Bad Wars and Their Consequences

Steve Hochstadt is a writer and a professor of history at Illinois College.

I went to see the model of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial when it came to the center of Jacksonville. “The Wall That Heals” travels across the country, bringing the cathartic effect of the larger wall of names in Washington to the hometowns of veterans and casualties of that long war. I did not serve, but I assume that this traveling reminder of the 58,300 Americans who died in Vietnam helps those who still experience the war’s pain.

I was moved to think again of my friend, Paul Semplicino (1947-1971), who died on leave in Bangkok, while President Nixon claimed to search for “peace with honor”, but secretly escalated into Cambodia and Laos.

- See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/blog/153643#sthash.kJWuTjiK.dpuf




Quills is going to like this article which is why I am posting this.

Though I think the writer of the article has missed a major point. There are occasions when bad wars are needed. Normally you topple a tyrant and a nation is able to rebuild. Not so with Iraq as it has had decades Sunni and Shia violence. The religious implications of a civil war erupting was clearly not thought out by the allied planners for the invasion of Iraq. They wrongly expected a quite regime change. The war will fail to bring peace to the area and it will take decades to resolve between the many warring factions at play in the Middle East. The only way this conflict can be completely won, is by the Muslims of the world united against he major core threat. This denies the propaganda machine of the extremists like ISIS of claiming the west is on a crusade to destroy Islam. As you would have a near united front of Muslim nations and Muslims themselves to deny the extremist groups of many of their resources.
Money, weapons, people

These root causes of how they can maintain a war and terrorism is vital here in defeating them by denying them of many of these resources. It will take a very vocal and military action undertaken by a united Muslim front against ISIS. Sadly that is not going to happen any time soon with the conflict being fueled by the real movers of the chess pieces on the chessboard.
Saudi and Iran.
Thus sometime a bad war is need in the short term to prevent the mass loss of life. The alternative to do nothing means countless more will die. A military intervention is needed to militarily damage the capabilities of ISIS and put them on the defensive. As they would be weakened to the tune of several years. Bad wars are needed as seen for a limited intervention, as time is the pressing matter in order to prevent the mass loss of life. ISIS is slaughtering countless innocent people

Will catch up on this later Quill.
Hope you enjoyed the article and catch you later or tomorrow

Have a wonderful day

Jacksonville Journal Courier wrote:But I’m not making a moral argument. My point is that the results of justifiable and unjustifiable wars are different. We could have destroyed Vietnam, but we could not prevent its independence. We easily got rid of a murderous dictator in Iraq and have not been able to prevent the country from sinking into anarchy with less security than before. We thought we could fix Afghanistan in our own image and kill those who had attacked us on 9/11, ignoring the earlier failures of the British and the Russians. The Taliban is still there, al-Qaida has spread farther and a more deadly virus of fanatic destruction has arisen in the Middle East.

In Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in many other places, our leaders did not know what they were doing. The result has been disaster for our soldiers, for the countries where we intervened, for our global image and our image of ourselves.

The political leaders who now demand that we commit more people and money to these mistaken incursions into other people’s lands are the same ones who say we don’t have enough resources to pay for schools or poverty programs or museums. They don’t want to remember the lessons of the bad wars we have fought, perhaps because they sent us into them.

We need to learn those lessons.

All evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

As I read this I find myself saying, he’s making the right argument, but for the wrong reasons.  Maybe bad wars do come from the knee-jerk responses of Republicans and Conservatives, but the analysis runs deeper than that.  Bad wars actually come from not understanding the purposes of wars.

Carl von Clausewitz said: "War is the continuation of politics by other means."  Clausewitz, On War.  Now, one's politics might be of the schoolyard variety, or they can be about much nobler ends.  And in order to know the difference, we have to know the ‘lay of the land’.  Most of what I hear about the Middle East and war is of the low-level variety, with no understanding of the underlying Shi’ia-Sunni civil war, nor any appreciation of the complexities of governments in the region.

So far, everyone hates ISIL because of a couple of well-publicized murders on the Internet.  In a PR war, the manipulators at ISIL did an excellent job of inflaming passions.  But inflamed passions are a long way from well-reasoned plans.  We have no plans for the region except to jerk a knee now and then, at the prompting of the manipulators of ISIL.  Those are ISIL's plans, not ours. What we are doing is playing bit-parts in ISIL's script, not carrying out any western strategy.

