The morality of war - Man's inhumanity to man

[SeanF]

22 minutes ago, Padraig said:

Not an expert but I would have thought this is the essential point.  Once WW1 made clear what modern war had developed into, the "thirst for war" changed.  "War as revenge" or to "right a wrong" is obviously still a thing but its a different mindset than pre-WW1.

I think WWI (perhaps too the Anglo-Boer War, and Russo-Japanese War) shifted opinion towards war being seen as at best, a necessary evil;  at least, in some parts of the world.

And yet, many wars in the past were far more murderous, without moving opinion in that way.  The Hundred Years War, in its most brutal phase between 1346-64, the Thirty Years War, the Mongol Conquests, the Deluge, the conquests of Mehmet II, Timur, Nadir Shah, were by any measure, complete horror shows.

[DMC]

I don't know what the fuck went on in the Ukraine thread, which is where I assume this grew out of, but did I just wake up to twenty years ago?  If so, why am I still so fat?

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

I think WWI (perhaps too the Anglo-Boer War, and Russo-Japanese War) shifted opinion towards war being seen as at best, a necessary evil;  at least, in some parts of the world.

And yet, many wars in the past were far more murderous, without moving opinion in that way.  The Hundred Years War, in its most brutal phase between 1346-64, the Thirty Years War, the Mongol Conquests, the Deluge, the conquests of Mehmet II, Timur, Nadir Shah, were by any measure, complete horror shows.

WWI and WWII are both wars that took place on screen (the latter much more than the former at the time), with the horrors of the front line brought to the people at home in a way that was never possible before.

[James Arryn]

6 hours ago, Padraig said:

Does this debating style normally result in productive debates?  Nobody is stopping you from posting.  Just suggesting that there is a thread designed for it.

As for your other point, Russia certainly portrays itself as a victim.  Nothing new there.  Most "villains" do.  They were forced into it etc.  (The US invasion of Iraq was the same in that sense, until that house of cards fell apart).  One should always be wary of giving it too much credit. 

I find it incredibly unlikely that it would view itself less of a victim if the US didn't invade Iraq.  (You could create a very different world where Russia wouldn't find itself a victim but the world is very different, so its meaningless.)

Ultimately though, even if you accept Russia's victim-hood, what would you do differently?   Arrest Bush?  Sure, go for it.  But does it change anything for Ukraine right now?  Nope.

(Just to add.  The Iraq invasion came with a cost.  Obviously not big enough for people like Bush and Cheney but there clearly was a cost.)

Well, first, several people have suggested I stop, and then created this thread to discuss the price the US has paid for it’s war crimes and what effect, if any, that has had on current events but which is instead a general lamentation about the tragedy of war, something which is both obvious and irrelevant to my points. It was nice of WT to make another thread to get me to shut up there, but first he missed the mark by a mile, and second it presumes that I agree my point is not germane. Should we do that for every opinion we don’t agree with? A lot of people in the UK politics thread are relating their economic crisis to Brexit…should heartofice be able to create a ‘International negotiations are complicated’ thread and insist everyone take those annoying Brexit comments there because he doesn’t think they’re related? (I’m assuming that would be his stance, to be fair, I haven’t actually heard him comment on it yet.)
 

And, again, I am NOT buying the idea that Russia is the victim. Russians are. The fact that we are definitely seeing a double standard being practiced in broad daylight helps Putin make his case immensely, but the truth of the matter is that what’s wrong with the double standard isn’t how Russia is paying a price for it’s crimes, but that the US isn’t. Absent that undeniable double standard, would Putin be able to fashion some bullshit argument that some Russians would buy? Of course, but it would not bea bullshit argument built on a truth, however misapplied. And, again, as has been said by GRRM himself ‘the best lies contain within them some nuggets of truth.’ To continue with my thematic illustration, many are playing Viserys, trying to hand wave away the clear double standard Putin is using to convince his people by just acting like it’s not really there, or doesn’t matter, or has no effect. 
 

