Sowell on Supporting the Troops

http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=tso


"SUPPORTING THE TROOPS"?


During the recent election campaign, it has been a liberal mantra that they "support the troops" while opposing the war in Iraq. Just what does supporting the troops mean -- other than just a throwaway line to escape the political consequences of a long history of being anti-military?

It certainly does not mean making the slightest effort to understand the pressures and dangers of combat, so as to avoid the obscenity of sitting in peace and comfort while second-guessing at leisure some life-and-death decisions that had to be made in a split second by men 10,000 miles away.

The latest example is the now widely-publicized incident in which an American Marine in Iraq shot and killed a wounded terrorist in Fallujah. Chris Matthews on Hardball spoke of "what may be the illegal killing of a wounded, unarmed insurgent" -- the politically correct media term for a terrorist -- and asked: "Is there ever a justification for shooting an unarmed enemy?"

The unreality of this question is breath-taking, both logically and historically. How do you know that someone is unarmed, when finding out can cost you your life? A hand grenade is easily concealed and can kill you just as dead as if you were shot by a machine gun or hit by a nuclear missile.

American troops in Iraq have already been killed by booby-trapped bodies. During World War II, wounded Japanese soldiers sometimes waited for an American medical corpsman to come over to help them and then exploded a hand grenade, killing them both.

Assuming that somehow you are certain that an enemy is unarmed, perhaps because you have already searched him or disarmed him, is it ever justified to kill him anyway? That question was answered more than half a century ago, when German troops wearing American uniforms and speaking English infiltrated American lines during the Battle of the Bulge.

Those German troops, when captured, were lined up against a wall and shot dead. And nobody wrung his hands about it.

The rules of war, the Geneva Convention, do not protect soldiers who are not wearing their own country's uniforms. To get the protection of rules, you have to play by the rules.

Terrorists are not enemy soldiers covered by the rules of war. Nor should they be. They observe no rules.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations can all talk about "the Geneva Convention." But that agreement on the rules of war has never applied to combatants not wearing the uniform of any country that is a party to the Geneva Convention.

Terrorists wear no uniform and show no mercy, as they have repeatedly demonstrated by beheading innocent civilians, including women.

Why any such terrorists should be captured alive in the first place is a real question. Maybe they have information that could be useful. But every terrorist our troops try to capture alive increases the risk of death for American combat troops.

Their information better be damned important for that.

It is more than enough to ask a man to put his life on the line for his country, without needlessly increasing those risks by trying to be nobler than thou or playing to the international gallery. The very fact that this Marine in Fallujah has been taken out of combat and is under investigation can only have an inhibiting effect on other troops.

The inhibitions under which American troops have already had to fight have needlessly jeopardized their safety while we tiptoe around the delicate sensibilities of the media, European critics and "the Arab street."

The Times of London refers to a Marine "killing an unarmed man in cold blood." If that was his purpose he could have opened fire when he entered the room, instead of waiting until he saw an Iraqi terrorist faking being dead -- for what purpose the Marine had no way of knowing.

We cannot fight wars to please The Times of London or the other nay-sayers and nit-pickers who have been against us from the beginning. There is no point trying to appease people who are not going to be appeased anyway. And to do so at an increased risk to American lives would be criminal.

To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

COPYRIGHT 2004 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

 

<b>Mr. Meowgi</b>: Sowell's point is that the nagging of the nay-sayers is primarily serving to put American lives more at risk. Is that really support of our troops?

<b>GV76</b>: Why do you say that we cannot possibly win? That was the topic of Sowell's next column (which I haven't been able to find online yet).

<b>DonnyMost</b>: What are you.... a junior in college? It takes the arrogance of someone in that station to call a professional Scholar "shortsighted" and "pathetic" while accusing him of authoring a "bucket of slop." You don't have to agree with him but these type of characterizations are ridiculous.

<b>Ender</b>: Your vaunted "insurgents" are killing Iraqi police and military along with scads of regular Iraqi men, women and children. Oh, and don't forget the international aid workers! Now, make that plea for the insurgents once again please and also demark how they are not terrorists...

