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Virtual War
When it comes to war, writes author Michael Ignatieff, virtual reality is seductive. We see ourselves as noble warriors and our enemies as despicable tyrants. We deploy our sophisticated weaponry -- in our minds itself the hallmark of a superior civilization -- against one-dimensional villains fighting with clubs and spears. We see war as a surgical scalpel and not a bloodstained sword. In so doing we mis-describe ourselves and the instruments of death. "We need," he writes, "to stay away from such fables of self-righteous invulnerability. Only then can we get our hands dirty. Only then can we do what is right."
In recent years, Americans have made it clear they don't want to get their hands dirty, and there isn't anything close to a consensus of what is right. Believing their technology to be superior and infalliable, they are happy to let it do their fighting for them.
Part of the sometimes horrific history of the 20th century is that technology is no good or worse than the moral character of the people using it. The idea of the Virtual War is a uniquely American contribution to this chilling history.
The philosopher Paul Kahn has argued that 'riskless warfare in pursuit of human rights' is a moral contradiction, since the idea behind human rights is that all life is of equal value. So called "risk-free warfare" presumes that our lives matter more than those we are intervening to save.
This idea is underscored in this devastatingly-documented attack on the lack of reason, moral foundation, clear goals or concrete results behind the recent conflict in Bosnia, an American-conceived Virtual War fought primarily by by hi-tech weaponry rather than people. The war was meticulously designed not only to force the Serbs out of Kosovar, but perhaps equally important, to be politically palatable to the American public. Thus the idea of the Virtual War, a conflict in which our technology would supplant the warrior willing to die on our behalf. In the Virtual War, machines do all of the fighting and bleeding for us. Except, of course, for their hapless targets.
Ignatieff (a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and producer of an award-winning TV series on natonalism) was present in the Balkans before, during and after the Bosnian conflict, writes clearly and with laser-like authority and confidence. He zeroes in on American techno-hubris, the idea that a handful of people running computer consoles in distant bases can wage or win a complex military victory, even in the most complex of conflicts.
He reminds us that the victory in Kosova was, to say the least, ambiguous. Far fewer Serb soldiers and equipment were killed in the Virtual Combat than we were led to believe. Although the Serbs did eventually withdraw, in part because of our relentless bombing of civilian targets far from the battlefield, and NATO troops entered Kosovo in their wake, there was no Serb surrender. Nothing was resolved. No legal or other agreements to resolve the conflict have been negotiated or ratified.
On a smaller but still bloody scale, the conflict continues today and is, in fact, worsening. The tanks NATO generals assured us had been destroyed mysteriously emerged from the brush and rumbled back home. Serbia is rebuilding its infrastructure.
"Why do virtual wars end so ambiguously?" asks Ignatieff: "Nations impose unconditional surrender on their enemies only when they have suffered some harm -- death of their citizens, loss of their territory -- which seems to require a fight to the death. Wars fought in the name of the human rights of other nation's national minorities are bound to be self-limiting. We fight for victory and unconditional surrender only when we are fighting for ourselves."
The political and military leaders who planned the Virtual War in Kosovo clearly grasped this idea from the first, even though the American public was never directly told. Missiles and smart bombs assaulted what pilots and data-interpreters hundreds, even thousands of miles away, believed were tanks, troop carriers and gun emplacements. Only a handful of NATO troops, mostly Americans, were involved, and the only casualties they suffered during the conflict were accidental, not in combat. Many of the casualties were civilians killed indirectly by technicians hundreds of miles away who often had no idea anybody had been killed.
"Virtual Wars" is a brilliant exercise both in journalism and moral reasoning. It's also yet another parable and warning about the unthinking American fascination with technology as an all-encompassing, infallible means to and end. Ignatieff documents that the technology used in this Virtual War was much less effective than we were led to believe during the fighting. In any case, he foresees, the American monopoly on this machinery will inevitably end, and it will soon be available to other countries and political groups. We are, he cautions, setting an awful precedent -- it's all right to unleash fearful weapons on unseen targets if you do so in the name of human rights.
The Virtual War was more or less invented in the Persian Gulf when transfixed Americans were hypnotized by the laser-guided video bomb flights and explosions released every night for the evening news. Here was a savvy, spin-conceived conflict if ever there was one: an unequivocally bad dictator pummeled by thousands of superbly-armed American soldiers who suffered few casualties and were led by a General as good with sound bites as he was with a field map. Years later, some people still puzzle why Saddam is still in charge, why the core of his army is intact, why many of the people who were encouraged by the United States to challenge him have been slaughtered, why he is rearming. But that is less riveting than the notion of the Virtual War, and the video on the evening news.
If "Virtual War" has a flaw, it may be in failing to take account the influence of modern media on the shaping of military conflicts. The U.S. military left Vietnam convinced they were undermined as much by grisly TV footage shown at home as by the North Vietnamese. Since that war, the military has taken extraordinary pains to make sure that they control the footage that makes it to the evening news. If they can't always win on the battlefied, they've sure conquered the mainstream media, desperate for such graphic, riveting footage. Consider the TV images from Vietnam to Iraq: mangled American bodies to imploding Iraqi radar stations and warehouses. But that's a minor oversight This a terrific book, richly documented, written in a spare and accessible way, and profoundly persuasive.
Ignatieff asks the right questions. Is it moral to kill others when we refuse to make any sacrifices ourselves? Can a "Virtual War" fought by machines controlled from great distances, really conquer countries, resolve conflicts, and promote lasting settlements?
Can any country like the U.S. muster the determination and will -- evident in all of its previous wars up until Vietnam -- to do whatever it takes to win even as our leaders concede the conflict --thus the principle -- isn't worth any any substantial material or human cost to us?
The Kosovo operation, writes Ignatieff, is the paradigm of this paradoxical form of warfare: where technological omnipotence is vested in the hands of risk-averse political cultures. "Precision violence is now at the disposal of a risk-adverse culture, unconvinced by the language of military sacrifice, skeptical about the costs of foreign adventures and determined to keep out of harm's way."
Purchase this book at Fatbrain.
Can High Technology Bring the Troops Home?
tcd004
Here's my Microsoft Parody, where's yours?
We fight wars with guns in the real world. We fight wars with scripts, computers, and bandwidth online. We trade money online through credit cards, we chat online through e-mail and IRC. We telecommute for our jobs. We have a plethora of technologies to interface the realworld's knowledge and information directly into the virtual one.
Yet despite the overwhelming evidence that the virtual world is a mirror of the realworld, we continue to treat this medium as somehow different from the real one. Our legal conventions somehow didn't cross the digital divide, and we're left with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the CDA, software patents, and "e-commerce". It seems that the world has fallen under the dillusion that if someone creates something "new" in the virtual world that is "old" in the real world.. it must be valuable and something to be protected. This is the single most dangerous idea threatening the virtual world - it could easily destroy it or render it a useless wasteland of advertisements and billboards, push technology, and download-only bandwidth.