As for what can be done now? I agree, little. If Biden issued a full admission of war crimes and dragged Bush et al to The Hague, no, the war wouldn’t immediately stop. It might be too late to have any effect at all. But if it had happened earlier, a lot that’s happening now might be different. But the discussion of the war in Ukraine has not, so far as I have ever seen, been restricted to only things which might make the war stop here and now. Trump’s call to Zelensky has been mentioned many times…why? Can we undo that call and get Ukrainian aid faster then by talking about it now? No, but yet it’s discussed. Some parts of the past, it seems, are not offensive regardless of their ability to stop the war today. 
 

Some of this is the US’s great ability to forgive itself, but a lot is syllogistic: Russians often raise US actions and the double standard to justify the war. James Arryn is raising US actions and the double standard, ergo he must be justifying the war. Regardless of how many times he specifically says the exact opposite, or regardless of the fact that he is a borderline pacifist, or regardless of the fact that he has contributed thousands to Ukranian aid, or that his wife more or less paid for her Ukranian co-worker to be able to get to Lviv to get her ailing mother out of harms way and back to Canada. Nope, if it says the past…especially the US past…has any bearing on the present, it is at best a useful idiot, tankie or Russian apologist. 
 

 

[Padraig]

To each point in your post, I could generally say, it is more complicated than you portray.

33 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Should we do that for every opinion we don’t agree with? A lot of people in the UK politics thread are relating their economic crisis to Brexit…should heartofice be able to create a ‘International negotiations are complicated’ thread and insist everyone take those annoying Brexit comments there because he doesn’t think they’re related? (I’m assuming that would be his stance, to be fair, I haven’t actually heard him comment on it yet.)

Even this.  You did make a big point earlier in the Ukraine thread about the lack of a thread to talk about what you wanted to talk about.  So you got your wish.  It may be more gracious of you to accept you now have that thread, rather than now complain it isn't titled correctly or it should be done in the Ukraine thread.

And I don't see why its a big deal that you were encouraged to move your posts elsewhere.  While you did touch upon Ukraine, you seemed to be more interested in the sins of the Iraq war.  So now you have a broader canvass to post in.  It doesn't mean that you can't talk about Ukraine anymore.  It just leaves the Ukraine thread to the more focused Ukrainian posts.

45 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Of course, but it would not be a bullshit argument built on a truth, however misapplied.

The problem that Russia has is that since the end of the Cold War, its power is now dwarfed by the US's.  And it views that as unfair.  Other countries are drawn to the US's orbit (and China's now, for the same reason) because the US has much more to offer than Russia.  Russia views that as unfair. 

Russia has used the latter as part of its justification for its war on Ukraine.  "Ukraine is ours.  How dare the US try to take it away from us".   That is a far more powerful argument than the US did something bad, so we should be allowed to do something bad too.  (Or whatever the precise details of your argument is).  That's just noise.

You did make the point that the West would have been less distracted if it hadn't got involved in the Iraq War.  Sure.  But if you go through each of the conflicts that Russia got involved in since 2001, would it have chosen not to if the West was less distracted?  You'll have to make a specific case here, since I don't see any obvious example where it would have not gotten involved.  Except maybe this current war.  But once you accept the other wars would have happened, Russia's course was probably set.

52 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Trump’s call to Zelensky has been mentioned many times…why?

In fairness, that was brought up mainly to show Trump in a bad light.  The Ukrainian dimension was almost irrelevant.

The reason I asked "does it change anything for Ukraine right now" is that I knew it didn't.  And that's why it should move to this thread.  Your scope is broader than Ukraine.

58 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Russians often raise US actions and the double standard to justify the war. James Arryn is raising US actions and the double standard, ergo he must be justifying the war.

