Free Republic

Thucydides Project 3-19-03

editors note: Thucydides Project is my project to start to collect sources and eyewitness accounts of the War on Terror. I hope to put the sources together in some kind of systematic narrative. I am starting with the 3-19-03 and the coalition invasion of Iraq. I hope to then move one day forward and one day back from this date.

3-19-03 Invasion of Iraq

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1196707

Copyright National Public Radio Mar 19, 2003

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.

A statement from the White House today warned Americans that a war with Iraq will entail casualties. Now the calculus of war and loss of life. We wondered what Americans expect in the way of casualties and what we now think of as significant casualties. Of course, many would say even one casualty is significant, and that's what several people told our reporters in San Diego, Austin and Cleveland.

Unidentified Man #1: One would be too many, but that's being unrealistic.

Unidentified Woman #1: Well, if one is that significant, but for the price of freedom, we have to sometimes give up something.

Unidentified Man #2: Unless there's an accident, I don't think we'll lose 25 people.

Unidentified Woman #2: Significant would be anything over a hundred, really. If we start breaking into the hundreds, then something went wrong.

Unidentified Man #3: I really don't know, but if you go by precedence from the last time around, we'll be somewhere in the case of less than 500.

SIEGEL: One reason people may expect two-digit or three-digit casualty counts is recent history. In the Korean conflict, 33,000 Americans died in combat; in Vietnam, more than 47,000. But more recently, the wars and the casualty counts have been smaller--147 in the first war against Iraq, 23 in Panama, 43 in Somalia. US operations in the Balkans have cost the US 30 lives, and in Afghanistan, the toppling of the Taliban and pursuit of al-Qaeda have claimed a death toll of 47.

The writer Max Boot, now with the Council on Foreign Relations, has written about America's small wars. And, Max Boot, do you think that over a quarter of a century we've come to expect wars that cost us relatively little in the way of American lives?

Mr. MAX BOOT (Council on Foreign Relations): I think that's fair to say. We've certainly seen tremendous success of American arms on the battlefield over the past decade and, not unnaturally, we expect that success to continue. After Vietnam, of course, America was horribly scarred and we were very wary of military involvements as a result of that, because we feared another Vietnam, a repeat of those quagmire and catastrophe. Since the Gulf War of 1991, however, we no longer think of Vietnam as the norm. We have come to think of the Gulf War as the norm, and so far, we have not been disappointed, and I pray that we never will be.

SIEGEL: Yeah, the thesis of your book, "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power," is that the US military has been at least as much shaped by the experience of small wars as by the big ones. Is part of that the relatively low expectations of casualties?

Mr. BOOT: Certainly there is a relatively low expectation of casualties. I think the big factor with small wars is that there are just so many more of them than the big wars. You can count on one hand the number of big wars the United States has fought in our history, and yet, practically every year going back to 1789, American soldiers, sailors and Marines, and more recently airmen, have been engaged in combat somewhere, very often in missions that are not even called wars, that are called peacekeeping or operations other than war, constabulary actions or some other phrase. So there are just so many of these, and most of them are not that costly in either casualties or in national wealth. But there have been an awful lot of them, and this has had a lot to do with the rise of American power over the last two centuries.

SIEGEL: We also asked the same people we heard from earlier about how many Iraqi casualties they expect the US would inflict.

Unidentified Man #4: I think significant for them would be a thousand. Anything over would be catastrophic for them.

Unidentified Woman #3: I can't even give an estimate because I have no idea if it would just be hand-to-hand combat or if there would be any type of biological warfare.

Unidentified Man #5: I don't know. You know, I look at the American technology. There's going to be significant loss of Iraqi lives. I don't know. It's hard to say. Hundreds.

SIEGEL: Max Boot, do Americans actually have a clear sense, or do we have an overly sanitized sense, of how many casualties this country inflicts in a small war?

Mr. BOOT: I think to some extent we might have an overly sanitized sense. In part, this is a result of technology, because in 1945, when we were attacking Japan with B-29 bombers, we did not flinch when inflicting hundreds of thousands of casualties on Japanese civilians, and that's even before the atomic bombs were dropped, whereas now, it creates a national scandal if a smart bomb goes astray and hits a wedding in Afghanistan. Now as I say, in part, this is simply due to the fact that targeting technology is so much more precise and that, in 1945, you couldn't be certain that a bomb would hit within a mile of its target, whereas today you have a very high degree of certainty that precision-guided munitions will hit within a few meters of their target.

So we are much less accepting of civilian casualties, but I think in some sense we may have set the standard too high. We have come to think, I think, of war as being a surgical business, where we only hit the bad guys and leave all the innocent people alone. But it's never going to be that way. It's always going to be a messy, ugly business with innocent people on both sides getting killed. And I think we have to accept that as being inherently true of war. That's not going to change, no matter how much technology may change.

SIEGEL: Max Boot, author of "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power," thank you very much for talking with us today.

Mr. BOOT: Thanks for having me on.

SIEGEL: And earlier, we heard the opinions of Doug Thompson, Marian Ezel(ph), Todd Ezel(ph), Alex Alviso(ph), Scott Day, Enrique Wajardo(ph) and Jeannette Burda(ph).