That's my take on virtual morality - it is just the same as realworld morality, only mirrored and adapted. Minus one minor glitch in people's thinking: that the two are somehow seperate and not to be mixed.
Today 50 Serbian soldiers, 5 radios and an electric toothbrush were killed by a nineteen year old armed with a GED and a toggle switch.
carlos
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
We should also ask ourselves the real reasons for the Persian Gulf "war". Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't about oil--only 11% of the United States total oil consumption for that year came from nations that could possibly have been affected (Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE). In fact, we were getting more oil from Iraq than from Kuwait in the year before the war started. Even after the war, the United States government repeatedly chastized the restored Kuwaiti government for its poor human-rights record, but did this out of the spotlight in venues that the U.S. public was unlikely to explore.
What's the agenda here? Why is the United States spending so much time and effort bombing people with alleged "precision" munitions (munitions which, in the Gulf War at least, were later shown to have only a 40% hit rate--a far cry from the perception that every bomb hit every target). We need to ask ourselves what the government is doing with all of this money, and who the next target of those weapons will be.
The United States government has shown, in recent years, a great intolerance for certain "fringe" groups. These munitions, once honed to perfection (after being tested on foreign soil in conflicts that are generated out of thin air), may be used in the future to silence groups that dare to speak out against the government.
We are right to be afraid of this, but we should not let that fear paralyze us. The government prefers to use smoke and mirrors when fighting these battles; only the blinding light of the truth will save us.
www.alarmist.org
It seems to me that the guy is saying that in order for a war to be moral enough people on your side have to be killed.
Minimum acceptable loss ratio?
"Sorry, gentlemen, you suffered less than 15% of our casualties. It is now quite clear that we are the 'good' side and you are the 'evil' side."
I can understand being morally uncomfortable about risklessly killing people at a distance. I would guess this is a remnant from the times when personal man-to-man battles were the only honorable form of combat. But, really, arguing that you MUST pay in blood to achieve military goals...
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Part of America's obsession with a lossless, painless war is deep wounds that still linger from Vietnam. The laser guided bombs, the tomahawks, the overwhelming air superiority are just more reasons for less body bags returning to America. But, as the Bosnia episode shows, Operation Desert Shield, later Desert Storm was an isolated and *rare* event. IT isn't always that simple!
In my country, India, where we just fought a unrequired, unnecessary skirmish with Pakistan (no value judgements please!) the country watched stunned as bodies and men flew back from the warzone. War is as always a bloody and nasty mess. There are rarely if ever one right side and one wrong side. But the tragedy of watching a wife soldier salute the body of her husband returning from the front in a coffin is something that no one wants to see. It made me gulp back feelings that I didn't know I would feel.
And the fools that start the wars are the ones that it rarely affects. The greatest tragedy of the lot.
K.
All weakness is within you, As is all courage.
Signal 11 Please stop biting my penis, Among falling leaves. --Anonymous P
A "virtual war" in Ignatieff's work, is a fiction, invented by the American armed forces. It is not some Web based DDOS attack, or anything to do with the 'net. He is talking about how the armed forces want to portray themselves as powerful, and inflicting massive damages, without actually putting themselves at risk. Arguably, minimizing their involvement.
Once the smart bombs have blown up the wooden shacks and accidentally destroyed the embassies, and the 'bad guys' leave, the real work begins, with soldiers on the ground. *These* are the ones risking their lives.
IMO, it is not the one who inflicts the most physical damage who is making the greatest contribution, but the one who is willing to make the greatest sacrifice, take the greatest risk for the cause. I have infinitely more respect for infintry cum peace keepers than jet jockies and button pushers on warships. They seem to only die in accidents these days, not in fighting.
The guys in blue helmets, who deliver food, who go door to door looking for weapons stashes, and try to defuse disagreements on the street corner before they get messy are the ones who should be proud.
Killing a lot of people or destroying a lot of hardware is EASY. Any kook with a big enough bomb can do that. Terrorism is much more efficient at that than a military strike. What's hard is actually PURSUING THE GOAL of peace.
At some point, the bombing has to stop in any war, and when it does, what you do next is much more meaningful to determine how things work out in the end.
Military force *IS* a useful, and necessary, last resort. But it should *NOT* be considered a goal or ideal. It should NOT be the chosen path, just because it's easier to justify the deaths of a bunch of people who'll never get on TV than a few GI's on the ground.
I'm from Canada. Can you tell?
Greg
On the other hand, if we could stop fighting altogether, we could use those machines for far better purposes.
It's a documented fact that the one purpose for giant robots is to fight, and if needed, kill other giant robots. Just look at the heroic deeds of Gigantor, Voltron, and Optimus Prime.
This Sig Intentionally left blank
I remember this old Star Trek episode where two cultures/planets were battling each other on a virtual battlefield. When someone on either side became a casualty they voluntarily stepped into a disintegrator in the real world.
Judging war by any moral standard is absurd. War is the ultimate escalation in disagreement. Once you inject morals into the equation then war is horrid by any standard.
Long before we started this virtual war there was the precedent of the Geneva Convention for civilized warfare. Even that seemed strange- two sides engaged in mortal combat agreeing to policies for treating prisoners. Then you have various International standards for allowed weapons and armorments. Blinding lasers and serrated bayonets are illegal and so are .22 bullets.
Probably the first example of virtual warfare was the arrow. Before that you had to look your enemy in the eye to kill him. Subsequent examples make the killing more and more anonymous. Oops, sorry we dropped thta napalm or the civilian village, just a case of bad information. Or worse yet, sorry for bombing that Chinese Embasy, just a case of bad information.
Back to my origional point, nobody likes war, but in an increasingly irrational world virtual war has proven the most effective means of reducing casualties. For every body left dead on the battlefield there are hundreds of mental casualties stepping away from the field. If war has to be, let it be-- quick and decisive.
I imagine that would provide us with much different candidates for President than we see now...
"Governor Bush? How is your aim compared to the war-trained eye of Senator McCain?"
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
2) The same people who are now wringing their hands over Bush's failure to wipe out the Iraqi government would have screamed bloody murder if the war went on for one more day than it had to. Removing a dictator means occupying a country until a new government can be established. Does anybody really think we were prepared to do that in '91? The Gulf War was not about human rights. It was about restoring the balance of power in the Middle East.
3) We live in a democracy, and Clinton never really had popular support for an extended war in Kosovo. While some leaders (FDR, Reagan, etc.) might have used the media to persuade the nation of the importance of the cause, Clinton (for better or worse) is not that kind of President. Personally, I think Clinton took the right approach when he limited our involvement, although at the time I thought that we should have stayed out entirely (and still do, somewhat).