The problem is that you have to slightly downplay the Ukrainian war because you are apparently absolutely sure that the Iraq War was the greater sin.  And given people are dying today in large numbers in Ukraine makes the whole thing in bad taste (and yes, people are also dying today in Iraq/Syria because of the Iraqi war).

[Padraig]

52 minutes ago, Werthead said:

WWI and WWII are both wars that took place on screen (the latter much more than the former at the time), with the horrors of the front line brought to the people at home in a way that was never possible before.

Right.  Media is the obvious factor driving a change of attitude.  And its reach being far wider than what existed before.  The "truth" about WW1/WW2 still exists in a much more tangible way than historic wars. People living longer, keeping the horror salient is relevant also.  Humans can be quite slow, so we get frequent reminders of the horrors now.

When horror shows existed in the past, were the ruling classes affected as much?  And did they lack the frequent positive reinforcement (not that horrible things weren't happening all the time but people didn't see it).

[Kalbear]

I will say one thing about the Iraq war that I don't think I've seen mentioned: the actual success of the US invasion of Iraq has made other countries think that they can do 'quick' wars like that, and that so far has been absolutely a failure. The US showed the world how a modern military backed up with technology, good regional allies and attacking a country that was in shambles could just plow through it like butter - but this was a massive exception to the rule, and if lessons were learned they were entirely the wrong ones. 

Ukraine (and Georgia, and Syria, and Yemen, and Afghanistan) are showing the more realistic interpretation here. But for a while I think a lot of countries had the assumption that when a modern, large combined arms military faced an older, smaller country they'd just blitz through them. And I do think Russia at least partially thought this as well, without understanding why the US was so successful and what made Iraq specifically vulnerable. 

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

WWI and WWII are both wars that took place on screen (the latter much more than the former at the time), with the horrors of the front line brought to the people at home in a way that was never possible before.

Photography really did that here in the US with the War of the Rebellion.  Didn't stop WWI though.

 

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Padraig said:

Right.  Media is the obvious factor driving a change of attitude.  And its reach being far wider than what existed before.  The "truth" about WW1/WW2 still exists in a much more tangible way than historic wars. People living longer, keeping the horror salient is relevant also.  Humans can be quite slow, so we get frequent reminders of the horrors now.

When horror shows existed in the past, were the ruling classes affected as much?  And did they lack the frequent positive reinforcement (not that horrible things weren't happening all the time but people didn't see it).

People did have a good idea of what war entailed in pre-modern societies. Not so much in England maybe, but certainly in the cockpits of Europe, like Germany, Northern Italy, or the borderlands of Poland/Lithuania, Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Peasants would establish networks to share food and shelter with neighbours who were pillaged, would post lookouts for armies, and avenge themselves where they could.

Likewise, every townsmen knew what would happen if their leaders rejected quarter, and the town was taken by storm.

[James Arryn]

7 hours ago, Padraig said:

 

The problem is that you have to slightly downplay the Ukrainian war because you are apparently absolutely sure that the Iraq War was the greater sin.  ).

Just saw this too, and I’m going to bed, so depending on babies/time I might address the rest later, but this is a misunderstanding of what I am saying, though it’s nuanced so I get your taking it this way. I do not think what Russia is actually doing in Ukraine is a lesser sin than what the US did in Iraq/Afghanistan…it might even be worse, we’ll have to wait and see once the fog lifts…but rather I think three things:

1) The US’s justification/reasoning for going to war were if anything more ludicrous.

2) The American people’s complete access to all the information needed to know their justification was ludicrous makes their overwhelming support a greater collective moral wrong compared to the Russian people who largely only get to hear/read what it’s government wants it to. 

3) The US ‘with us or against us/BS rationale’ was the turning point in international relations and essentially killed the diplomatic community’s soft power, built up over 50 years, to provide some form of (occasional) check on might makes right. Putin is just a continuation of that. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, James Arryn said:

2) The American people’s complete access to all the information needed to know their justification was ludicrous makes their overwhelming support a greater collective moral wrong compared to the Russian people who largely only get to hear/read what it’s government wants it to. 