Group Criticizes U.S. Stance on Korea --- Experts on Pyongyang Urge `Direct, Bilateral' Talks To See What Is Possible

By Doug Struck The Washington Post. Asian Wall Street Journal. New York, N.Y.: Mar 19, 2003. pg. A.3

I was able to access this article through Proquest and my local library. I’m not sure that it would be legal to reproduce the article in. So I won’t unless someone credible tells me different.

Agamemnon

Three hurt as Russian APC is blown up on Chechnya-Ingushetia boundary

BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union - Political. London: Mar 19, 2003. pg. 1

We're All Better Off Without That U.N. Resolution

By Joshua Muravchik. Asian Wall Street Journal. New York, N.Y.: Mar 19, 2003. pg. A.11

Australian opposition leader slams "government of cowards"

BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific - Political. London: Mar 19, 2003. pg. 1

By Joshua Muravchik. Asian Wall Street Journal. New York, N.Y.: Mar 19, 2003. pg. A.11

(Corrected)BBC Monitoring quotes from Russian press Wednesday 19 March

BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union - Political. London: Mar 19, 2003. pg. 1

I'm not wedded to the idea of calling it the War on Terror. Its also wider than Iraq and Afghanistan so I’m not sure what to call it.

If I ever work my way back to 9-11 I may jump back in time instead of going back day by day.

ok to begin with I’d have to know what WOT and BTW are. I also agree with you completely.

I could probably go back to the Barbary Pirates or the Fall of Constantinople. Its probably more practical to start more recently.

I have this idea I’ve been kicking around for a while. I’ve been thinking about putting together a history of the "Terror War" online. The idea was sparked by my current fascination with Greek history and the Peloponnesian War. I've been particularly inspired Victor Davis Hanson’s “A War Like No Other.” It is a truly excellent book filled with insight and dense with content.

The thing that has interested me the most about this period of Greek history was Thucydides contemporary history of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides decided early on that this war would be a war for the ages and began collecting sources and eyewitness accounts. The result is one of the most vivid and enduring accounts of war and politics. I think it would be interesting to start collecting sources and accounts of the “Terror War” and try to put them into some kind of context.

I thought about starting with the date of 9-11-01 but eventually decided against it. The real start date of the long war is 3-19-03 and begins with the coalition invasion of Iraq. The idea is to collect sources from that date and events that happened on the date and catalog all the important events. From there I hope to add one-day forward and one day backward from 3-19-03.

I think it would add a good deal of perspective to see the events as they happened and what people said and did at the time. I lack an expertise in a lot of areas (economics, military, diplomacy and so on.) Any help would be appreciated if anyone is interested. Maybe someday someone smarter than me can put the compilation to some use and write a definitive history of our war for the ages.

No the Democrats will get their pound of flesh. Rumsfeld is only the appetizer. But now they have to do something they haven't done in the 3 years of war. Come up with a policy.

Were The Voters Right? Wednesday, November 08, 2006 1:26 PM

I have a simple question were the American people right in their decision last night? Republicans are reeling right now from the public’s clear rebuke. They have lost the House and are almost certain to lose the Senate. It was a big wakeup call for a party once in power. But were the voters right? Sadly the answer is yes.

I have learned over a few years of having observing politics to trust the voter in the end. Elections that seemed wrong and ones that I disagreed with profoundly turned out to be pragmatic and clear in the end. For example I never liked President Clinton and would never vote for him but having Bob Dole as a one term President wasn’t a very appealing alternative either. Also at the time I was irate at the Senate’s unwillingness to remove an impeached President Clinton. But in the end the people’s wise unwillingness to remove a disgraced President saved us from President Al Gore.

So what were the lessons and the pragmatics decision of the voters in 2006? One the shaky conservatives I spoke to ached for a responsible opposition party. A friend of mine who is a moderate republican said it plainly to me. “I want to vote for Democrat a responsible Democrat.” I basically told him that they didn’t exist ignoring his basic point and his yearning for a responsible opposition. Democrats now have been put in a position to be that responsible party that Americans yearn for. Power also acts as a magnifying glass to people and parties. Under the lens you either glitter or burn. The Democrats now have to justify the trust placed in them by voters.

There is also a hidden silver lining in this that transcends party and ideology. The war on terror and Iraq can no longer be a Republican war. It will have to become an American war. The Democrats will get their pound of flesh but in the end they will be the ones making decisions. Platitudes like we are against torture will no longer be a mask, which they can successfully hide behind. They will be faced with the real decision of how to treat and interrogate enemy combatants.

On Iraq and the war on terror the Democrats will finally have to choose a course. They can no longer triangulate their position saying in all things that they would have done more or less than the President in every instance. They will join the President in the decision-making and the responsibility for those decisions. In the end we can only trust the decision of the voters and listen to their message.

I am looking to support a good relief agency to help in the Sudan. Any ideas on what’s a reliable honest group?

glad to hear I wasn't the only one doing a happy dance.

I wouldn't go that for the union only asks that they "wet their beak"

I wonder if I can lobby within the union. I don't want them to support republicans. I'd like them to spend those millions shoring up pensions and providing actual services to members.

that's a nice thought. I hate to knuckle under but it sounds like thats the wisest course of action. I guess I have to volunteer for candidates until I break even with my forced contributions.

I've heard that and I wonder if that is still true. Should I get my conceal and carry permit before I try this?

I'm not sure what to do. I know its kind of futile I hate the thought of my money going to support the "free speech" of democrats on my dime.