Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

of course this is no surprise. on day one, they seized the hospital, so no reports like this would be released until they were well into the mission. and they pointedly refused to let men aged (iirc) 15-55 out of the city. The odds that magically they only killed the actual rebels and thugs and killers who constitute the opposition are non-existent: soemwhere in that up to 1600 (is it? or was it 1200?) enemy killed are some civilian deaths, and perhaps a fair number.

Meanwhile, the civilians who fled fallujah are going to come home to death and destruction, for which they will blame the americans, and while our focus is there, the resistance has been launching operations elsewhere, and elsewhere in the times it notes that our intel says that rebel recruiting is up, and, of course, we caught no major terrorist leaders who had been (supposedly) holed up.

I can't actually believe that today's Marines didn't recognize all this as a likely outcome going in....

The way to not kill any civilians is to declare the whole population insurgents. A declaration that might be not too far from the truth come to think of it.

"The odds that magically they only killed the actual rebels and thugs and killers who constitute the opposition are non-existent:..."

Yes, as opposed to other wars that *have* only killed "thugs and killers."

I challenge anyone to name any war (anywhere, any time) fought by any military that has taken more care not to kill innocent civilians.

Mark, I challenge YOU to inform us on the ways in which the Military has taken care not to kill innocent civilians in this war. If they have taken such care, then why are 100,000 civilians dead?

Quit carping. Killing Iraqi civilians is not the fault of our soldiers. It is the policy handed our soldiers by our politicians. We voted to elect Mr. Bush. We voted for his policy of killiing civilians in Iraq. We will be in Iraq for four more years killing civilians because Mr Bush will refuse to back down from Gods will. Get used to it. Turn off your TV if it bothers you.

This is what our troops are doing for us in Falloojeh.

fallujapictures.blogspot.com/

"I challenge anyone to name any war (anywhere, any time) fought by any military that has taken more care not to kill innocent civilians"

Why should that be in any way relevant to the question whether we are willing to risk a high number of civilian casualties? No matter how much greater that number *could* have been, anyone who supports a war in the first place has to accept the blame for every single dead innocent civilian and then decide whether that is the price he was willing to pay.

howard's second punch line was - I suspect - that the number of 1600 killed insurgents possibly overstates the success of the campaign.

Konrad, you're right about the second punch line (that's why i use "up to").

Mark, really, what do you think the mission is? i can't be the one introducing you to the notion that this is a political struggle, a guerilla conflict, not a land war. With the collapse of all other justifications for this tragically wrong policy, the humanitarian intervention is what's left....

"Mark, I challenge YOU to inform us on the ways in which the Military has taken care not to kill innocent civilians in this war."

Jesus H. Christ! I didn't think anyone was sooooo fantastically ignorant as to not know the *extreme* measures our military has gone to, to avoid killing innocent civilians in Iraq!

Here are some comparitive pictures. Maybe you should read some history before posting:

Stalingrad:

http://www.katardat.org/marxuniv/2002-SUWW2/Images/images-stalingrad/Stalingrad-zruins.jpg

Dresden:

http://www.elementallife.com/Myself/Her_Thoughts/images/Downloaded%20pictures/10087293.jpg

London:

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/ww2/blitz.jpg

Hiroshima:

http://mothra.rerf.or.jp/ENG/A-bomb/photo-1/p9.jpg

Sarajevo:

http://195.78.195.198/med/photo-gallery/ExJugoslavia/Le%20case%20di%20Sarajevo%20crivellate%20dai%20colpi%20dei%20cecchini.jpg

Halabja:

http://www.imk-news.org/halabja/HALABJ~1.JPG

New York City:

http://www.lndambulance.org/images/wtc/wtc.jpg

Can you honestly not know that the U.S. military could EASILY have killed every single one of the 300,000 inhabitants of Fallujah...and at far *less* cost in U.S. troop deaths?