I think you're overstating this a bit. The information was there to access for the smart and savvy, but certainly not for all and many were still in a relative stage of shock and just accepted what the government was telling them. Early teens me could see right through it, but most adults I spoke with couldn't or wouldn't. That said, pro sentiment for the war fell off rather quickly after just a few years and by 2005/6 the public was consistently against the war. 

[Jace, Extat]

18 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think you're overstating this a bit. The information was there to access for the smart and savvy, but certainly not for all and many were still in a relative stage of shock and just accepted what the government was telling them. Early teens me could see right through it, but most adults I spoke with couldn't or wouldn't. That said, pro sentiment for the war fell off rather quickly after just a few years and by 2005/6 the public was consistently against the war. 

But not relevantly opposed to the war. 

I have always been most disgusted with the media for this. They got full access to the fireworks in return for abandoning that admittedly flimsy fourth estate facade and helped encourage the American people to mutilate our credibility on the world stage. And then they just brushed it away, out of public mind, for fifteen fucking years while our tax dollars were hoovered away by mercenaries and manufacturers. 

Afghanistan was not a war, besides. It was a wealth redistribution scheme masquerading as an opportunity to test long-term occupation capabilities in response to the failures of Vietnam. 

[Galactus]

Something that Bret Deveraux brought up in his talk about WWI is how the ratio of value from capital investment vs. war has changed: In the middle ages investments gave relatively little benefits compared to just shanking some guy and taking his land, in an industrial society the basis has changed: Not only are economic investments more valuable, but the destructive power of modern weaponry means that unless the war is *extremely* lopsided, or you can offload the costs on to someone else, war just... doesen't pay.

 

LIke, for WWI, it's not just a matter of not even the winners coming out ahead, but that there was *no practical way anyone  (of the main belligerents) could come out ahead*. 

Obviously doesen't end war as a concept, but it changes the dynamic rather drastically. 

[Toth]

5 hours ago, Padraig said:

The problem that Russia has is that since the end of the Cold War, its power is now dwarfed by the US's.  And it views that as unfair.  Other countries are drawn to the US's orbit (and China's now, for the same reason) because the US has much more to offer than Russia.  Russia views that as unfair. 

Russia has used the latter as part of its justification for its war on Ukraine.  "Ukraine is ours.  How dare the US try to take it away from us".   That is a far more powerful argument than the US did something bad, so we should be allowed to do something bad too.  (Or whatever the precise details of your argument is).  That's just noise.

I think that has to be reiterated again and again. Putin's main problem with the US is not its hypocrisy, but that through NATO it prevents Russia from invading neighbors he really, really, really would want to invade. With Ukraine leaving Russia's sphere of influence being a major concern because he expected to never get it back.

My impression was also that "US did an illegal war in Iraq" kind of drowns in the many acts of Cold War related military and CIA interventions that certainly paint the US as an imperialist power that acts with impunity when it thinks it serves its goals. So... deleting Iraq from everyone's mind wouldn't change that. As much as that wouldn't change the USSR's activities at the same time, which are conveniently forgotten in this exchange. And deleting all of that history from everyone's mind I think also wouldn't affect very much that Putin considers all of these acts privileges of being a superpower and really wants to do them himself. And does himself since his rise to power.

[Galactus]

Just now, Toth said:

I think that has to be reiterated again and again. Putin's main problem with the US is not its hypocrisy, but that through NATO it prevents Russia from invading neighbors he really, really, really would want to invade. With Ukraine leaving Russia's sphere of influence being a major concern because he expected to never get it back.

