BS?: "US Marines Are Locked In Battle With Syrian Troops"

[Battlefront.com]

Peter,

When you talk about disadents and what not, every country is probably involved in some other country's problem in that respect. So your Cuba example is out of context. However, you were close to the mark without actually shooting for it...

There were, and probably still are, groups of Cubans within the US that actively engaged in terrorist activities within Cuba. Although on a tiny scale compared to what Syria's hosting of large scale terrorist organizations is like, from a black and white standpoint there is no difference. For years the US turned a blind eye towards this, but since 9/11 it has started to take them seriously and actually doing something about them.

Let's face it, dealing with non-state agents is a very messy thing. It is difficult to deal with and most nations ignore the problem even when they are the victim or potential victim of it. If you don't believe me, then you obviously didn't listen to even one day's worth of testimony of the 9/11 Comission in the US. The US government had ample generalized warning, but did very little. Just as the Afghan government didn't seek to do anything about it. In fact, they worked hand in hand with them. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and international law is not properly set up to handle this sort of stuff, nor are the nation states themselves. That is now slowly changing as non-state players are becoming the single biggest threat to peace and stability the world round.

Back to Syria. The difference here is that there is a large scale, active, and deadly insurgent war being waged against the internationally recognized government of Iraq. The US, and others, are acting on that government's behalf. Any group aiding and abetting the insurgents is therefore guilty of violating international law.

Syria has a clear and long standing record of using force to influence its neighbors, especially Lebanon (which they occupied militarily). There is no doubt at all that terrorist groups use Syrian soil to recruit, train, and otherwise support activities that result in death and destruction outside of the borders of Syria. Much of it directed against civilians, mind you, and therefore teh activities themselves are overtly illegal. Since the US is being targeted by these groups, and the Syrians are unwilling and/or unable to control them, this leaves the US in a legal position for pursuing retaliation options. Not being an international law expert I don't know exactly what the position is or how it goes about getting it enacted, but from a legal standpoint I think there is little doubt that Syria is in the wrong here.

As for US double standards... yeah, no kidding it has double standards. Find me a nation state that doesn't have them and I'll send you a free copy of CM:SF Even "neutral" states tend not to be as neutral as they look. For example, a nation state that publicly states that the US is a bunch of criminals carrying out an immoral and illegal war still conducts business with the US government, companies based on its soil, or institutions that are in large part influenced and/or funded by the US. The double standard here is one of empty protesting because REAL protesting (embargos and what not) are never in their best interest, so hollow words are the only tangible action used. People accusing the US of double standards need to look at whatever house they live in first because it is most certainly made out of glass.

Yup, the world is a very gray and ugly plac, not B&W world of pure good and pure evil. However, sometimes colors are more black than white or vice versa. A nation state actively hosting armed groups who purposefully use their weapons primarily against civilian targets is about as different from Cuban dissidents in Miami as Combat Mission is from Pong.

Steve

[ November 26, 2005, 09:42 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Bigduke6]

Morality always takes a backseat to military operations when push comes to shove.

Steve,

This may be true from a military standpoint, i.e., the logical process by which rational decisions are made about going to war, and once in a war deciding how to win it.

This statement of yours however is simply wrong when it comes to the critical - to my mind decisive -factor of civilian support and participation in a war. I may be misinterpeting what you say, perhaps you mean plenty of wars are fought to an end without "push coming to shove."

To argue morality, all of it, is simply rear-burnered to military necessity for the duration of an armed conflict is counter-factual. Humans are humans and they do not like getting killed for a bad reason.

Indeed, almost all societies in all times have required special circumstances to make even the killing of others acceptable to the society. If a society's government violates the accepted rules about killing, it will pay some price - and the more democratic the society, the more likely that price will have a direct impact on the course of the war where the killing is taking place.

Simply put, the civilians supporting the army have to be more or less confident the army is being employed in a "right", rather than a "wrong" way.

A case that you cite - U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the expansion of the war into Cambodia - is illustrative. It made absolute military sense for the U.S. to consider "violation" of Cambodian neutrality. The NVA/VC were using a large section of the Cambodian frontier as safe havens and a transport corridor, and NVA/VC were doing their durndest to kill U.S. troops in South Vietnam.

Therefore, the U.S. National Security Council (i.e., Kissinger and Nixon) argued for and convinced the U.S. joint chiefs and the commander in Vietnam to bomb the everloving bejeezus out of those areas.