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/print/fallujah_101/

November 12, 2004

Fallujah 101
A history lesson about the town we are currently destroying.
By Rashid Khalidi

There is a small City on one of the bends of the Euphrates that sticks out into the great Syrian Desert. It’s on an ancient trade route linking the oasis towns of the Nejd province of what is today Saudi Arabia with the great cities of Aleppo and Mosul to the north. It also is on the desert highway between Baghdad and Amman. This city is a crossroads.

For millennia people have been going up and down that north-south desert highway. The city is like a seaport on that great desert, a place that binds together people in what are today Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. People in the city are linked by tribe, family or marriage to people in all these places.

The ideas that came out of the eastern part of Saudi Arabia in the late 18th Century, which today we call Wahhabi ideas—those of a man named Muhammad Ibn ’Abd al-Wahhab—took root in this city more than 200 years ago. In other words, it is a place where what we would call fundamentalist salafi, or Wahhabi ideas, have been well implanted for 10 generations....

The British sent a renowned explorer and a senior colonial officer who had quelled unrest in the corners of their empire, Lt. Col. Gerald Leachman, to master this unruly corner of Iraq. Leachman was killed in an altercation with a local leader named Shaykh Dhari. His death sparked a war that ended up costing the lives of 10,000 Iraqis and more than 1,000 British and Indian troops. To restore Iraq to their control, the British used massive air power, bombing indiscriminately. That city is now called Fallujah.

Shaykh Dhari’s grandson, today a prominent Iraqi cleric, helped to broker the end of the U.S. Marine siege of Fallujah in April of this year. Fallujah thus embodies the interrelated tribal, religious and national aspects of Iraq’s history.

The Bush administration is not creating the world anew in the Middle East. It is waging a war in a place where history really matters.

"Mark, really, what do you think the mission is?"

Well, one possibility is to try to make this less likely to happen in the future:

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1620777,00.html

Mutilated blonde corpse found
14/11/2004 14:48 - (SA)

Fallujah - The body of a blonde-haired woman with her legs and arms cut off and throat slit was found Sunday lying on the street in Fallujah, a notorious enclave for hostage-takers, marines said.

Hostage 'slaughter houses' found
10/11/2004 17:47 - (SA)

Near Fallujah - Iraqi troops found homes where foreign hostages were held and slaughtered in Fallujah, said Major General Abdul Qader Mohan, chief military spokesperson for the joint US-Iraqi operation in the rebel city.

Another possibility is so that the people who control Fallujah don't do this sort of thing:

http://iraq.usembassy.gov/iraq/041111_fallujah_briefing.html

"In almost every single mosque in Fallujah we have found an arms cache, we have found IED factories, we have found fortifications, and we have even found weapons repair facilities. We have been shot at by snipers from minarets, and we've also seen the use of schools for the storage of weapons. This is the enemy that we fight. It does not respect the religious mosques or the children's schools."

It is U. S. policy to to bring forth democracy in Iraq even if it is necessary to kill every man, woman, and child. The problem does not lie with our troops... they are simply doing what they have been ordered to do. Hopefully, it is not with relish that they discharge their orders.

"It is U. S. policy to to bring forth democracy in Iraq even if it is necessary to kill every man, woman, and child."

Yeah, sling that bullshit.

And Saddam Hussein and his sons would have volutarily stepped down from power this year, if we'd only let them.

Corrected Mark Bahner:

"I challenge anyone to name any frivolous war (anywhere, any time) fought by any military that has taken more care not to kill innocent civilians."

Yes, this is exactly what I was saying the war would be like - right here on this blog - way back when Brad DeLong thought the Iraq adventure just might be a net positive.

I can't think of a war where a civilian population caught in the killing zone has not suffered as least as much as the opposing troops. This is what war is. This is why would should not be quick to engage in it.

America, you wanted war (at least tacitly approving of it by reaffirming its chief architects. So stop griping. War is killing. Get over it and accept the consequences of your actions. You do live in a democracy, don't you?