My impression was also that "US did an illegal war in Iraq" kind of drowns in the many acts of Cold War related military and CIA interventions that certainly paint the US as an imperialist power that acts with impunity when it thinks it serves its goals. So... deleting Iraq from everyone's mind wouldn't change that. As much as that wouldn't change the USSR's activities at the same time, which are conveniently forgotten in this exchange. And deleting all of that history from everyone's mind I think also wouldn't affect very much that Putin considers all of these acts privileges of being a superpower and really wants to do them himself. And does himself since his rise to power.

I think that's not *quite* Putin's beef with the US, but rather the sense that the US set up a rules-based order that it then choses to ignore, while at the same time preventing Russia from doing (what he views as) the same thing. The Iraq War was a genuine snub not because he cares about Iraq but because it showed clearly that the US wasn't treating Russia as an equal. (which, to be fair, it isn't, by just about any metric) 

[Werthead]

15 hours ago, Zorral said:

Photography really did that here in the US with the War of the Rebellion.  Didn't stop WWI though.

Absolutely incomparable in its impact. Photographs of battlefields were not beamed into thousands of cinemas across the world where they were seen by millions of people within a few days of them happening, and there were very few photographs of actual combat. There were some quite distressing photographs of POWs, casualties etc, but in many cases they were not published at the time for being too gory/disturbing etc.

WWI happened because it had been a century since the last European war and the belief was that advances in weapons would make a war cleaner and faster and easier, and Germany, in particular, had its successful wars against Denmark and France in the 1860s and 70s as a recent (ish) example of how they could win "big" victories with such weapons. The American Civil War also wasn't a very static war (outside of a few sectors they really should have paid closer attention to) and armies moved around relatively rapidly in many parts of the conflict, which was also taken on board in Europe (and the reason it lasted four years is because the American didn't know how to fight properly, weren't trying to kill their fellow countrymen too hard etc, or so it was believed).

WWI should have really put anyone off fighting a major war again, but the Germans identified what caused their problems and actually (and unusually) came up with systems to overcome those problems, namely combined air-armor-artillery assaults with infantry following up afterwards, which allowed greater wars of movement. They just didn't reckon on the rest of the world catching on as fast as they did (stupidly, as the Germans actually borrowed some ideas for combined-arms warfare from the British, whilst the Russians had already worked out the importance of tanks and had better tanks than anything the Germans had).

There is the theory that the world "needs" a major war every few decades just so a new generation can realise what a terrible idea war is and not pursue it again, but there was also the feeling that the horrors of WWII and the overwhelming amount of footage available from the conflict would defuse that and keep those fears down. Many of the people in both the White House and the Kremlin during most of the Cold War were people who had served in WWII or their parents had, so there was an immediacy there of knowing the horrors of what would happen if war broke out (Khruschev had literally helped lead the defence of Stalingrad, reportedly sometimes being on the phone to Moscow coordinating reinforcements whilst bullets flew past the door leading outside ten feet away, though he may have exaggerated that) even beyond the nuclear threat.

Every war since WWII has of course been covered in increasingly gory, unpleasant detail by increasingly better photographic and film technology, but that doesn't appear to have stopped some people from thinking it's still a viable way of solving political problems.

There's also the increased risk of war from autocracies. Humans like to keep busy and engage in power politics. In a democracy, a lot of its political energy is expended inwards on winning elections and staying in power. It distracts nations away from external issues. In an autocracy with a single ruler, they are much more likely to expend that energy outwards, intrigue with other countries and launch wars to get what they want, because they become so used to using force internally to keep order inside their country that it becomes the natural go-to reaction outside of it as well.

[James Arryn]

7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think you're overstating this a bit. The information was there to access for the smart and savvy, but certainly not for all and many were still in a relative stage of shock and just accepted what the government was telling them. Early teens me could see right through it, but most adults I spoke with couldn't or wouldn't. That said, pro sentiment for the war fell off rather quickly after just a few years and by 2005/6 the public was consistently against the war. 

Well, a few quick points:

1) Regardless, Americans had far more access to real information than Russians do.