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I found a link to a synopsis or the old Star Trek Show Episode about virtual war A Taste of Armageddon
The main reason the wars in Kosovo, Iraq and Vietnam were fought and "won" against different "enemies" has more to do with public perception and national interest than with questions of human rights.
Remember, as well, that there are only three types of strategies: occidental, chinese and "japanese".
Here are just a couple of examples of what I mean:
So... As far as I am concerned, there are no "good" or "bad" wars. All wars are just determined by national self-interest, which then influences public perception of the war.
Kosovo (and the rest of the Balkans) are a complete mess because public perception and self interest were out of whack. The sad thing is that most industrial and military powers in the world today could not care less if the Serbs massacred all Kosovars (and butcher they did). Half-hearted attempts were made to find a diplomatic solution. Then, a half-hearted attempt was made at stopping the bloodshed. When in doubt, bomb 'em back to the Stone Age! Predictable result: the serb civilians rallied around the flag and supported the murderous tactics of their government.
Why are the Balkans still a mess? Because occidental powers have no national interest in solving the long-term problems in the region. Watch the situation in Montenegro: this is probably going to be the next Croatia or Kosovo. All of this because national interest is the dominant force behind the wars men wage.
Clemenceau was right when he said: "war is waged by nice people who kill each other without even knowing their names, all of this to the benefit of perfect b______s, who know each other very well, but will never kill each other"...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
In the olden days, people used to make blood sacrifices to gods so that their war campaigns would be successful. Skipping the sacrifice would not be "right".
Nowadays, Mr.Ignatieff argues that we should restore the practice. It isn't "right" otherwise -- how could you run a decent, "moral" war without copious blood being spilled?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
On the one hand, Katz once again demonstrates his ignorance and his dislike for anything "American" by going on about the "uniquely American" slant on automated killing. The Chinese invented guns, the British invented the longbow, the Germans invented poison gas, the British decided to bomb Germany only at night and from high altitudes during WWII, etc, etc, all with the intent of maximizing damage to the enemy while minimizing loss to one's own troops. "Smart bombs" and the policy of not descending below 15,000 feet to drop them (as was done over Kosovo) is just an extension of that same mentality, not some new exclusively American slant on war.
That being said, the real reason for the sort of standoff warfare (I'll refrain from using the completely incorrect term "virtual war") in places like Kosovo is that there isn't sufficient political motivation for anything else. Look what happened to Bush and Clinton when we all saw American troops killed and humiliated in Somalia. The political price was far worse than when we saw POWs on Iraqi TV in 1991. Why? The Gulf War had an enormous base of popular support behind it, but the Somalia intervention did not. Likewise, the Kosovo action didn't have strong American support - most Americans felt that it was a European problem that should have been taken care of by Europeans, and they felt that putting US troops in harm's way (more than they already were) was not justified. Had a US armored division entered Kosovo and started slugging it out with the Serbian army, the US would doubtless have won, but the political and human cost would have been unacceptable. Cynically, it's the political cost that made the decision, but the outcome was the same.
So... The only new and unique thing about the new standoff warfare is the way it expresses ambiguity. When there is enough political will to do something about a situation, but not enough public support to put large numbers of American lives at risk, we'll send in the smart bombs. Militarily it doesn't accomplish much, but the collapsed bridges and exciting footage of airplanes taking off and landing is clear evidence that we're doing something!
That said, all it really takes is that one in a thousand psycho who really loves the violence to make a war brutal. All Germans weren't horrible just ad all Bosnians are not. When that rare psycho in in charge, so much the worse.
As far as pointing the blame finger to any nation for making the world as it is, choose France and Russia. By brutalizing their own people or putting in place governments willing to brutalize their own people they are largely to blame for the events of the last 100 years. See Etheopia, Serbia , Vietnam, Chechnya, Afghanastan, .....
I fail to see the point. First of all, without the "strong arm" of the US (and NATO) approxamitly 1.000.000 kosovar albanians would have been slowly grind to pulp by a regime that based it's popularity on making Kosovo Polje "Serb" again. Granted we would have been much more at ease with it since killing 80 people here and 15 people there, would have made very lowzy soundbites, so we would have heard very little of it in the long run (But hack who cares it's not my family, right?) The same goes for that patch of land the size of rode island south-east of Irak (I mean who really gives a f*ck). Politics and political intentions are NEVER honorable. Not because they are dishonest but because they have no value in that sence. Politics are a representation of the will of a population ( I love Polls ). Except in countries like the above mentioned where politics is PRECISELY what everybody in the normal world does NOT want. War is merely a continouence of politics by other means(Crimson Tide). The concept of a toll-free war is absurd because it is presicely that toll which should persuade to act differently. It is however the intention of any general to minimize damage to his own resources. It's a "simple" calculation of how much is what worth (human lifes measured in training and expertize; cold, crude but true). It is much cheaper by any standard to drop a $100.000 missile then it is to lose $10.000.000 trained pilots or $500.000 trained infantery. Let alone the cost of budget cuts when fighting an unpopular war (lots of deaths of your own). It makes perfect sence to use these methods precisely because they are so cost effective. Which brings me to the final point. If this books says on the one hand that virtual wars only cost less lifes on the side of the electronicaly savvy then how come those tanks ROLED out of the bushes. The war was won, NOT on the premise that in order to win a war the opposite side needs to surrender completely and a huge pile of dead soldiers need to prove it. The war was won because the opposite side desided that the loss would be greater than the gain ECONOMICALY. WAR = POLITICS = ECONOMICS It has been for the past 3.500.000 years and it will always stay that way. No tech will ever change that. ps. I'm neither a US citizen not an army man. I was raised a passivist turned in to scepticist converted to a realist hopefull to be an optimist (once).
Alex, so long as mass graves keep being found in Kosovo and Bosnia, and as long as Radko Mladic and
hsi henchmen still walk free, I have no sympathy for Serbs who whine about not getting the govenment TV station. To downplay the role Milosovic and Serbia had in genocide through out the Balkans in the name of Serb nationalism, just to show how some innocent civilian were hurt in the cross fire is missing the point.
The Serbs have the government they deserve. If they don't get rid of it, by any means nessesary, then they are just as culpable through in-action as the Serb police who lined up Muslim men and women and shot them into ditches.