Now sit back and enjoy the fruits of your actions. Get used to it, get comfortable. There's plenty more to come in the next four years.

Yes, this is exactly what I was saying the war would be like - right here on this blog - way back when Brad DeLong thought the Iraq adventure just might be a net positive.

I can't think of a war where a civilian population caught in the killing zone has not suffered at least as much as the opposing troops. This is what war is. This is why we should not be quick to engage in it if other options are available.

But America thinks full scale invasion of Iraq was the only option available. You made an informed choice. Regretting it is to no pupose.

America, you wanted war (at least tacitly approving of it by reaffirming its chief architects). So stop griping. War is killing. Get over it and accept the consequences of your actions. You do live in a democracy, don't you?

Now sit back and enjoy the fruits of your actions. Get used to it, get comfortable. There's plenty more to come in the next four years.

It may not matter to the end result, how many baddies were in Fallujah, nor how much care we trumpet to avoid killing innocents, because innocents will die, and the bad guys will be heroes. So we are still fighting this war the wrong way, because of the Enemy's (1) diffuse, cross-border force-structure and (2) religious belief, and because of Our (3) obvious intent to protect their oil for Western consumption--if, of course, the Christians have the most dough to pay for it..., as well as (4) complicity in Israel's expansion. The best analysis is still in Michael Sheuer's ("Anonymous") IMPERIAL HUBRIS, yet uncontradicted by bloviations in this thread.

I was noticing in these posts. The arguments about the Iraq war sure turn ugly when we are losing.

"dirty little war"? There being no such thing as a clean war, 'little' is the only word that carries any information here. So we have a little war on our hands. That's real deep analysis. Wow!

Mark, try to think a little harder. We all know - i specifically said so, fer instance - that many of the people we killed are murderous thugs and killers who would happily have killed americans and iraqis. this does most assuredly NOT make the mission a body-count collection; in even the most optimistic take, destroying the village in order to save it is a bad idea, and i sincerely believe that the marine leadership knows it even if the bush administration and enablers like mark don't.

and by the way, mark, i agree that the US is doing its best to minimize civilian casualties; that's not the same as having the military spokespeople claim there are no civilian casualties.

and one (one hopes last) time: eliminating bad guys should not be the basis of us foreign policy, and yes, amazingly enough, there was and is such a thing as too high a price to pay simply to topple saddam hussein. how can that be such a difficult concept to grasp?

The simple strategic goal of the guerrilla force is to grab the occupying force by the balls and squeeze real hard until they shoot at everybody who looks like a guerrillero. So far they seem to be succeeding pretty well.

walons: "So we have a little war on our hands."

guerrilla (from Spanish guerra) = little war.

Yet again, it is worthwhile to refer those in the audience who have not read it to T.E. Lawrence's classic Encyclopedia Brittanica article, Science of Guerilla Warfare. An exerpt:
--------
In the Arab case the algebraic factor would take first account of the area to be conquered. A casual calculation indicated perhaps 140,000 square miles. How would the Turks defend all that--no doubt by a trench line across the bottom, if the Arabs were an army attacking with banners displayed . . . but suppose they were an influence, a thing invulnerable, intangible, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile as a whole, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. The Arabs might be a vapour, blowing where they listed. It seemed that a regular soldier might be helpless without a target. He would own the ground he sat on, and what he could poke his rifle at. The next step was to estimate how many posts they would need to contain this attack in depth, sedition putting up her head in every unoccupied one of these 100,000 square miles. They would have need of a fortified post every four square miles, and a post could not be less than 20 men. The Turks would need 600,000 men to meet the combined ill wills of all the local Arab people. They had 100,000 men available. It seemed that the assets in this sphere were with the Arabs, and climate, railways, deserts, technical weapons could also be attached to their interests. The Turk was stupid and would believe that rebellion was absolute, like war, and deal with it on the analogy of absolute warfare.
-------
http://www.bellum.nu/wp/tel/telsogw.html
-------
There's more, and it's rich, and if one were favorably inclined toward the Turks, it's sad. The parallels to the present situation are in many ways uncanny....

