Modern-day sugar-coating.

[The Hierophant]

Forgive the crassness of this thread, but I'm interested as to your take on why objective morality plays such a crucial part in the waging of modern western war. There was a time not so very long ago when openly stating that one wished to fight for land and resources was not such a deplorable notion. So why is the attempt being made to morally justify the impending war in Iraq? Why is it that simply stating that war is for money (as it always has been in some shape or form) is no longer an acceptable reason? What brought about this way of thinking? Why not march in and take what can be taken by right of might? Is that such a heinous thing? Does there need to be a genuine threat to the 'free' world to invade the Iraqi nation? Can't our representative armies just kill and allow us to reap the spoils? Is that such a horrible thing to bear upon our collective guilt-ridden christian consciences?

Thoughts?

[Timber Loftis]

Ooooh - Cespenar says here is a link to Timber's thoughts on this. Check out the conversation between Timber and Djinn Raffo regarding master morality and slave morality. But don't tell Bhaal I showed you, or he'll put me in hell with Martha. Funny git, he is.

http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/cg...;f=14;t=000316

[Skunk]

Probably because wars in the past seldom involved high civilian casualties. Nowdays, war involves very high civilian deaths.

For example, in Afghanistan, for every allied solider that died in action, more than 250 civilians died...

[Timber Loftis]

Originally posted by Skunk: Probably because wars in the past seldom involved high civilian casualties. Nowdays, war involves very high civilian deaths. For example, in Afghanistan, for every allied solider that died in action, more than 250 civilians died...

Sorry, but I highly doubt this number. I don't usually nitpick facts with folks, but without some sort of direct or indirect evidence cited on this one, I'll suspect you may have once again been "naive and uninformed" (hope I quoted Memsie accurately there).

Unless maybe you only compare US casualties to all Afghan ones including Taliban. Oh well, I just wanna know where you got the digs on this one.

[Sir Taliesin]

Originally posted by Skunk: Probably because wars in the past seldom involved high civilian casualties. Nowdays, war involves very high civilian deaths. For example, in Afghanistan, for every allied solider that died in action, more than 250 civilians died...

Back it up! I've never seen numbers like that!

[Skunk]

Back it up! I've never seen numbers like that!

Happy to oblige:

Number of civilian casualties as a direct result US/UK air bombardment is estimated to be 3767. (See the US study: A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting

Number of servicemen killed in Hostile action = 15 (See : U.S. and Allied Casualties:
Operation Enduring Freedom and
the Anti-Terrorist Campaign

Thus the ratio stands at 251 civilians:1 serviceman.

[ 01-24-2003, 11:54 AM: Message edited by: Skunk ]

[Timber Loftis]

Sorry, Skunk, but the armed forces accounting you supply contains no civilian casualty listings from what I can see. To the extent the "non-hostile" column may be civilian, there aren't even 250 total people dead on the list, much less 250 per 1.

As for Dr. Herald's Dossier, it find it simply incredible. For instance, check out fn.#12 where he cites the bombing of 400 innocent Afghan civilians to this site as a soure:
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1016-03.htm

See what I mean? You tell me if that's credible. Plus what the hell is the "Department of Economics and Women's Study" at the University of New Hampshire? Well, looks like it's newly added to the Dept. of Econ., cause their website doesn't even have it.

Anyway, I do note that Dr. Herold is a Euro-import whose original degree is from Zurich in the late 60's, for what it's worth. Now it is true that he got his masters and PhD at Berkeley, certainly well-repsected. However, I've been there and have known a lot of folks there, and for every sane intellectual turned out there is at least one SF/CA-namby pamby-inundated kook turned out.

But, what does it for me is the comb-over. I simply cannot trust or rely on anyone whose comb-over is such an obvious and pathetic lie.


[ 01-24-2003, 12:36 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Skunk]

Sorry, Skunk, but the armed forces accounting you supply contains no civilian casualty listings from what I can see. To the extent the "non-hostile" column may be civilian, there aren't even 250 total people dead on the list, much less 250 per 1.

You're misreading it. The military accounting is just that - military forces.
The non-hostile column contains the number of military personnel that died as a result of non-hostile actions (ie accidents, illness etc.)

As for Dr. Herald's Dossier, it find it simply incredible. For instance, check out fn.#12 where he cites the bombing of 400 innocent Afghan civilians to this site as a soure:

It's not the only site that it mentions - it also corroborates the figures with reports from the reporters of The Guardian, The Observer and the Boston Globe. You need to spend more time with it and see how the arguments are supported by other sources.

Anyway, I do note that Dr. Herold is a Euro-import whose original degree is from Zurich in the late 60's, for what it's worth. Now it is true that he got his masters and PhD at Berkeley, certainly well-repsected. However, I've been there and have known a lot of folks there, and for every sane intellectual turned out there is at least one SF/CA-namby pamby-inundated kook turned out.

You can indeed seek to denigrate the reputation of the accademic concerned - but it does not change the figures. Unless you prove that the figures are all a lie - which is very hard to do given the serious accademic nature of the piece...

[Timber Loftis]

Skunk, I was merely poking fun. Just joking, 'kay.

As for reading the whole article, I do admit I didn't have time to delve into it completely. But, I must generally say that checking up on the government and inventorying every Afghan civilian casualty caused when it was trying to root out an organization and someone who is unquestioningly EVIL falls on my list of priorities somewhere between reading Anomen's character dialogues over and over and counting all my paperclips.

[Skunk]

That's OK. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I was actually in FAVOUR of the action in Afghanistan - but I was horrified by the methodology that was used. I don't think that civilians were deliberately targeted - rather that they were completely disregarded as if they weren't there... That I found hard to swallow.

Herold provides some more links to his tabulations - perhaps easier to understand:

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/