There were two problems with this policy, very obvious in retrospect. First, the tool selected - B-52 strikes - was not exactly surgically accurate, and so it killed not just Vietnamese soldiers but Cambodian and Vietnamese civilians. Not only did that create more local resistance to a U.S. presence in the region, it saddled the Cambodian government with tens of thousands of refugees; making it a good deal more difficult to argue - in both Cambodia and the U.S. - the U.S. strikes were actually to the net good of most Cambodians.

Second, a strong majority of the U.S. public, and an absolute majority of the politically-active public, was not interested in winning the war in Vietnam, and was unwilling to accept an expansion of that war for purported military goals. They just wanted out of the war - they saw the conflict as amoral, ill-judged, and quite unwinnable.

So, when Nixon administration bit the bullet and chose military priority over public support, the initial policy was to conceal the bombings. William Shawcross in Sideshow lays the story out clearly. The Cambodian bombings were possible to keep from the U.S. public for a while, but they didn't really solve the problem of havens in Cambodia. The Vietnamese were pretty resilient to air attack, it turned out.

This policy of bombing without meaningful results set up the government for the charge of duplicity, of expanding the Vietnam war for no good reason, although a large section of the U.S. population was against it.

When the Nixon administration realized the bombings were not giving the needed effect, the next decision - ground forces in Cambodia - became logical from a military point of view. More risk of friendly forces but more chance of shutting down the safe havens.

Problems: A signification proportion of the U.S. population didn't really care about military necessity. They saw the war itself as amoral and its expansion as even more amoral, especially from the point of view of risking the lives of U.S. draftees.

The primary tool selected for the Cambodia ground war to minimize that risk - the ARVN - was poorly-disciplined, prone to looting, hated Cambodians, and generally corrupt.Their performance in the border incursions could not be concealed from the U.S. public.

The Kent State shootings came directly from U.S. student protests over the expansion of the Vietnman ground war into Cambodia. This was a disaster for the Nixon administration, and so the U.S. war effort, because, although the U.S. public is historically willing to allow its governemnt to kill foreigners at will, the U.S. public also historically has gone ballistic the moment the U.S. government starts shooting U.S. citizens.

It is just my opinion, but it is at least arguable that if a coherent U.S. military effort to limit the Vietnamese abuse of Cambodian neutrality was vaugely possible before Kent State, it was impossible after Kent State because of the damage that incident did to the U.S. administration's arguements the war was moral.

For the record: I'm not trying to argue the Vietnam war was good, bad, ugly, or anything else. I'm talking about perceptions of morality, and how they have a direct impact on whether wars are successful or not.

[Peter Cairns]

Steve,

I wasn't getting at you in particular, and I am glad that the US is taking extremists on there own soil far more seriously than before, over here the big concern for years was fund raising for the IRA. An odd consequence of 9/11 was that the real change in US attitudes probably accelerated or even broke the deadlock in the N.Ireland peace process.

As to support of a recognisied regeme

allowing intervention of a third I am not so sure. Given that Pol Pot was recognisied at the UN as the legitimate government, does that make the chinese incursion in to Vietnam legitimate.

The right of self defence is one thing, but if you start extending it as "legitimate" to cross borders to attack anyone who attacks a friend, then you open up a whole can of worms.

Stopping them at the border and going no further may not seem ideal, but borders are pretty much what the international community works by and laying them aside shouldn't be done lightly.

Once country A, crosses in to country B because people from B are crossing in to ally C, Then Country D who is allied to country C can argue the right to strike at country A.

Bin Laden took the view that as the US was bankrolling and arming Israel who had illegally occupied the west bank, the US financial capital was a legitimate military target. Once you start letting borders be porrus either way you are on a slippery slope.

it's like the WP arguemnet if they behead people or Saddam uses gas, doesn't mean we can smoke people out, because we fight by the rules we want to be the norm, and they fight by theirs, but if we fight by theirs too, then their rules become the norm and that ultimately does more damage to the rule of law and what we stand for than they would.

If you use evils means to defeat evil then evil prevails.

So for me the US for the long term benefit of the rule of law and what we stand for, frustrating as it may be for the guys on the ground, should stick to it's side of the border.

After all you mentioned Syria in the Lebanon, Israel to prevent the same thing ended up with creating a ministate in Southern Lebanon, and even the disasterous freedom in Galillee ( politically not militarily). and neither ultimately did any good, and probably made things worse.

Peter.

[Kellysheroes]

Hrmmm Combat Mission and Pong aren't so different.

They both use mathematical code to project an image onto a screen for fun and entertaining purposes. There differences being one is a wego (hit the ball sort of game then wait for the other guy to hit it or miss and then show the results) and the other is (real time action where you see results constantly).