Someone should have read that to W before it all went down.
Again we have a state army pushing a state vs state conflict (for multiple reasons including profit and geopolitical advantage) when what we have is a movement with a figurehead we have failed to quash and willing hordes of suicidal warriors whose glory spreads and numbers increase with each foolish strategic and tactical move by Bush & Co.
I would also like to state that I resent Bush for making our military fight under those circumstances, where murdering the wounded is not an offense but a survival mechanism, where the basic human decency that could have prevented the entire war from taking place is repressed and execution style killing is a sort of mercy. The cost of this conflict will not be measured in dollars but in blood, sanity, lost opportunity, and the death of hope that man may live, if not in perfect peace and harmony, may mind his own goddamned business and not rob, murder, and bear false witness against his fellows.

This discussion gets to the very heart of the distiction between traditionally defined "just" wars and wars of choice. If war had been forced on us, if US citizens were at risk, "the trajedy of war" would count for a lot. We chose to put peaceful Iraqis at risk, and may well be killing them in greater numbers than Saddam did in recent years. This war isn't supposed to be about giving Saddam a report card. If he was no longer carrying out slaughter on the scale that deposing him would lead to, "we did it for the Iraqis" is a pretty weak argument. It's looking that way.

Comparing what happened at Stalingrad to Falluja casts us in the role of the Nazis - not very flattering. I would like higher standards, thank you. We have obviously lowered the standard for going to war. I would think that that has implications for the other standards, for events that follow on. If we go to war preemptively, to protect ourselves when there is no imminent threat, we are trading a low risk to ourselves against a high risk for the population of the country we invade, that has very large ethical implications.

Saying "we've always done it this way" just isn't good enough. We have also adopted technology aimed at reducing risk for our own troops. Stand back and hit hard. Since the rate of non-combatant deaths is likely to be pretty closely associated with the rate of death among enemy combatants, we've done two things to put civilians at risk in an effort to lower our own risk. Two pretty big things. We need to address the implications of those changes to the innocents who live where we have chosen to go to war.

"War is hell" is just a mindless excuse. Our claim, now badly eroded, to being the good guys, doesn't allow for simple-minded crap like that. We've changed the game to our own advantage.

We also have a problem with the simple facts of the matter. Saying we have taken steps to reduce civilian casualties leaves open the question of how effective those efforts have been. If we have taken two very big steps that put civilians at greater risk, then instituted some rules of engagement that military planners say should reduce civilian casualties, we still have a long way to go. How do we know we have offset the impact of the changes we've made in war fighting? If the civilian death count is high (Lancet says it is, while the US military is going to considerable lengths to see that we can't know), we can't simply point to the rules and say, "see, we're still the good guys." The US military has reported that there aren't many non-combatants in Falluja, at the same time refusing to distinguish between combantants and regular folk, if one happens to be a male of fighting age.

So no more excuses, OK? When the military opens the gate and tells investigative reporters to have at it, my confidence level will improve.

**Well, one possibility is to try to make this less likely to happen in the future:**

And has this approach ever worked in the history of the world, or are we still fighting the same battles we've been fighting for over a thousand years while you go through your WWII fantasies? Now Arab TV is showing wounded prisoners being executed by American soldiers in Mosques. Feel safer yet?

Name a war with fewer civilian casualties? Easy. The Falklands War. No civilian casualties at all. Just a large number of hapless argentine conscripts. Several of the recent peacemaking operations in africa by the brits and the french also seem to have been less nasty, although that is probably because most african armed forces, official or not, don't have the organisation to mount effective resistance.

Thomas - that certainly sounded rather racist, in addition to being wrong. I suppose you just exclude from your analysis regions/countries (e.g., Ivory Coast) that don't fit your conclusion?