2) Equally, Americans were fully aware that global opinion was strongly opposed and arrogantly decided to blame that on global ignorance, bias, or cowardice. 

3) The US’s own intelligence community was openly opposed to the administration’s claims and the NIE report detailing same was front page news across the country and readily available. Your own phrase, ‘just accepted what their government was telling them’ is, when it comes to the question of invading another country in the face of global opposition, in my opinion the greatest condemnation. Especially after mountains of information going back to Nam that the US government often bullshits by the ton about their foreign adventuring. The decision whether or not to go and kill countless foreigners in their home country should, in any kind of moral society, require more consideration than you are yourself describing here. And it’s not like there is a long list of countries who routinely invade other nations as the U.S. does, and virtually none with access to a relatively free press and global opinion.

4) Yes, the U.S. eventually tired of the occupation…that’s the historical pattern. But far from turning against the war because of what the Iraqis were suffering ( or Vietnamese, etc.) it was the number of American casualties and material costs that turned the tide of American opinion. In fact, even as late as 2007 most Americans could almost perfectly name the number of US casualties, but hadn’t the foggiest idea of how many Iraqis had died and when asked to hazard a guess almost universally underestimated the number by tens to hundreds of thousands.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna17310383
 

So if you think this somehow redeems the American people, well, imo this is actually just further cause for condemnation. In fact, as the article listed above states, the underestimated numbers of Iraqi casualties was often seen by Americans as a cause for criticism of the war’s success itself.
 

And if you are going to say it’s natural to care more about your own casualties, I would respond that that’s somewhat true for wars of equal volition or defense, but when you are the country going around invading other countries, it’s myopically arrogant and borderline sociopathic to only care about the cost to yourselves from the wars you created in other people’s lands. 
 

edit to add: and, as the final fuck you to anyone America destroys, Bush was re-elected with greater numbers after it had already been made abundantly clear that the war’s justification was bullshit, after the revelations about Abu Gharib, torture, Gitmo, secret illegal prison networks filled with kidnapped ‘suspects’ given zero due process, after awareness of massacres and GTA style shooting-for-kicks road patrols, after all the Blackwater revelations, etc. If your response has anything to do with the economy or Kerry being boring, I think you’re making my point for me. 

[SeanF]

Going off at a tangent, I’ve been interested to read Max Boot’s Invisible Armies.

One good point that he makes is that most guerilla campaigns fail. And those that succeed, usually do so because the guerillas are operating in conjunction with regular armies.

That bears out my own research into the Peninsular War (Guerra de La Indepencia).  The contribution of the Spanish regular army to allied victory has been hugely underrated.  The partidas hurt the French, without doubt, but they came nowhere close to driving them out of Spain, and many of their leaders and personnel were themselves Spanish soldiers.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Fuck Max Boot, guy thought Supreme Court got Brown v Board of Ed wrong and was a huge proponent of the Iraq War.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 hours ago, Galactus said:

I think that's not *quite* Putin's beef with the US, but rather the sense that the US set up a rules-based order that it then choses to ignore, while at the same time preventing Russia from doing (what he views as) the same thing. The Iraq War was a genuine snub not because he cares about Iraq but because it showed clearly that the US wasn't treating Russia as an equal. (which, to be fair, it isn't, by just about any metric) 

Here’s the problem.  The US does something awful and Tankies (and Qnuts) start screaming bloody murder that it is “unfair” that Russia isn’t allowed to do something awful as well.  It’s like a serial killer complaing that it is unfair to hold them responsible for their serial killing because the Zodiac killer has never been caught.  

Russia and its Tankie (and Qnut) apologists somehow believe if they deploy the Tu Quoque fallacy frequently enough somehow Russia’s brutal invasion becomes a “just war” because it is unfair to complain about Russian brutality.

ETA: Just for clarities sake I know this isn’t… your… argument and you are simply relaying what is being argued.  I’m point out why the argument is unsound.