The plain fact is that the reason we in the west have no plans for the Middle East is that we have no interests in the dynamics that are driving the Middle East.  Oh sure, we want oil; but they want to sell us oil.  So that part is not in jeopardy.  No, what’s going on in the region is the continuation of the age-old Sui’ite-Sunni civil war, and we have no dog in that fight.

No its a case of genoicde Quill and preventing further mass killings.
Its not about hate. Again the long term goal of defeating ISIS will take  a united Muslim front to accomplish this.Though many lives cannot wait until this happens. That is why a short term bad war is a necessity to weaken dramatically the militray capabilities of ISIS.
Its not just murder either, but slavery, sex slaves, countless women and children being raped repeatedly.
That is why something has to be done in the short term in order to help the people under this oppressive regeme.

Didge wrote:No its a case of genoicde Quill and preventing further mass killings.
Its not about hate. Again the long term goal of defeating ISIS will take  a united Muslim front to accomplish this.Though many lives cannot wait until this happens. That is why a short term bad war is a necessity to weaken dramatically the militray capabilities of ISIS.
Its not just murder either, but slavery, sex slaves, countless women and children being raped repeatedly.
That is why something has to be done in the short term in order to help the people under this oppressive regeme.

What you describe, the doctor would call the symptoms of the disease, not the underlying factors.  ISIL isn’t the problem.  ISIL is merely one iteration of one of the factions of the greater Shi’ite-Sunni civil war.  Wipe them out and another will take its place.  You are missing the bigger picture.

Let’s play out your idea of going over there and beating the shit out of the contemporary combatants…ISIS.  Don’t you think the survivors of our onslaught will come back again?  And they’ll bring with them their sons, and their brothers, and their cousins, and their nephews…the list goes on ad infinitum for the next two, three or more centuries.

Don’t you find it curious that we are fighting with both sides of the real conflict?  That is, we are arguing over nuclear power with Iran, imposing sanctions and all, and Iran is the leader of the Shi’ite faction.  Yet, we are simultaneously bombing the shit out of the Sunni faction, presently known as ISIS or ISIL.  Don’t you get the feeling that we—the westerners—are missing something?  Chrissake, we don’t even have a side that would stand with us if we did put boots on the ground.  They are all against us.  They are all playing us.  Duh!…we’re missing something.

You really don’t understand human psychology.  You don’t accomplish anything by beating the shit out of someone.  We learned that in the schoolyard: beat the shit outta Jonnie, the school bully, and he comes back with more friends to his gang.  You have to change his mind-set.  You have to rearrange conditions so he doesn’t want to start a war. You guys have the same thing going on with Northern Ireland, going round and round and round...and you still never learn. You gotta change the mind-set, or you'll never put to rest the conflict.

That’s a much bigger challenge and methinks you don’t want to face that challenge.

Yes I do know and understand that the conflict involves two bigger opponents. Yes I do realsie they will come back again, hence the point "limited war". That has norelevance in regards toa short term limited operation to take out the military capabilities of ISIS.

Again the pressing over riding need is the civillian lives under threat.
This takes pecedent over everything else in the long term to defeat ISIS, which as I said will take a united Muslim front to defeat.
I have qualifications in psychology, so plase spare me that babble about what you know psychology wise when you fail act to a real threat facing the lives of many people. So deflectung the debate with woeful claims on something you have no qulifications on is poor to say the least. We are not going to be able to resolve the overall conflict between Iran and Saudi, but the present situtaion is dire for the people on the ground.

So we can certainly accomplish what we set out to do by weakening the military capabilities of the most present pressing threat and their capabilities to hold their control. It shows you have no comprehension fo a short term strategy one of which its goals is not to win a conflict, but to seriously render the capabilities of ISIS to continue its violence and hold of power. So again you conflate issue's over the most pressing need here of which we can actually do something about.

This is a mess that the Muslims themselves will need to sort out in the end, but sitting back doing nothing when we can do something that will save countless lives over rides any of your poor reasoning here. You are basically sentencing peope to death, rape and slavery. Anyone with a concious mind, knowing we can do something about this and at the same tie offer a chance for opposition groups to ISIS who are not genocidal is a necessity. As I say your strategy just senteces people to death.