I do wonder that, with each successive conflict, what the impact of real-time information has on public opinion. I wonder what would have happened if we had had daily body counts from the mainland and Pacific islands (after Japan surrendered), or in much of Europe following Hitler's death?

I think that fewer civilian casualties were inflicted in the 2001 attack on Afghanistan, the 1999 bombing of Serbia, the 1989 invasion of Panama, the invasion of Grenada, etc. Of course, there was less war overall in those cases. I don't know if more care was taken to avoid killing innocents.

Really, though, why should we be surprised when a democracy implements the policies its constituents want? George Bush may have sold this war as a necessary move to prevent a mushroom cloud in Los Angelos, but Bill O'Reilly and his ilk always sold is as an oppurtunity for cathartic sadism. When most of us were whooping and cheering when bombs went off in Basra and no doubt killed people, why should we be surprised when the military adopts callous policies. A little more than a year ago, I had a roommate whose computer had a "campus Republicans" sticker, and whose desk was littered with Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Dinesh D'Souza. He never viewed war as an unfortunate but necessary way of defending the U.S. He took glee when the military killed, and referred to our enemies as "animals," and when the invasion of Iraq happened, you almost got the impression that he viewed it as a proxy war against Democrats ("hah! We're in Baghdad now! And those foolish anti-war leftists were saying it would turn into a quagmire!").

Killing civilians isn't some unfortunate side-effect of our foreign policy. It's a selling point of it. We're getting what we want.

heyoh, Mark Bahner---

>
"It is U. S. policy to to bring forth democracy in Iraq even if it is necessary to kill every man, woman, and child."

Yeah, sling that bullshit.

And Saddam Hussein and his sons would have volutarily stepped down from power this year, if we'd only let them.
>

Well, we have to destroy the country in order to save it, I guess.

You know you are seeing true statesmanship when a president creates a situation markedly worse in every sense (strategic, tactical, political, economic, humanitarian) for everyone (jihadists excepted) than an impoverished country ruled by a two-bit Stalin, rife with corruption, sadism, and oppression.

NM

and CD138,

Good stuff on -Seven Pillars-. Must not have been on Rumsfeld's pre-war reading list.

I'd add some more suggested material for neo-cons

Alistair Horne, -A Savage War of Peace-
Thucydides, -History-, Books VI and VII
Lean et al, "Lawrence of Arabia"
Pontecorvo, et al, "The Battle for Algiers"
(which, unbelievably, Pentagon study groups
have apparently been watching without seeing
for some time)
Sledge, -With the Old Breed-
(Even when it is in a good and just cause,
and in the nation's interest,
combat is--well, let Sledge show you. So
do not ever, ever put men in combat unless
you have a ^%$* good reason)

NM

This entire debate is, at it's core, about under what conditions Persian Gulf oil will be extracted, and all fantasies of energy independence aside, the oil will be extracted. The people of the Persian Gulf are militarily, technologically, economically, and politically weak, and they sit upon the natural resource most highly valued by the rest of the world. In the not too distant past, this would have been a straight-forward prescription for enslavement or slaughter. That is how the world has always worked.

Today, there may be a third option, that of political and economic modernization. Whether this option is attainable is an open question. The model employed in the past 80-plus years, however, enslavement (by proxy), is no longer tenable, because the slaves resent the slavedrivers' paymasters (the world's oil consumers) sufficiently to violently attack them, often with the slavedrivers assistance. If the U.S. didn't exist, the next highest oil consumer would suffice as a target of hostility.

With enslavement no longer tenable, if political and economic modernization, and fairly rapid modernization at that, fails, massive slaughter will become the inevitable outcome. Human beings in the rest of the world are not going to let the oil of the Persian Gulf stay in the ground, out of respect for the human beings in the Persian Gulf. In all of history, human beings have not behaved in this manner when they desperately desire a natural resource. Fallujah will be smaller, comparatively, than a grain of sand on the Arabian peninsula.

