The Right's condemnation of a Just War and the villification of the media/Left

[beachmom]

Before I start, I am going to remove the "http" from the right wing links, as I don't want the link to be live. So you will need to copy and paste, if you want to take a look which I think is worth while.

When I was researching the "Lonely Kerry" photo, I stumbled upon a right wing mil blog that is fairly deplorable. One particular post upset me above all:

blackfive.net/main/2006/12/lessons_learned.html

When you decide to go to war, make sure you go ball’s deep. In my segment on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show yesterday, I focused on the frustrations that I hear from milblogs to MSM reports to reports from my own sources that the ROEs have devolved to the point of absurdity and our forces are more fearful of UCMJ violations than they are of enemy insurgents. This devolution of the ROEs in Iraq originated from an institutional CYA instinct by the DOD and senior commanders resulting from sensationalist media coverage of such events as Abu Ghraib, CIA "secret prisons", and various manufactured Gitmo abuse claims.

The Ethiopian Army has imposed no such constraints on itself and is doing to islamist forces in Somalia in days what the UN, and the US weren’t able to achieve in years. Reports from the front indicate that the Islamic Courts who had been administering sharia law in Mogadishu have surrendered and fled the city in advance of the Ethiopian assault. Obviously, the Ethiopian Army’s combat power, training, and capabilities are a mere fraction of ours and yet they are decisively defeating a fanatical and entrenched enemy in an urban environment. Why?

Off the top of my head, I would say that Ethiopia is not afflicted with a pernicious and defeatist media machine that is capable of manipulating public opinion, and even if it was, it doesn’t look like the Ethiopian president would give a damn in any case. The word that comes to mind is resolve. When a leader resolves to send men into battle, he is obligated to withstand the criticism of the media so that the troops who are withstanding hostile fire from the enemy are able to decisively defeat that enemy. This is the area where the President, Rumsfeld, and the Generals have been found wanting. Wars cannot be won with restrictive ROEs that allow the enemy to use our self imposed limitations against us. If the situation dictates that ROEs of this type must be employed, then it has not yet reached a point where combat troops are warranted.

This vicious cycle, in my opinion, is a primary reason for our difficulties in Iraq and the reversal of these policies, meant to protect military commanders and administration officials from criticism, would end up being the best "way forward" strategy that we could employ.

So these Americans want US to become more like . . . Ethiopia? Despicable doesn't begin to describe my reaction to this. However, since I am not in the military nor have I been in war, I wanted to learn more about the ROE in Iraq. Upon googling it, I found another right wing blog which examined what these rules are and how it affects the troops in a less inflammatory way here:

captainsjournal.com/2006/12/13/the-ncos-speak-on-rules-of-engagement/

The Captain excerpts some e-mails from NCOs who are put into a horrible quandiary, because they often have to choose between killing Iraqis who may be civilians, may be insurgent, and protecting their unit. These NCOs claim the ROE causes them to hesitate because they are just as afraid of killing civilians (and being investigated) as they are of getting killed. Later, the Captain concludes with this:

The “softer” approach to counterinsurgency warfare (COIN) has it supporters at the Pentagon, and the “proportionality” doctrine of just war theory is served by a small footprint and minimum force projection (as is other doctrines, such as avoidance of collateral damage and safety of non-combatants). Just war theory was developed by Cicero and given Christian trappings by Augustine. But a slightly more deontological approach was developed by Calvin and Aquinas, a doctrine that professor Darrell Cole calls Good Wars. Rather than emphasis on proportionality, one sees heavy emphasis on the state as the minister of justice and the protector of its citizens, this protection being paramount in doctrinal considerations. There is no appeal to principles higher than this.

So there is an argument that the existing ROE is in place due to legalities as discussed above, but there are also true believers in the small footprint and soft glove to “win the hearts and minds of the people.” This issue is made more complicated by the involvement and importance of ROE not just at the tactical level, but the strategic and even doctrinal level as well.

snip

The problem has many ingredients. One part media pressure, one part ROE in need of revision, one part military brass seeking protection, and one part public expectations for modern warfare combined with waning support for the war, and the result is a witch’s brew of problems for U.S. troops.