<b>No Worries</b>: This piece asks for support of our troops. It criticizes a liberal mantra from a weak anti-war candidate.

<b>RocketmanTex</b>: Twain was a satirist. Be careful when trying to identify truth therein.

 

I don't particularly know Chomsky's views, but it is one thing to ridicule a mainstream conservative viewpoint as "pathetic" and "short-sighted" while it is another thing to ridicule an extreme position such as you imply Chomsky might offer.

You are right, though. Being designated a "scholar" does not make you right, reasonable or even close to either one of those. I took a regrettable short-cut there.

 

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20041119.shtml

The unlimited enemy
Thomas Sowell (archive)

November 19, 2004 | Print | Send

Cats are supposed to have nine lives but fallacies must have at least ninety. Some notions will be believed, no matter how many times they have been refuted by facts.

One of these seemingly immortal fallacies is the implicit assumption that our enemies have unlimited resources, so that our efforts at strengthening ourselves militarily are doomed to be self-defeating.

At least as far back as the 1930s, the intelligentsia and others have warned against military spending as setting off an "arms race" in which each side escalates its military buildup in response to the other, making the whole thing an expensive exercise in futility. The same notion was repeated throughout the long years of the Cold War.

Today's version is that, no matter how many Middle East terrorists we kill, new ones will take their place and we will have nothing to show for all our efforts and sacrifices. People who talk this way are completely undaunted by the fact that Ronald Reagan proved them wrong during the Cold War.

President Reagan understood that the Soviets did not have unlimited resources -- and in fact their resources were far more limited than ours. Going directly counter to those who wanted a "nuclear freeze" or other weapons limitations agreements, Ronald Reagan began a military buildup that kept upping the ante until the Soviets had to throw in their hand, ending the Cold War.

When Reagan ordered a bombing of Libya in retaliation for Libyan terrorism, the immortal fallacy was immediately voiced by former President Jimmy Carter, who declared that this would only make matters worse and bring on more terrorism. But Libya toned down its terrorist activities.

Years later, when Saddam Hussein was overthrown in Iraq and was then dragged out of his hiding hole, Libyan dictator Kaddafi decided to end his nuclear program and cooperate with monitors. Unlike Jimmy Carter, he knew that he did not have unlimited resources.

Those who argue today that virtually every military action we take only arouses "the Arab street" against us and provokes a new stream of terrorist recruits fail to understand that international terrorism requires more than new recruits. It requires huge amounts of money, sophisticated leaders and an intricate structure of command.

President Bush hit the terrorists in the pocketbook with the help of countries around the world by exposing and disrupting their financial networks. Then many of the top terrorist leaders were killed or captured and their training bases in Afghanistan destroyed.

There is not an unlimited supply of money, sophisticated leaders, or countries willing to risk American military action by aiding and abetting international terrorism. A number of countries have begun cooperating, making this one of the largest international operations ever to be called "unilateral."

There may not even be an unlimited supply of potential suicide bombers in "the Arab street," now that Saddam Hussein is no longer there to subsidize the families of suicide bombers who kill civilians in Israel or to provide sanctuary for other terrorists.

Critics of the Bush administration may keep saying that there is no connection between Iraq and terrorism but the terrorists themselves seem to believe otherwise. Why else are they pouring into Iraq, in what they themselves have characterized as a crucial battle to stop the Americans from reconstituting that country in ways that will make their plans for the region harder to carry out?

There is a cost to this war as there have been costs to all wars, including the Cold War. And there have been painful setbacks and surprises in this war, as there have been in all wars.

George Washington lost most of the battles he fought but we still came out of it as a new and independent nation. But there were grownups in that war and in our other wars.

The big question today -- and for our future -- is not whether our enemies have unlimited resources but whether we have an inexhaustible supply of immaturity in our media and among our politicians.

 

How about some substantive contribution rather than sniping at the author? LOL.

 

If Sowell was being satirical you would have a point....