If one wishes to condemn this Administration fine, by all means do so. If anything, one should do so for them being insufficiently aggressive and bold. I have no illusions about being able to discern from my vantage point as to what the chances of success in Iraq now are, other than I always thought it to be at best a 50-50 prospect. However, since the nearly inevitable outcome of the Persian Gulf failing to modernize rapidly is a violent doom for the people of the Persian Gulf, 50-50 prospects were about the best available.

Huh? You aren't claiming that the Iraq was leaving its oil in the ground before 2003, are you, Will? I agree that the oil will be extracted come what may, but I don't see why that requires any invasions or anything.

Thanks for the example Julian. Now I know that 52% of this country is a bunch of war-mongering, homophobic, creationist morons. That clarifies the issue. Sometimes I wonder if liberals wouldn't be so pissed if they would calm down and accept the war for exactly what the president says it is. Whether you agree with his reasoning or not, apparently all the above referenced members of our country appear to want him to finish the job.

No, Julian, the world's oil consumers were accomodating Iraq's slave master, Saddam Hussein, although, to be sure, not to the extent the oil consumers accomodate the slave masters in Saudi Arabia. In any case, the paradigm of enslavement by proxy, in order to facilitate oil extraction, is no longer tenable. The slaves really don't like it, and will violently assault those that pay the slave masters for the oil, while the slave masters encourage this process, in order to lessen the degree to which they are held responsible for their oppressive actions.

This paradigm may have remained tenable in a world in which the availability of destructive technology was stable. That world has past, if it ever existed. It will increasingly possible for disaffected groups with access to resources (and the oil will ensure that adequate resources will find their way to disaffected groups in the Persian Gulf) to obtain technology needed to cause great destruction. In turn, the Persian Gulf will be targeted for even greater destruction. The people of the Persian Gulf will either become free and modernize, and somewhat rapidly, or they will will share the fate of any other militarily and economically inferior people who sit atop natural resources that far more militarily and economically powerful people greatly desire.

cb,

There is no question that, if the roughly half of the country's voters that didn't vote for Bush would just empty their brains and take whatever he tells them as gospel (which many who voted for him seemed to do - Saddam double dates with bin Laden, there were tons of nukes found in downtown Dagnab, mercury is good for you, we'll make a decision on global warming when scientist reach a consensus that there is really a problem, served honorably in the Texas air guard, McCain fathered an illegitimate child, that sort of stuff), then those who oppose Bush's policies now would be calmer.

Problem is, Bush forgot to hand out soma. If we don't have our soma, emptying out our brains and letting Big Brother fill them back up for us is, well, it's hard work.

kharris,

please. you sound like the right when clinton was pres.

cb-

>

Sometimes I wonder if liberals wouldn't be so pissed if they would calm down and accept the war for exactly what the president says it is.

>

and just what is that, "exactly"? where are we at now? oh, yes, it's defeating terrorism and spreading freedom in the Middle East. two abstractions you could drive an H2 through, two verbs rendered meaningless by having abstractions as their direct objects, a geographical area, and some conjunctions. As a representative of the wholly unrepresented and unrepresentable faction of left libertarians, I'll accept that 100.00%.

I'll also accept that Iraq II is and always has been one of the most pathetic excuses for statecraft in the history of states. Heck, go back before states and I'll bet you can't find anything worse. Disorganized slavering mobs have more effective intelligence than your best and brightest neocon thinktank. And guess who'll be making "policy" for the next four years? Even now in the basements of various research libraries across the globe historical ironists are dusting themselves off, realizing who they are, and preparing to write their masterworks.

NM

Make that "an infinite number of H2s..."

NM

My understanding of your post, Will Allen:

1. Some Saudis and Egyptians attack us, primarily owing to our policy with regard to Israel, though to a lesser extent to our policy with regard to Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
2. .......
3. We invade Iraq so that Iraq will be modernized, instead of the pissed-off Iraqi masses acquiring destructive weapons and attack us for paying Saddam for their oil.