As we visit in the homes of friends and family this Christmas season and partake of good food, good company, good drink and good cheer, the more thoughtful among us might discuss “just wars” and “good wars,” and doctrine, strategy and tactics. But as we do, remember to say a prayer for our troops. While we eat and drink and converse, a marine or soldier hurts. His feet hurt. His back hurts. His knees hurt. He is very cold … or very hot. He is lonely for home. He is exhausted and never gets enough sleep. And he is expected to apply counterinsurgency warfare in conditions where the nature of the battle has far outrun just war theory - where insurgents hide behind women and children - and turn our own ROE against us as a tactic of war.

In this post, he links to a nifty site on Just War here:

http://www.justwartheory.com/

Here is what Senator Kerry said at Pepperdine University about a Just War:

http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=4212

The fourth and final example of where people of faith should accept a common challenge is perhaps the most difficult and essential of all: rekindling a faith-based debate on the issues of war and peace. All our different faiths, whatever their philosophical differences, have a universal sense of values, ethics, and moral truths that honor and respect the dignity of all human beings. They all agree on a form of the Golden Rule and the Supreme importance of charity and compassion.

We are more than just Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims or atheists: we are human beings. We are more than the sum of our differences — we share a moral obligation to treat one another with dignity and respect—and the rest is commentary. Nowhere does this obligation arise more unavoidably than in when and how to resort to war.

Christians have long struggled to balance the legitimate need for self-defense with our highest ideals of justice and personal morality. Saint Augustine laid the foundation for a compelling philosophical tradition considering how and when Christians should fight.

Augustine felt that wars of choice are generally unjust wars, that war—the organized killing of human beings, of fathers, brothers, friends—should always be a last resort, that war must always have a just cause, that those waging war need the right authority to do so, that a military response must be proportionate to the provocation, that a war must have a reasonable chance of achieving its goal and that war must discriminate between civilians and combatants.

In developing the doctrine of Just War, Augustine and his many successors viewed self-restraint in warfare as a religious obligation, not as a pious hope contingent on convincing one’s adversaries to behave likewise. Throughout the centuries there have been Christian political leaders who argued otherwise; who contended that observing Just War principles was weak, naïve, or even cowardly.

It’s in Americas’ interests to maintain our unquestionable moral authority — and we risk losing it when leaders make excuses for the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo or when an Administration lobbies for torture.

For me, the just war criteria with respect to Iraq are very clear: sometimes a President has to use force to fight an enemy bent on using weapons of mass destruction to slaughter innocents. But no President should ever go to war because they want to—you go to war only because you have to. The words “last resort” have to mean something .

In Iraq, those words were rendered hollow. It was wrong to prosecute the war without careful diplomacy that assembled a real coalition. Wrong to prosecute war without a plan to win the peace and avoid the chaos of looting in Baghdad and streets full of raw sewage. Wrong to prosecute a war without considering the violence it would unleash and what it would do to the lives of innocent people who would be in danger.

People of faith obviously don’t have to agree with me about how we keep America safe, how we prevail over terrorists, or how we end our disastrous adventure in Iraq. But I do hope people of faith step up to the challenge of rejecting the idea that obedience to God somehow stops when the fighting starts. We need a revival of the debate over what constitutes Just Wars and how they must be conducted, and all people of faith, whatever their political allegiances, should participate in the debate.

So what is the Right's narrative here:

1. The concept of the Geneva Conventions and Just War are quaint in the face of the terrorists, who follow no such rules.

2. We must cast aside those values in order to win this war.

3. There is an enemy greater than the terrorists who continually "stab us in the back" -- the news media who show pictures of what war looks like.

4. The media is in service of the Left who are on the side of the enemy.

5. The ROEs have been put in place in fear of the "CNN factor" of pictures of bad things in war. The ROEs are getting our troops killed, since they cause hesitation and therefore, weakness.

6. The Left is killing our troops and losing the war.

Pretty compelling stuff, isn't it? This needs to be counteracted. Sen. Kerry is the one of the bunch best equipped to do this. He needs to talk the way he did when he debated John O'Neil in '71. Despite the Right's whining, many Americans are quite uncomfortable with the idea of killing civilians and abusing human rights, but I do not think there is enough defense of the idea of a Just War coming from Democrats. They skirt the issue instead of taking it on head on. The above arguments will be deployed by John McCain backed up by the entire right wing media. As Iraq is seen as lost someone needs to be blamed instead of themselves. We need those new fighting Dems in the Congress to speak up on ROEs and Just War as well; otherwise we and the media may very well be demonized for another generation.