Sure there are a lot of Mexicans in Texas, but I don't remember too many of them being gunned down systematically by the Texas Rangers. And if it ever does happen, I hope the rest of the world DOES bomb the US and occupy Texas.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Were you there? I was sent there for a four-month tour in '98, as part of a "peace-keeping" mission. I was attached to the NATO headquarters as an Air Force communications troop outside of Sarajevo. The captial of Bosnia, Sarajevo was subjected to nearly two years of seige by Bosnian Serbs who were backed by Milosevic. So many people died during that seige that every open space was used as graveyard. I can't tell you how many times we were thanked by the people who had to live through this for stepping in and stopping the killing. Indiscriminate killing? How does raining mortar shells on a marketplace sound? Nearly seventy people were killed when the Serbs launched that attack on a quiet Sunday morning. How dare those people try to buy bread! Yes, the US military is overused (and misused) when it comes to peacekeeping missions, but if we belong anywhere it is in the Balkans. Oh, and "Who had ever heard of Serbia or Bosnia before the wars over there?" WWI started in Sarajevo when Archduke Ferdinand was assasinated by a Serbian Facist. Some of the bloodiest fighting of WWII took place in these same Balkans, as Nazis, Communists, Allies, and Muslims fought for dominance. Learn a little history before you spout off. As a well-travelled American, I can confidently state that our brutal ignorance of anything that doesn't happen right in front of our faces is one reason why people despise us.
You seem to be quite thoroughly confused.
The dehumanization factor of so called "high-tech" warfare creates a social/political climet that allows for justifications of mass suffering.
I don't see why -- you'll have to come up with some arguments as to why do you think this is so. Besides, these kinds of arguments were put forward each time a better ranged weapon came along. For example, there was a great deal of bitching and whining on the part of knights (about the dehumanizing factor of high-tech warfare) when firearms appeared.
Don't forget the high-tech media which is one of the greatest weapons devised.
And what does this have to do with the issue? I, too, can come up with metaphors that use the word "weapon".
In reference to Cambodia and Rawanda you need to check your history a little better.
I do? I don't think so. And, BTW, the country is called Rwanda, not Rawanda.
The USA turned a blined eye to both of these areas as massacures beyond imagination were taking place.
Exactly my point. Thank you for supporting it. Ignatieff's book, it seems, is heavily pro-isolationist and anti-interverntionist. I was making the observation that intervention (even with high-tech weapons) is not necessarily a bad (as in immoral) thing.
If you look at Rawanda's history you'll find that massacures the scale of recent did not take place until colonial Europe arived and pit populations against themselves.
This is pure unadulterated crap.
(1) Massacres of this scale could not take place because there weren't so many people living around. Before the Europeans arrived and hugely upped the local population growth, tribes were small.
(2) As to pitting populations against themselves, it seems to me that Rwanda was independent for quite a while by now, and no massacres were taking place while it was colony.
(3) And how would you know that no genocides occured in the pre-colonial Africa? As a matter of fact, tribes and peoples were wiped out on a regular basis, with most completely forgotten and no trace remaining of them.
While were at it you should'nt fail to mention South America, where in Nicaragua the US CIA spent it's time training soldiers to butcher the civilian population.
Well, I was talking about genocide. I don't think that even the US loonly left claims there was genocide in Nicaragua.
It's easy to think that war without loss of life is a good thing if your side is right.
I'll put it to you that war without loss of life is a good things regardless of who is right.
The problem is that we ( the USA ) is not right.
We is not right about what? Everything in the world?
For all are morel grandstanding our foriegn policy is completely self interested to the point where killing and torturing entire population is justifiable.
Sigh.
(1) Our moral policy is self-interested as opposed to whose?
(2) Care to give some examples of US killing and torturing entire population in recent times?
Look at our atitude tords the UN
Yes, and? UN is a highly hypocritical bureacratic organization mostly interested in the welfare of its own employees. I certainly do not see it as holding any moral high ground. And why should it? Is there something magical about the assembly of 150-odd representatives of various governments?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
The French had the English massively outnumbered and out provisioned and still managed to get spanked twice on their own turf. Is fighting a battle when your enemy has 3 times your number cowardice, or is it only cowardice when you use a tech and tactical edge to win decisively?
And despite this down the road a bit further in the amercian revolution the English lined up in little rows, wearing bright red, and marched through the woods while being shot at from hiding.
Tradition is not the way to win wars people. Innovation, surprise, and if possible overwhelming force win wars.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
As I see it, the greatest danger here is that we (as the Western World) have lost the willpower to actually place our troops in harm's way. Politicians (rightly enough) see media coverage of dead Americans (or Canadians in my country's case) as something negative which will be remembered the next time we visit the polls, so they are unwilling to risk casualties to achieve a national goal. The public's knowledge of what is at stake is entirely shaped by the media - who do not have "The Truth" in mind when they formulate a broadcast, but rather "The Ratings" (ie advertising potential) - and as a result the public is happy to see high-tech wizardry saving potential casualties to achieve some particular goal that they have been made to understand is important.
Mind you, The troops themselves are still motivated to risk their lives when directed, but it seems the political will to implement their use is utterly missing.
The problem with this is that artillery and aircraft have never one a war, it requires infantry on the ground occupying key targets to defeat an enemy. Unfortunately, this means casualties in any conflict - high tech wizardry can only limit the number of casualties, not eliminate them.
Events like Kosovo do not resolve situations, only delay them. The Balkans will errupt again in the next few years because we failed to solve the problem there, same as with Iraq. The folks that started the conflict on the other side are still in power in both cases.
One of the prime causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was the fact that they had hired foreign troops to defend it, and when push came to shove those troops were not motivated enough to actually be effective. I sincerely hope that high tech weapons and button pushing are not our "foreign troops"...
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I agree with you sir!
You are one of the first posts here that has made any sense. Where are those moderator points!!!
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
The longbow was actually invented by the Welsh, not the English. The English tended to use the Welsh archers in their army. At Crecy and so on, the archers were Welshmen drafted into the English army.
Interestingly, Micro$oft's Age of Empires ][ has the longbow as the English's specialist weapon despite there being a Celts army. I know it's a small thing, but it really bugs me.
The idea that soldiers are allowed to be killed, but not civilians seems strange to me. I suppose that in the West where most soldiers are volunteers it has a certain logic. However, many soldiers around the world are forced into the army. Is it more right to kill a 12-year-boy in a uniform than a civilian?
Would you want your sister getting cluster-bombed?
Err, I'd be just as upset if she was bombed after joining the army as if she had been if she was walking around a shopping centre. I fail to see your point.
Well, perhaps it hasn't reached the land of the AC yet. US satellite photos from Bosnia show that the Serbs exhuumed many mass graves around Sreberniza after the war was over in 95 in order to cover up the massacres, to hide the evidence. This was admitted into evidence at the War Crimes Tibunal in the Hague last week at the trial of one of the generals involved in the massacre.