They both portray an "illusion" of something real, pong like ping pong or tennis, CM hypothetical warfare with little army men to give it that WOW affect. But, CM just has a bunch of bouncing balls (those little tracers of simulated bullets), hitting or missing the paddles (the little men or tanks or equipment). Even bouncing off on tanks sometimes and even equipment cause you hear the ricochet.

Both boil down to bits and bytes, with Lights on, Lights Off, like Karateah Kid rax on, rax off.

If you look at the code behind both games it would be hard to tell them apart in general. One having a much longer line of code I'm sure..PONG! haha

Yes, CM is really just a more advanced PONG in reality, more glitz and glamour, but, basically the same in the long run. One just has more paddles and pongs.

[Londoner]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Militarily maybe. How about morally?

Morality always takes a backseat to military operations when push comes to shove. This is logical since war is, to its very core, immoral. Even if you can construct a moral justification for one soldier to take the life of another, it is difficult to come up with a moral justification that excuses the harm and/or suffering on others who just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Since war inherently can not avoid collateral damage (and I mean that in the broadest, long term sense as well as short term) then war is by its very nature immoral. Since Human behavior is so rarely inline with moral principles, warfare must be viewed in the context of Human Nature and all of its MANY flaws.

Steve </font>

[Nidan1]

Originally posted by Londoner:

Very Clausewitzian Steve, I'm sure that last sentence is lifted out of On War . You do realise many (if not most) modern historians would disagree, but well argued nontheless.

I find two major problems with some modern historians (1) they are very eager to re-write history in order to apologize for most events involving western dominance and (2) they tend to look at past events through today's attitudes and mores.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Nidan1:

I find two major problems with some modern historians (1) they are very eager to re-write history in order to apologize for most events involving western dominance and (2) they tend to look at past events through today's attitudes and mores.

And I find the major problem with types like you that you know **** about why we study history.

[Nidan1]

Originally posted by Sergei:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Nidan1:

I find two major problems with some modern historians (1) they are very eager to re-write history in order to apologize for most events involving western dominance and (2) they tend to look at past events through today's attitudes and mores.

And I find the major problem with types like you that you know **** about why we study history. </font>

[Sergei]

Simple. History is studied in order to get useful, objective information. Which may very well mean that it is looked at from angles that were not so usual for the ruling classes of that era or for historians of past decades, because what was useful for them might not be so for us. You make this sound like something bad, while it is, in fact, the very essence of the science.

[Nidan1]

So while you may be an historian, you have attacked me personally for making an observation based on the very principles that you support.

I am not part of any ruling class, why do you get your dander up over what I say?

[Sergei]

Huh? I guess you're taking things waaaay too personally.

[Nidan1]

Originally posted by Sergei:

Huh? I guess you're taking things waaaay too personally.

Sergei , if I said to you..."I don't like what types like you have to say" How would you take it?

[Sergei]

That's not abuse.

[Nidan1]

Ok, now you're trying to change history.

[Sergei]

What is history?

[Nidan1]

Originally posted by Sergei:

What is history?

Er....the last time you had sex, with someone other than yourself?

[Sergei]

If there are no written records of it, wouldn't it be prehistory?

[Nidan1]

Is that like a tree falling in the forest, and no one hearing it fall?

[Drusus]

Please, lock this down quickly. Im afraid Sergei might come up with some non-written records.

[Sergei]

More like a fart in the wind.

[Sgt Joch]

just to put my 2 cents in.

the Vietnam war was very messy and the parallels to Iraq are uncanny.

Cambodia and Laos were unwilling or unable to stop Vietcong forces from using their territories as bases for their attacks in South Vietnam. The US was therefore justified militarily in attacking those bases even if they were located in a "neutral" country.

Another example, in the spring of 1967, US forces started attacking north vietnamese airfields. North Vietnam promptly flew their migs to China. For the next year, North Vietnamese migs were taking off and landing from bases in Communist China to attack US aircrafts flying into North Vietnam. This was a clear act of war by China against the US, which the US ignored because it did not want Vietnam to become WW3.

If we go back to Iraq, Syria is either actively helping guerillas to use its territories to stage attack against forces in Iraq or turning a blind eye to it. For example:

Outside Iraq but deep in the fight

The US is therefore justified in sealing off the border and even taking punitive military action against Syria.

We have to remember that the whole concept of what is permissible conduct between nation states is fluid and depends on circumstances. For example, in 1967, Israel launched a surprise attack against Egypt, Syria and Jordan which resulted in a big territorial gain. Yet Israel was able to convince most of the international community that its action was justified as a pre-emptive attack against a Arab invasion.

Considering Syria's international reputation, you could even say that the US has been restrained in its response. It could easily start launching air strikes against insurgent targets in Syria without raising a big international fuss. After all, Israel has been getting away with the same thing for years.

