, truly Saddam is the victim here. Good grief.