Besides, even if "some" of the photos were faked by a German General (how ironic) that in no way negates the truth about what has and still is happening in the Balkans at the hands of fanatical Serb Facists (Please take this in the way it is intended...The Serbs as a people are not facists. This comment is directed at those Serbs, especially in Bosnia and Kosovo, who happily took part in the repression and killing of their fellow citizens based solely on nationality or religion. Some Bosnians and Croats aren't much better, but at the moment most of the atrocities seem to be commited by Serbs or in response to atrocities commited by Serbs).
If All are faked, why has an International War Crimes Tribunal indicted most of the Serb leader ship, both military and civillian from both Bosnia and Serbia proper? As a matter of Fact, why does the Tribunal even exist?
Read my sig...get a clue. Don't be an apologist for evil.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
It seems to me that this makes a pretty strong case against getting involved in the new conflict, seeing as we all made such a muck of it last time.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I was a rifle company XO in the 3-14 INF, 10th Mountain Division, and was deployed in the Lower Jubba Valley of Somalia from December of '91 to late March of '92.
I can't hope to compete intellectually with those of you who have seen all the Star Trek episodes, ready all the political science books, and figured it all out. However, I can offer a few observations based on my experience.
1) Anyone who tells you, based on watching television and reading the newspaper, that they really know what's going on in a war zone is totally full of shit. Usually the people on the ground don't even know exactly what's going on.
2) If you carry that analogy to the air, do you think the guys in their fast-movers really know what they're dropping their bombs on, or whether they were successful? After the USAF claimed to have knocked out scores of Scud launchers (in the desert, perhaps the most benign environment possible for air warfare), the GAO did a review and determined that in actuality, they had knocked out ZERO Scuds on the ground.
3) In order to prevail over the long haul in any kind of sustained military or military/humanitarian mission, you need to commit to a sustained presence on the ground. So-called precision warfare from the air can be quite helpful (note that the North Vietnamese returned to the discussion table after the US unleashed the B-52s), but it is part of a mix of capabilities necessary to achieve the long-term POLITICAL goals of the operation.
4) As a guy named Clausewitz has mentioned before, war is an extension of politics. Politics and economics are in most cases joined at the hip, not because economics is an evil that infects politics, but because economics is an essential component of human existence. We all want, but there is only a finite supply.
5) If the political will isn't there, it ain't gonna happen. To those of you who were around during the Vietnam era, this will sound familiar, but we really were making good progress in Somalia. The failed Mogadishu raid was in military terms, a great success. A difficult, extremely grueling mission where men lost their lives, but in persuit of a difficult goal, it was a big success. People back home saw the bodies being carried through the streets, and decided it was not worth losing American lives to save Somalis from themselves. Note that there were stupendously stupid battles during WWII, with casualties well over 50%. Had any of these battles occurred today, those in charge would be sacked, condemned, and punished. It's economics - saving Europe was important then. Saving Europe is kind of important now, but most Americans would just rather let the Europeans figure out how to do it themselves.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Kinda cool how everything comes around, eh? :)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Sounds almost like an episode of the orginal Star Trek,where 2 planets fought a war via computer,then the victims were destroyed.No rubble,no radiation,no fuss--and no end.
Geek Hillbilly
Once again, a writer states the obvious, and the "intellectuals" wring their hands that the sky has begun to fall.
Who was it who said in the Fourteenth century that "war was obsolete" with the invention of the crossbow? Why did he say that? Because it was the beginning of accurate, deadly war at a distance. It was all about "remote" killing of the enemy, while providing maximal protection of your own forces.
It amazes me that Katz believes protecting your forces from harm is a new style of war. Every defensive technology is about protecting your forces, from mechanized tanks to cruise missiles launched from ships.
Now, this is not to say that the nature of war has not changed in the 20th century. Clearly weapons of mass destruction are new (Mutual Assured Destruction), but that's all that is new in the art of warfare. Ironically, MAD has been the most stabilizing influence in history.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Typed like a true child of the 60's. Total War was a tactic used by the North during the Civil War. Go back to high school, or at least rent a copy of Gone With The Wind.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I agree with the bulk of your comments, but would argue as well that sometimes the national self-interests can be more abstracted and considered over a longer timescale in some wars than others.
In World War II, the American contribution to the UK was crucial long before Pearl Harbour, and despite a very strong isolationist and even pro-Nazi public contingent for which Charles Lindberg was a "convenient idiot", to use a Lenin quote from another context.
WWII was a Good war to fight because if the US hadn't fought in the 40's, they would have been hit by V-2 successors hitting New York from Nazi-occupied Britain before the 1950's (Werner von Braun was asked to design such weapons during the war).
Korea was also pretty clearly beating back an invasion from a civil war, successful because the South resisted such invasion and did not want to be ruled by the northern half of the country. The US felt they had to "draw a line in the sand" to avoid further communist expansion (a policy called "containment").
Unfortunately, although Viet Nam resembled the Korean situation (a civil war, the northern half communist and bordering on the People's Republic of China, a corrupt southern plutocracy), the populace was mostly Buddhist while the plutocracy was mostly Christian, the populace had been denied the vote to reunite the country and the plutocracy in Viet Nam, unlike Korea, was far less willing to share the wealth, or at least to allow the brighter poor people to be co-opted by (join) the plutocracy.
Viet Nam may have been a turning point in the Cold War, but regardless of the lives of all the western soldiers (Australian, New Zealand, South African, Canadian, French and others as well as American) lost there, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the Vietnamese civilian deaths, much less the deaths of civilians in communist gulags.
Remember more people died under Stalin and Mao than under Hitler or Hirohito, although not from lack of trying....
The other wars and "police actions" were less about national self-interest than corporate interests (Honduras, Chile, Guatamala... thank you, US Fruit Company!) or were simply the unwillingness to share trade (WWI) or to insure that one man no longer controlled by the US (although previously trained by the CIA and the military) would not control a quarter of the world's oil production (Gulf War 91).
After all, thank God that we were fighting to keep Kuwait democratic so that women could vote, all citizens, not just those who owned property there prior to 1923 could vote... what, you mean Kuwait *still* only allows males whose ancestors owned property prior to 1923 to vote? What is this, a plutocracy?
I am particularly depressed that you failed to mention Rwanda/Burundi and the mutual massacre of Hutus and Tutsis by very low tech means, as contrasted with guns and shellings in the Balkans. At least in the Balkans, the mess is as a result of a few power-mad assholes with guns as contrasted with a more general genocide in Africa.
In brief, there *can* be good wars. They're just a lot more rare than we have been *lead* to think.
BTW, I'm Canadian, and I knew one of the Canadians who won the Victoria Cross in WWI when I went to law school in Halifax in the late 1980's.
LIVE on TNT, from the UN Arena in downtown Manhattan it's....
World Diplomacy Nitro Live!!!
