[lbo-talk] Identity wars and other issues

Dwayne Monroe idoru345 at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 19 09:07:20 PDT 2005


Wojtek:

There is a big difference between western governments and eastern suicide bombers. The former do mainly other things, such as managing vast economies, and blowing other people up is a tiny and rather marginal fraction of these activities. What is more, even when they engage in blowing up, they usually show considerable restraint, trying to limit "collateral damage" and punishing (at lest in principle) those who fail to show such restraint.

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In a very narrow, technical sense, you're absolutely right.

The US military has a demonstrated mania for accuracy as evidenced by weapons like...

Fielded ordinance such as:

* BGM-109 Tomahawk

* GRU-15 (laser guided bomb)

* Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) GBU-29

And weapons systems in development such as:

Excalibur XM982 155-millimeter satellite target-able projectile (a GPS guided artillery system).

...

So precision is the holy grail and has been since the US Army Air Corps tried to precisely deploy "blockbusters" over Germany over a half century ago.

Nevertheless, we witnessed the near complete destruction of Fallujah and, we receive reliable reports that coalition military action is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis (to use the most recent and prominent example of American/British ordinance in angry flight).

So, though you're technically correct, when we examine the actual consequences of this "restraint" you mention the body counts seem extraordinarily high. Much higher, I'll hazard to say, than what we've seen (so far) from the less precise violence of Jihadis.

Western military strategists and political managers are aware of the high potential for "collateral damage" when, for example, a JDAM GBU-29 is loosed near homes, schools, etc. To the extent they know many non combatants will surely die yet still deploy such destructive weapons suggests their hands are not as comparatively clean as you seem to say.

Indeed, as early reports of civilian casualties rolled in during the first weeks of War Plan Iraq's unfurling, Pentagon spokesmen, assuring us their war machines were unfailingly accurate, insisted "the regime" was hording non-combatants near sensitive sites.

That a so-called "regime command and control element" was very close to Bagdhad's Mansur neighborhood and the use of a JDAM against the target meant the almost certain death of people huddling for safety in their nearby homes was apparently of zero concern.

There are many other examples of such discliplined "restraint".

.d.

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