[Battlefront.com]

BigDuke6

This statement of yours however is simply wrong when it comes to the critical - to my mind decisive -factor of civilian support and participation in a war. I may be misinterpeting what you say, perhaps you mean plenty of wars are fought to an end without "push coming to shove."

I mean what I said both tactically, operationally, and strategically. More enlightened military conduct seeks to maximize military effect while minimizing moral outrage, but when the chips are down morality is sacrificed to some degree or completely.

Tactical example: fire is coming from the window of a civilian structure. Morally, and legally, the soldier has an obligation to make sure that no civilians are in the civilian structure before returning fire. But push comes to shove and the soldiers being fired upon fire back into the house without any further information. The simple reason is that being moral in this situation is not practical, so military necessity takes over. A sweep of the building after finds that return fire killed two small children as well as three enemy fighters armed to the teeth. From a morality standpoint, this is a disaster. From a military standpoint it is a mixed military victory if the force inherently cares about morality (many do not!), otherwise it is a clean cut military victory.

Operational example: enemy forces have taken up fortified positions in the middle of a residential section of the city. The military commander tasked with clearing out the enemy resistance has to choose his methods based on the near certainty that there are civilians in the area and, at the very least, the homes of civilians. Even if his course of action results in no civilian casualties, destroying the essential shelter and items of comfort for the civilians creates hardships for them. So there is a moral, and legal, obligation to take these things under consideration. A commander that cares about the morality, and legality, of his action will choose the balance of weapons and tactics that will most likely yield a military victory with few friendly casualties, while at the same time causing the least amount of harm to the civilians and their property. Unfortunately, principles of morality must be compromised because there is no combination of method or weaponry that can succeed in clearing out a determined enemy without risking (and actually causing) harm to civilians and their property. The degree of collateral damage determines the degree of sacrifice of moral principles over military necessity. But always morality is the one to suffer the compromise, even when the force is highly concerned about the balance (many are not!).

Strategic example: any war, any time, any place, ever. Morality is inherently compromised from the second a war starts. Period.

The point of all this is to emphasize that war is inherently immoral by its very nature. All one can do is seek to minimize the compromises made for military necessity. Enlightened leadership and excellent training are needed to achieve even a somewhat decent result. When one or the other fails, the moral standing of the soldier, force, and/or nation state is most likely unnecessarily compromised in the court of current and historical opinion.

Peter,

I wasn't getting at you in particular, and I am glad that the US is taking extremists on there own soil far more seriously than before, over here the big concern for years was fund raising for the IRA.

I grew up in the Boston area and always found this to be disgraceful. However, living there I understood how it was able to continue. The city had bigger problems that its limited resources, including those of the State and Federal governments, were not able to cope with even though it was focused on it. I'm talking about the mafia, the drug trade, poverty, and the rest of the issues that go along with an urban area. Trying to crack into a highly organized, grass roots militant organization that was causing (so far as most people knew) no harm to the local society was pretty far down the list.

The sad thing is that there are always more bad people than there are resources to bring them to justice. That is not an excuse for an official position of apathy, but it does explain it.

The right of self defence is one thing, but if you start extending it as "legitimate" to cross borders to attack anyone who attacks a friend, then you open up a whole can of worms.

Correct, it is a can of worms. However, when it is clear that a conflict between A and B is directly aided by C, then C becomes a legitimate target for SOMETHING more serious than official protests. The more clear cut the aid, the more supported the conflict is, the fewer worms are in the can.

Stopping them at the border and going no further may not seem ideal, but borders are pretty much what the international community works by and laying them aside shouldn't be done lightly.

Correct. Which is why I chose my worse carefully. I am sure that the US has legal grounds to do something about Syria's complicity in aiding the insurgency in Iraq. The question is, what is the legally correct course of action to take. Since I don't know squat about that aspect of international law, I don't know the answer. I would assume that military incursions across an internationally recognized boundary without a larger context of "authorization" is on questionable legal grounds. However, a doubt there has ever been a conflict that has followed international law to the letter. These sorts of gray areas are normal now, all the way back to the fact that nobody declares war any more. To me it would seem the laws on the books are outdated and are in need of a significant rewrite.

Bin Laden took the view that as the US was bankrolling and arming Israel who had illegally occupied the west bank, the US financial capital was a legitimate military target. Once you start letting borders be porrus either way you are on a slippery slope.

Yes, it is a slippery slope. The thing is a non-state player is already on that slope by its very existence. Therefore, the legitimate state players have little clear cut, non slippery options available to them. Unfortunately it comes down to the lowest common denominator. Terrorists don't respect boundaries and states' rights, so it would seem that states are being forced to blur that line as well.