Tonight in our main event, US President Jessee "The Body" Ventura fights Saddam "The Iron Sheik" Hussain in a no-holds-barred cage match to determine once and for all who gets to control Kuwait!!!
But first, Slobo "The Butcher" Milosovich fights to keep Serbia's right to murder Albanians. But WAIT!!! He's fighting to keep *Austrian* peacekeepers out of Kosova! And you know what that means, ladies and gentlemen. Repersenting his native Austria against Milosovich: Arnold "The Terminator" Schwartzenegger!!!
Let's get rrready to RRRRUMBLE!!!!
Cue theme music....
Ya know? That might not be a bad idea at all!
john
Imagine all the people...
The point of "virtual war" is precisely that American foreign policy is severely constrained by the American people's unwillingness to sustain serious casualties. This is a very good development as it will lower the risk of the U.S. becoming involved in a poorly thought out engagement.
In fact if you look at the "virtual wars" such as Kosovo and Desert Storm, both of them turned out to be pretty much impossible to win long term with a "virtual" approach and would have been ungodly expensive disasters with a conventional armed forces approach.
We should cheer this development -- now all we need to do is hope this century brings more highly developed democracies scared to death to go to war.
Part of the reason that the USA was reluctant to enter World War II as a combatant was the public awareness of how the British and others had used lies and propoganda to generate political and military support in World War I. Many of the lies and fabrications were publically exposed in the 1920s, leading to mistrust of European politicians. To many Americans, Europeans killing other Europeans was a European problem.
Picking on Canadians (and vice versa) is funny specifically because we get along so well.
My comments in no way were meant to diminish the quaint little commune you call a country. ;)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I'll have to agree with Kaa about your level of confusion. In addition, massacres on definitely did occur. By some counts, Genghis Khan was responsible for more deaths (~100,000,000) than any other single person ever, in absolute terms! And there weren't that many people living back then.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
Who had ever heard of Serbia or Bosnia before the wars over there?
I had. Ever heard of the Balkins? The area of the world where World War I started? That's the area.
Oh no, but now there's a few people fighting and killing each other the rest of the world has to intervene for "humanitarian" reasons.
Actually, we were afraid of a repeat of World War I.
No, personally I'm sick of it. The US needs to stop intervening in conflicts which have nothing to do with it.
Actually, we got involved for one simple reason: had we had the forsight to be able to murder Adolf Hitler in the 1920's, should we? Many think "yes" in this country. So we got involved in an outbreak in the Balkins because some in the US state department were afraid that perhaps, we were seeing the rise of another Adolf Hitler.
It's that fear, that we were about to see the seeds of World War III, that caused us to step in.
"The marching of an army into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, frightening the inhabitants away, leaving their growing crops and other property to destruction, to you may appear a perfectly ambiable, peaceful, unprovoking procedure, but it does not appear so to us..."
--A. Lincoln, c. 1847, when he was a member of the House of Representatives.
The "Mexican War" was precisely the "gunning down systematically ... by Texas Rangers" of Mexicans. James A. Polk: "It was clear that in making war we would if practicable obtain California and ...other portions of the Mexican territory..."
Of course, back then, human rights were not exactly an issue.
The Serbs have the government they deserve. If they don't get rid of it, by any means nessesary, then they are just as culpable...
And what about the Americans? Our government was democratically elected -- just like theirs. (Oh yes it was -- look it up.) Should *we* get rid of it 'by any means necessary', since the United States had to break *FOUR* international treaties in order to engage in this undeclared "war"?
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Let me be the first to point out that we are *RIGHT NOW* seeing the rise of another Hitler in Vladimir Putin [new President of Russia, for the politically unaware].
- Same rhetoric of "bringing back the glory of the state",
- same supression of the independent media,
- same demonization of the "decadent" West,
- same cozy links with the oligarchs while calling for an end to "corruption",
- same unqualified support for the military,
- same bringing into the government his unknown and unqualified 'associates',
- same saber-rattling,
- many of the same economic problems, etc.
He's even sent troops to Ethiopia: maybe he'll be Mussolini as well. I just wonder who his "internal enemies" are going to be. I've got half my money on "the liberals" and the other half on "the Jews". [I'd advise members of both groups to leave before the purges and pogroms start up].And, also, who will be Putin's Neville Chamberlain: "I believe it is peace in our time."MARK MY WORDS -- you saw it here first.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
The dicotomy between then and now comes from the fact that in the "modern" western world weapons are not needed for our mere survival. We have little need to hunt for our food, and (while it does have its own problems) we have a justice system to protect us from violent criminals.
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
Do you think computers are making decisions? Do you think humans are sitting there, passively, disengaged from the reality of war?
I spent most of ALLIED FORCE at Aviano AFB, which was the tip of the spear for the NATO Air Forces. I traveled throughout Italy, wiring people to information, and wiring information to the clock.
Members of my team traveled into the mud of Albania, served on US Navy ships at sea, and flew combat missions on Command and Control aircraft. (We used Linux, Open Source Tools, and duct tape extensively and successfully, but that is another story).
It was my job to ensure that US Pilots flew their missions with the best intelligence available. We looked for every possible edge to make sure that the pilots and their crews would come home when the campaign was over.
The pilots that fly these missions do not have a free ride. They get shot at with missiles and anti-aircraft batteries, and many do see what they are hitting with the video feeds wired in the tip of their missiles.
They are prepared with reports, photographs, video, and 3D simulations for the mission at hand.
If you recall, some of these men were shot down and rescued. Special Forces engaged in fierce fire fights in order to bring the pilots home. These rescue teams flew at night, over the tree tops, and into enemy fire. This was not virtual, it was a life and death mission under extreme conditions.
Remember the men lost training to fly the Apaches in the mountainous terrain? It is amazing that the search and rescue teamscame home, let alone the downed pilots.
With technology, you can watch genocide in action.
Car loads of Serbian soldiers would drive into a village, and begin burning down the homes of innocent civilians. They would execute entire families as they fled their burning homes.
On one occasion, the Serbs were reinforced by helicopters and more troops. Predator, a surveillance drone, flew overhead, sending a live video feed back to commanders on the ground who then directed pilots forward to thwart the attack.
I watched dozens die on one such broadcast from Predator while anxiously awaiting a fighter with fuel to arrive on target.
Minutes became hours.
Seconds after the last Serb mercenary climbed aboard, and the rotor began to spin, the helicopter was destroyed by a missile.
Justice was served. Should we judge this particular laser guided munition to be immoral? I think not.
NATO didn t save any lives in this town, but the next village down the road sure did appreciate the effort.
The Serbian attack on Kosovar civilians was well planned. It was systematic. Go back and read the articles from CNN, jot down the name of the towns, and plot them on a map.