I don't get #2. At least, as far as I can tell, your claim is that we invaded Iraq so that terrorists won't attack us as they did on 9/11. I don't see why that is, though. West Germany had to deal with terrorism in spite of being a Democracy. So has Japan (Aum Shinrikyo, anyone?).

So we invade a country, none of whose population took part in the 9/11 attacks, to prevent them from taking part in such attacks, because modernization mysteriously prevents terrorism?

If you want the Iraqis to be free and modern, because you think they'll be happier and better off that way, and that it's worthwhile for the U.S. to help them along the way just to be nice, then just say so, but if you really think that invading Iraq was somehow supposed to trigger of Rube Goldberg chain of events that would lead to us getting the oil with no terrorists trying to attack us, then you need to flesh that idea out a bit.

Gee whiz whilikers, Julian, I didn't realize that this was a forum that lent itself to extended examinations, but I'll address a few points. First, the Sept. 11 attackers decidedly did not have U.S. policy vis-a-vis Israel as the major motive. Second, it does not logically follow that since modernization does not completely eliminate the threat of mass attack, modernization is useless in reducing the threat. Third, it is often not strategically wise to attack a problem in the most direct manner. Fourth, the Hussein regime had given sanctuary to a terrorist who had previously attempted to topple the WTC, so to paint it as not having deadly intent vis-a-vis the U.S. is fatuous.

Look, you obviously believe that extracting the oil through enslavement by proxy is still sustainable, ignoring the fact that this paradigm is what led to the attacks of the 1990s, culminating in the Sept. 11 attack. I believe you are in error, and to continue this approach eventually guarantees a conflict which will be extraordinarily bloody.

So... we leap into a bloody conflict in the hopes that somehow this will prevent a bloody conflict from happening? I'm sorry, but if you're worried about us eventually mass-killing the people of Iraq to get the oil, I'd think that the LAST thing you'd want to do would be to place a lot of troops in Iraq. That's like... uh... a philo-Semitic German in 1936 saying "let's put all of the Jews in concentration camps so that their existence out the open doesn't provoke Nazi hardliners into killing them all." I know that sounds ridiculous, but so does invading Iraq so that we don't get into a bloodthirsty conflict with Iraqis.

Look, Saddam Hussein was an enemy of the United States, and the invasion of Iraq might have been justified on humanitarian, political, or economic grounds (though the actual invasion, as it has happened, has thus far moved us backward on all three fronts), but to say that an invasion was inevitable, now or later, with more or less brutality, and that Bush and his crew are just helpless before the world-historical forces that force them -- or, if not them, some later, more brutal administration -- to invade Iraq, is really fatuous. All of the attacks of the 1990s combined have not cost as many American lives as the war in Iraq, and all of the attacks of the 1990s and the attack of 2001 combined have not cost nearly as many American, Iraqi, British, etc lives as the war in Iraq. Perhaps, someday, Iraq and the middle east will be modernized, and that will have been a result of the invasion of Iraq.

No, we won't mass kill the Iraqis to get their oil. However, once some group with funding from Persian Gulf oil mass kills enough Americans, as a result of Americans extracting oil through enslavement by proxy, we will mass kill Iraqis, Saudis, and others, much as we mass killed aboriginal North Americans. This is what happens to militarily and economically weak people who sit atop valuable natural resources, when they show sufficient propensity for violence against those militarily and economically more powerful people who seek to obtain those resources. Extraction through enslavement by proxy worked as long as the slaves had no means of responding. That isn't the case any longer. The people of the Persian Gulf will either extract the oil, and trade with the rest of the world, as free people, or they will die in droves.

Finally, that you equate putting people in concentration camps with an attempt to provide people with an opportunity at self government, even if that attempt is violent, really says it all.