If you use evils means to defeat evil then evil prevails.

Problem is, there is no agreement on what "evil" is. Many people adjust their principles based on greater context and personal viewpoint. For many, the simple fact that the US is in Iraq at all makes them "evil", and by extension ANYTHING that they do is construed as being illegitimate at best, "evil" at worst. Others see things in near opposite terms, whereby the US is conducting a crusade (I mean that literally and/or figuratively) and there for it needs to do whatever it must do to win. Unfortunately, neither side cares about international law, just like the WP example illustrates. Legality isn't really the issue.

Kellysheros,

Hrmmm Combat Mission and Pong aren't so different.

Nice try By this logic you'd be able to say that ethnic cleansing in Bosnia was akin to how the Allies cleaned the Third Reich out of France. Superficial similarities abound, but they are clearly different.

Londoner,

Very Clausewitzian Steve, I'm sure that last sentence is lifted out of On War ? . You do realise many (if not most) modern historians would disagree, but well argued nontheless.

I am a historian by schooling, and I'd say that's not true at all. In fact, I'd say that vast bulk of serious historians would back me up 110%. The issue of whether particular compromises of moral principles for military necessity had a net positive effect... that's where historians love to have debate. But none would argue that war inherently causes a conflict between morality (or principles if you will) and what is necessary to win a conflict.

Sergei and Nidan1... easy now! I disagree with Nidan1's perception that historians do as he says, since I have plenty of books in my collection that are highly critical of "western" behavior. In fact, I don't think you could find many books written about the Cold War or Vietnam, to name two recent events, that do not have some hard, critical lines taken about large issues. This histories of WWI and WWII are generally packed with criticism of Imperialism and Colonialism, yet are mostly written by "western" historians.

However, I do agree that history is usually written using the standards of the day and not of the times. Although, if you look closely you often find that the moral principles of the time were not much different than today. The difference is theory and reality are closer matched today than before. An example of this would be the Spanish Inquisition. Same religious texts then as now which are used for the West's basis of morality, but back then there was a very different view of how much the principles should apply to those not in power. Therefore, the Spanish Inquisition was as much an immoral event then as it would be if it happened now.

Steve

(edits to put back in things I accidentally left in my word processor )

[ November 27, 2005, 09:08 AM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Colin]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Peter,

If you don't believe me, then you obviously didn't listen to even one day's worth of testimony of the 9/11 Comission in the US. The US government had ample generalized warning, but did very little.

As for US double standards... yeah, no kidding it has double standards. Find me a nation state that doesn't have them and I'll send you a free copy of CM:SF Steve

Two things caught my eye there.

First off, the US had ample SPECIFIC warning. C'mon, 'airliners will be highjacked during the week of September 10th and flown into US national monuments' is pretty specific. We know what warning Bush had.

Second, I'd suggest Venezuela is nation without double standards as the US has. You can contact me personally I'd you like to send me a copy.

Sergei, Nidan. Stop, it's dumb **** like that which ruins on topic threads. You are both old historians. Congrats. You are awarded no points, cool points or social standing points.

Finally, I think that through all of this it's just clear that the US administration is a war machine. This is their focus.

The citizen's no longer support a very questionable war.

The administration has threatened action against how many states? 3? 4? Iraq, NK, Iran, Syria and you can watch them spout bull**** about Chavez also. They operate in clandestine ways and are more about manipulating mass opinion then winning it. I know all politics have a certain secrecy and manipulative aspect but the this American administration has managed to win the worlds hate more so then any other nation.

The point I would be concerned about, if I were an American (any maybe I'm missing some POV because I'm Canadian), is that your government is willing to encroach on another nation's soil to attack for reasons that are questionable at best.

And they managed to do it at least twice in 4 years. **** got to go so I can't finish the post

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

Once country A, crosses in to country B because people from B are crossing in to ally C, Then Country D who is allied to country C can argue the right to strike at country A.

Didn't you lose track of your argument? If A attacks B because A is allied to C, and D is also allied to C, then why would D attack A? Shouldn't it also be attacking B? Or is D actually allied to B, and therefore committed to protecting B from A? Or is it the case that D's alliances or lack of them are irrelevant and it is simply taking advantage of the situation to settle an old grudge with A?

Whatever the case may be, your paragraph strikes as a bit...odd. Even for the House of Mirrors logic that often governs international relations.

Michael

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Colin:

Sergei, Nidan. Stop, it's dumb **** like that which ruins on topic threads.

Talking of pot and kettle... You know where you can shove your naive extremist nonsense? To the trashbin.