The first day of the war, all of the major towns on major arteries leading out of Kosovo were attacked. The next day, all of the secondary roads, and the smaller towns were torched. The third day, we watched refugees leaving on trains, the last major transportation artery in Kosovo. These towns, once annotated on a map, gave the appearance of the hours on the face of a clock. Systematic. Brutal. The Serbs wore ski masks to hide their identities from their neighbors.
Try researching hours of gun tape video that DOES NOT reach CNN. The sterile bomb damage assessment (BDA) videos of buildings and parked aircraft make the public Pentagon briefings. It appears that author Michael Ignatieff just researched theseprime time videos, not the actual BDA used by the warriors engaged in making a peace in the Balkans.
You get to see the men standing there in shirt sleeves, smoking, and then looking up right before impact. The picture is too fuzzy to make out their faces.
Pilots did not see death so clearly from 15000 feet in WWII, or in Vietnam.
I was there at the debriefing of the pilot involved in the convoy bombing.
The Serbs were using civilians as human shields, in addition to using civilian vehicles to move from town to town to commit atrocities and loot. I saw the anguish sweep over this pilot, and his General, as they spent hours listening to tapes and watching video, recreating the strike.
I flew home after the first 3 weeks of this virtual war and got just as drunk flying back 5 days later as I did coming home.
For the war fighter and their commanders, it is truly vivid, and real time, even through the lens of a video camera during an air campaign. Thank God we did not see casualties from a ground campaign. Enough said.
Going to war with advanced weapons and vehicle platforms is not immoral. This is a gross simplification of a complex reality.
A simplification designed to sell a book first, and to offer a weak philosophical discussion second. The aforementioned Star Trek episode sounds more intriguing.
Precisely Formulated Goals, Desired Outcome Achieved
;-) There are several reasons for this, including the American culture that is pretty closed; lack of history knowledge and general ignorance among the people with lower education/income level. Here comes patriotism. Try turning on the TV and watching some movies or shows. Significant portion of them has evil terrorists/drug dealers of Serbian, Oriental, Latino, Russian or Arabic origin whose evil plots are dismantled by brave and moral-dispersing G.I.-s ;-)
Clinton is a scum. Pure and simple. He should be either tried as a war criminal or shot like a dog.
There were many posts here about the economics of war. It was actually Lenin who told many years ago that the politics is a concentrated expression of the economics.
But not many people gave a detailed explanation of what economics were used this time.
1) Rob Peter to pay Paul.
Do you remember the hurricane in the Central America, when Clinton sent the emergency food relief by buying 10,000 pigs from farmers in Iowa and giving it to the hungry ? It was a worthy cause, and it was not expensive for the taxpayers. On the other hand, whom will these farmers vote now? I'd guess, Gore.
The same thing happened here, but on the much higher and much more cynical scale. Not everyone welcomed the end of Cold War. Besides the military establishment whose value was greatly diminished, the defence contractors felt the heat. As you know, it's not easy thing to reprofile the companies from military production towards the peaceful one. Soviet Union ruined a lot of industry trying to do the conversion in the beginning of 90-s. And they did not even have a capitalism at that time, i.e., there was a tremendous need in the goods they could have produced in these ex-military factories; here in the US all the niches of the market are already taken, so that whatever marketing direction defence contractors might take, they will be fighting established players in that area of the market.
On the other hand, the ammo and equipment used in battle is usually replenished and replaced by the government. And this equipment produced for the internal use is the most technically advanced, with the highest price tags and profit margins unlike the obsolete equipment sold to the third world countries who use it against their neighbours. And this kind of equipment is not likely to be outsourced to the other countries; so, spending these money on destroying Yugoslavia means reinvesting the significant portion of it into the American economy. Plus, Clinton reaps the great political benefits: should I remind you that in this country big business usually favor Republicans? So, rob the taxpayers and give money to the defence establishment.
2) I would not claim that all Americans are ignorant idiots when it comes to the other world (as some of my friends who live in Europe tend to think), but the sad truth is that a lot of them are (including G.W. Bush
For these on the lower level of the intellect CNN does not differ from other networks; they just see the same ideological bubblegum and propaganda stereotypes produced by live actors instead of the Hollywood! They take CNN footage and comments without a grain of salt and are just proud of their country who "restores justice in the entire world".
So, another electorate win!
3) You should not forget that this war was used to show Clinton's name in other context than the Monicagate scandal. I don't approve the Starr's hipocritic witchhunt, but it does not approve Clinton's desire to whiten by leading a "righteous war".
I thought that the above said was it before meeting with a specialist in the modern warfare. He was able to open my eyes on several factors I could not see before.
4) Sure, you know that the ammo has the "good before" date stamp. Do you know, how much it will cost to properly dismantle all of it, especially in our environmentally conscious era? It is not just much more expensive than transporting them to any destination on the Earth; you can add the cost of lost planes and still have a huge profit by choosing this way of destruction for the ammo.
5) Weapons manufacturers would kill to test their latest equipment in the real world. And they will kill innocent civilians. Just try thinking how much the tests would cost in the peaceful times. You need to find a place first and make sure there will not be possible casualties among the bystanders. And not everyone wants the tests made in their vicinity; just remember the latest protests of Puerto Ricans. It might be cynical, but the war is the only kind of maneuvers where you don't care about accidental victims among the civilians.
6) Psychological factor.
The army in the US is professional. It means that only ones who want to join the army do it. The sad truth is that there are a lot of aggression in people. And the American approach is to suppress and hide it. Where people in primitive societies give the aggression an exit by "resolving" problems with fistfights or at least shouting matches, modern American culture uses lawyers for this (unless you're in some kind of ghetto where the only law is the law of force and money).
A war can be and is a way to disperse some adrenalin into the world for a lot of aggressive people who have consciously chosen the Army and do it with only a few coffins shipped home.
I don't know what idiot has designed the military doctrine of fighting dictators by making the population suffer, BUT IT JUST DOES NOT WORK! No external "precise strikes" will give the people power; it will just give them unfounded hope (as it happened in Iraq) or desire to close ranks behind the tiran against the external enemy (as in Yugoslavia).
In the end, we have a country that was ravaged; hunger and lack of industry in the only country of the former Soviet block that prospered without the West's help.
God Bless America!
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Wow, sounds to me like Radovan Karadzic and Radko Mladic have a great defence. I wonder why they won't go to face those charges in the Hague? or Slobo? If his country is as domocratic as you say, why has B92 and other opposition voices been silenced?
Just because they haven't found them yet, doesn't mean they are not there. As Carla De Ponte said in the article you quote "Our job is to gather evidence not take a census of the dead".
Nearly 6 years after the end of the war in Bosnia, the war crimes tribunal is still finding mass graves, some with as many as 2500 people in them (search CNN for the story last week). So since those graves weren't found in the first year after the war they didn't happen?