Have a good evening, I will be back tomorrow

Didge wrote:Yes I do know and understand that the conflict involves two bigger opponents. Yes I do realsie they will come back again, hence the point "limited war". That has norelevance in regards toa short term limited operation to take out the military capabilities of ISIS.

Again the pressing over riding need is the civillian lives under threat.
This takes pecedent over everything else in the long term to defeat ISIS, which as I said will take a united Muslim front to defeat.

But what of the western military in the meantime? It takes about 5-years to deploy and then draw down the military in occupation of a country. Look at Afghanistan. It’s not the Texas Rangers, riding to the rescue.

Didge wrote:I have qualifications in psychology, so plase spare me that babble about what you know psychology wise when you fail act to a real threat facing the lives of many people. So deflectung the debate with woeful claims on something you have no qulifications on is poor to say the least. We are not going to be able to resolve the overall conflict between Iran and Saudi, but the present situtaion is dire for the people on the ground.

You sound angry, didge. Did I touch a nerve? I see in your tone that you are as frustrated about the magnitude of the problem as I am. Except, my response is to stand down until we have a plan; your’s, apparently, is to go in a-blazing, hoping for the best…but as usual, expecting the worst.

Didge wrote:So we can certainly accomplish what we set out to do by weakening the military capabilities of the most present pressing threat and their capabilities to hold their control. It shows you have no comprehension fo a short term strategy one of which its goals is not to win a conflict, but to seriously render the capabilities of ISIS to continue its violence and hold of power. So again you conflate issue's over the most pressing need here of which we can actually do something about.

It’s not about me, didge. When you turn on your correspondent, it is evidence you have the least confidence in your own argument. Let’s see…you were saying: “a short term strategy one of which its goals is not to win a conflict, but to seriously render the capabilities of ISIS to continue its violence and hold of power.”

And along comes another arms salesman and hands them the capability to wage war all over again. It’s not “conflating” issues, didge. It’s reducing things to a common denominator. All of these eruptions are merely symptoms of a much greater long-term religious conflict. And it will keep going on, no matter how many Band-Aids you put on it.

Didge wrote:
This is a mess that the Muslims themselves will need to sort out in the end, but sitting back doing nothing when we can do something that will save countless lives over rides any of your poor reasoning here. You are basically sentencing peope to death, rape and slavery. Anyone with a concious mind, knowing we can do something about this and at the same tie offer a chance for opposition groups to ISIS who are not genocidal is a necessity. As I say your strategy just senteces people to death.

You are right: the Muslims must resolve things themselves. I wrote in Transformative Peacemaking:

The key to peacemaking is precisely the making of a harmonic change—hence, the term transformative peacemaking. It is to supplant the conflict with something wholly new and different altogether. As Fischer and Ury have noted: “More often success is achieved by finding a solution that is arguably consistent with each side’s principles.” This is why the method of transformative peacemaking is to find the widest possible range of possibilities for outcome—the widest possible range for redefining the arena to one that simply slips past the conflict.

(As John Kenneth Galbraith said: What fun to be able to quote yourself.)

Point 1) Really? You have no comprehension of  limited campaign of its logistic or the need to stay any longer than the job is done in conjunction with the forces fighting them already.

Point 2) Subjective babble again which seeks to deflect the debate. You propose stating I do not understand psychology based off your own lack of knowledge and qualification and offering no evidence. Not frustrated at anything which again is deflecting the debate with yet more babble trying to get at me in the most child like manner based on emotive reasoning. Its just I expect better from you and is an admission on your part you have no point.

Point 3)Never claimed it is about you. I am stating what is most pressing to those most under threat and what nations can do to help prevent that, especially as they are a part of the cause of that situation in the first place. You do not go into something and create a mess and expect someone else to clean up your mess, which is what your strategy proposes. The effects of that war with Iraq is still ongoing, which means the US has an obligation to asset the people, which your strategy leaves them up the creek without a paddle.

Point 4) You actually never engaged the strategy or the most pressing issue here. Your goal is long term, which we take the Muslims to resolve. My goal is short term that saves lives. So you are arguing off a completely different objective than mine


I suggest you keep to the points of the debate, as any emotive reasoning about me you bring into this, is just mere deflections and subjective beyond belief, where I certainly expect better from yourself in our debates.

Until tomorrow

This argument is losing steam. The essential points have been made. This is where the shouting starts.

Haha...I'll leave off.