In the past weeks and months I have indicated how the British Empire’s use (and sometimes American patriots as well) of tactics that are less than honorable, yet attain short term military goals, would have unintended consequences .. when is it proper to apply this same understanding to other periods of American History?
The last few days has been a time in “American society life” that reflects on a 90-something man’s passing away and a reflection on what he meant to this country as well as the world. This man was the last president to have participated in WWII, which alone puts him on a pedestal in this land. Although the actual events surrounding him being the lone survivor of the plane he was piloting are cloudy at best (pardon the aviator’s pun), it seems that American loves heroes, and it willingly excuse many many character faults along the way as long as one has this elite (no pun intended) status. (think George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, etc)
While this post is not about the life of HW Bush, and while I have no animosity towards him personally (“revenge is mine says the Lord”), or his family who is in mourning, it does us well as a people (or as various groups of people/cultures across this land) to reflect of certain aspects of their legacy and learn from them.
“Those who do not know history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them.” George Santayana
So the point here is to reflect on an aspect of Gulf War I that has always disturbed me even as I “thought” I understood the justification of the war at this time. From The Intercept article we read the following:
U.S. bombs also destroyed essential Iraqi civilian infrastructure — from electricity-generating and water-treatment facilities to food-processing plants and flour mills. This was no accident. As Barton Gellman of the Washington Post reported in June 1991: “Some targets, especially late in the war, were bombed primarily to create postwar leverage over Iraq, not to influence the course of the conflict itself. Planners now say their intent was to destroy or damage valuable facilities that Baghdad could not repair without foreign assistance. … Because of these goals, damage to civilian structures and interests, invariably described by briefers during the war as ‘collateral’ and unintended, was sometimes neither.”
Got that? The Bush administration deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure for “leverage” over Saddam Hussein. How is this not terrorism?
Here we are 27 years later knowing that Iraq has since been invaded yet a second time and has never returned to its previous state where the average Iraqi could earn enough to support their family in relative peace. We all know it will take decades or centuries to recover from this US/UN effort to “spread democracy” to the Middle East.
If we back up in our mind’s eye and consider the tactics the British opted to use more frequently, especially as they grew increasingly frustrated in not meeting their objectives against “farmers with pitchforks”. Is it ever right to choose tactics that are less than honorable to achieve the ends usually determined by leaders and politicians far away? How can those “sworn” into the service of these military entities individually object to be a part of those types of actions?
In 1780 it was the dreaded Tarleton that we read about and how he is the bad guy. But what happens when these types are on “our” side? Do we treat them different? How does this country’s text books treat Sheridan, Grant and Sherman from the directives each of these generals issued in the early 1860s against innocent families that happened to be in states that peacefully seceded?
“To the petulant and persistent secessionists, why death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of the better . . . . Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources” – William T. Sherman after the war
“Government of the United States” had the “right” to “take their lives, their homes, their lands, their everything . . . . We will take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property . . . ” – William T. Sherman after the war
“the war will soon assume a turn to extermination not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people . . . . There is a class of people, men, women, and children, who must be killed . . .” – letter to William T. Sherman’s wife on 31JUL1862
“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to the extermination, men, women and children” ..”The more Indians we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed next year,” William T. Sherman wrote to Sheridan. By 1890 the U.S. Army murdered as many as 60,000 Indians, placing the survivors in concentration camps known as “reservations.”
So it seems we have the British Empire using these tactics in 1780s, and the USA adopting these tactics in 1860s as well as with the American Indians the balance of that century .. and then fast-forward to 1991 and we find ourselves as “bad” as the British yet again!
So what kind of “democracy” are we spreading? It stinks!
All of this to say once again, to know history is to be best prepared to scrutinize government propaganda when their mouthpieces try to convince the public of the “good” in what they are doing. They know that the first impression is a lasting impression for so many that are not critical thinkers in this land.
So be prepared! Be a student of history, a critical thinker, considering things that you are still in process forming an opinion on.
Stay the course!
-SF1