Give me a break. I have not reconsidered my views.
The government sanctioned murder of ANYONE base on their ethnicity, be it 100, 10 000 or 10 million people is wrong.
Does the UN/ NATO need a lot more resources to police the province? Hell yes. Does that mean they are on the side of the KLA (who I agree are terrorist and thugs)? No.
Read my sig. Get a clue
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
"What's the difference? It cost us fewer lives than Korea or Vietnam, and was more successful. And you claim that makes it wrong? Or that we entered too easily?"
I never said it was wrong. You should READ before you go and make assumptions. I said that when a war is too easily won, winning becomes a nebulous unsatisfying thing.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
In short, the willingness to fight, kill, and die, for one's own, or one's neighbors, is best kept as personal -- and perhaps as local -- as possible.
Otherwise, as the responsibility for defending a people's freedoms flows towards a central organization, inevitably so will the authority for deciding when, and under what circumstances, to project force under that banner.
Of course, by itself, the Second Amendment isn't anything approaching a cure-all in terms of stopping all sorts of abuse.
But, without the clear message that individuals must take responsibility for preserving their own security, safety, and freedoms, it seems, historically as well as (to me, anyway, given human nature) logically inevitable that the abuses of freedoms, the balkanization of peoples, the destructions of entire peoples based largely on a perceived threat they pose to a wealthy minority, etc., will increase.
(Other important individual responsibilities that help society repel such things include defending freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, and defending the basic rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- note that "life" here ideally starts at the moment of conception, since a society that dismisses the unborn as unworthy of protection is likely to erode its notion of innocence of children over time.)
Now that I view sociopolitical issues from this standpoint, I realize that I can't claim I'm nonviolent just because I don't, and intend never to, own any firearms, and further don't feel inclined to commit violence to preserve, e.g., my own personal property. (I'm less sure about what I'd do as my own family members' lives, and my life, gets involved; that's okay, I think, and just as well.)
After all, if my personal property was stolen, I'd report it to the police, and that invokes a system of violence by proxy, something I could (for the most part, unless I choose to not be a good citizen and follow pertinent laws, in which case I could say "entirely") choose to not do.
Similarly, if I vote in favor of legislation that authorizes a local, state, or federal government to restrict other people, I'm authorizing violence, again, by proxy.
I therefore now take my responsibilities in these areas much more seriously. I'm not "pro-gun", but since I'm unwilling (as a Christian) to require others to commit violence to forward the agenda of gun control (due to being unwilling to suffer violence in the attempt to implement it myself, e.g. as if I was a BATF agent or something), I find myself generally opposed to gun-control legislation.
Generally, having tried to put into practice what I see the Golden Rule as requiring of me, I find myself much less supportive of various sorts of legislation which I might have long-ago supported, and even opposing things about which I might have been neutral -- because violence committed on my behalf, with my approval (explicit or tacit), is morally pretty much the same as if I committed that violence.
So when it comes to things like the initial and final invasions of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, my initial opinions became radically changed within pretty short order. Not so much because I went from being "pro-law-enforcement" to "anti-law-enforcement", but because I went from thinking it was great those BATF agents put their lives on the line to "take out" some extreme fringe militant group to seriously doubting whether their lives (the BATF agents), and certainly the lives of so many innocent Branch Davidians, were worth putting on the line so a bunch of Americans (possibly including myself) could feel more "comfortable" knowing that their guns had been taken away.
And these days when someone says (including here on /.) something like "I favor gun control because knowing people like whoever have guns doesn't make me feel safe", I have to laugh...
(This change in my own thinking has been somewhat stunning. Applying my own logic to the War on Drugs leaves me, a lifetime opponent of the use of even recreational drugs due to my religious convictions, seriously questioning much of what I used to take for granted as being legit when it comes to government activism on behalf of the anti-drug agenda of mine. Certainly I reserve my own rights to "fight" on behalf of that agenda myself -- I won't give up freedom to speak out on it, for example -- and I do think a War on Drugs has the marginal advantage over the coming War on Guns, morally speaking, that drugs aren't nearly as important as guns when it comes to what it takes to preserve, versus merely enjoy, liberty -- but the assumption I long held that legal prohibitions were "obviously necessary" for drugs have nearly completed vanished. I no longer have any moral justification to ask DEA agents to put their lives on the line to make sure my neighbors aren't smoking crack, shooting heroine, especially using marijuana or growing hemp. Whatever support I have left for such prohibitions is on much shakier, short-term ground.)
I encourage everyone to consider reasoning about their favorite "issues" from this standpoint: does the position you advocate require someone else to be imposed upon if they disagree? Does it require other parties to threaten, perhaps use, force (i.e. violence) to impose your will on your behalf? If so, are you personally willing to implement that violence and take the risks that stem therefrom -- thereby advocating your position as a means to ensure that the violence used to impose your will is collectively agreed upon and carried out in a less emotional state by professionals? Or are you advocating that position simply because you assume you won't have to face the results yourself, including the results when the use of force is imperfect, as will inevitably happen from time to time? Would you die for your position, as America's Founding Fathers were willing to do (and many did) for the freedoms they carved out via their limited-government approach to creating a nation?
Considering the incredible ability the USA has had (for decades now) to impose its will on others, I often think it's amazing we don't commit worse abuses than we have to date (e.g. bombing aspirin factories with innocent people inside, to take one obvious example).
But with Americans increasingly favoring gun control, and not even wanting investigations into things like the Elian raid, in the presence of important legal questions...
In this context, I'm pretty much convinced that 99% of all gun-control advocates are not so much "non-violent" as combinations of hypocrisy and cowardice, because I don't see much "grass-roots" efforts involving going door to door (in cities, suburbs, or rural areas) asking neighbors to turn over their weapons. Nor do I see signs saying "Gun-Free Zone" in front of peoples' houses, the way one now takes "Smoke-Free" or "Drug-Free" signage for granted.
Perhaps gun-control proponents will prove me wrong, and take up their own charge to remove guns from the American countryside without waiting for government to do it for them. (More properly, by first viewing themselves as intrinsically part of that government.)
(My guess is, those who do that, will consist largely of people who end up concluding they were wrong-headed to advocate gun-control anyway. E.g. if 80% of US women aged 18 thru 21 were "drafted" into an unarmed militia whose sole purpose was to remove all handguns from the American countryside, I bet the percentage of Americans who "support gun control" would go way down, even if it was the most effective way to get the supposedly desired results, and even assuming this approach would have the lowest casualty, as well as highest compliance, rates; the advocates of gun control are, in my estimation, unlikely to send themselves or their daughters into the fray, preferring to "feel safe" by remote control.)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.