Replies

Ya lost me there, Publius, could you please clarify yer statement?!

Certainly. This goes back to the concept of "fear of world opinion".

If the enemy has the overwhelming force he will use it.
If we have it, we need neither permission nor approval.

You may not have noticed that we are getting the fallout for having used power indiscriminately for simply asserting that we have it and can actually use it?
Allowing the enemy to use fear of "world opinion" to prevent us from making it a reality makes no sense, does it?

"...the concept of "fear of world opinion".

If the enemy has the overwhelming force he will use it.
If we have it, we need neither permission nor approval."

I'm not proposing that we make a Viet Nam-like mistake and handcuff our fighting forces unnecessarily, and I certainly supported Dubyuh's decision to forego UN approval of our actions to move into Iraq when we did. That said, I do believe that world opinion matters and maintaining our nobility in this War does matter in both the short- and long-term. Indiscriminantly bombing an entire town outta existence is not the path I think we want our military to take. Sure, Fallujah is a major problem and we need to address it using overwhelming force, but mass-murdering of innocent civilians harms our long-term interests, imho.

"You may not have noticed that we are getting the fallout for having used power indiscriminately for simply asserting that we have it and can actually use it? Allowing the enemy to use fear of "world opinion" to prevent us from making it a reality makes no sense, does it?"

Fallout from whom? Totalitarian regimes? Anti-War Leftists? If anybody is criticizing the Coalition's conduct in the Iraqi Liberation to date, they are full of $#!+!! Our conduct has been exemplary. However, if we were to mass-murder innocent civilians as we most certainly have the ability to do--and as FReepers are proposing on this thread--we will have forfeited the higher moral ground and will open us to attacks from American public opinion, which worries me a lot more than world opinion.

FReegards...MUD

KING HENRY V, Act 3, Scene 3
King Henry: How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit;
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;
Or like to men proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
bEnlink'd to waste and desolation?
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?