Quote:
Originally Posted by Armistead
We don't see the innocents as human, they're numbers. Hard to grasp the US military killed close to 300,000 civilians. Imagine you as a parent having your home blown up and all you can find of your kids is body parts. We are supposed to protect civilians, when we level towns because of a few gunman then blame them for all the civilian deaths....that's just murder.
|
While I highly doubt the 300,000 number you list since that would mean we are killing innocent civilians at a rate of about half of what was done during the bombing of densely populated cities with massive amounts of dumb bombs in Germany during WW2.... Think on that for a minute and you will see how inane such a claim is....
Still, let me play devils advocate for a moment. Using your logic, the death of "300,000" people is "murder". While I admit its a tragedy, let us look at history. In WW2, German civilian deaths were between 600,000 and 700,000 dead, about double that wounded, and 7.5 Million made homeless. So using your arguement, the leaders of the Allies were all murderers. They should have never acted to preserve the peace, remove a psychopathic tyrant and save the known world from being killed if not of "good German stock". Perhaps you'd like to be speaking German now?
It is documented that Saddam is known to have killed at least 600,000 people.
http://wais.stanford.edu/Iraq/iraq_d...sein42503.html
With this fact alone, even assuming your loss numbers are correct, we have eased the plight of the Iraqi people substantially. Yet what you so lightly dismiss - the "levelling" of towns because of a "few" gunman (and I'd like a bit more than mere accusation on that topic), is in fact sound policy. The townspeople KNOW who the insurgents are. They choose to not point them out and have them removed. Instead, they ALLOW them to hide within the general populace. Thus, they are complicit in their actions.
Let me tell you, the vast majority of soldiers in Iraq (and anywhere else) would like nothing better than to get flagged down on a patrol, told who, what and where the bad things are, and be able to handle those problems (be they people, IED's, weapon cache's, etc) discretely with a minimum of fuss (and danger). However, that doesn't happen in some places. So then you get into a bad spot, and it becomes a "you or them" equation. All the namby pampy hand wringing of "we shouldn't be there" doesn't do those grunts any more good than TP for armor at that point. Had the "innocent" civilian population stood up and not hidden the bad guys, it wouldn't get to that point. But they did. They are no longer innocent.
I'm sure this will be met with great disgust by some here, but I am going to say it anyway. Remember the story of Sodom and Gommorah? Had just a tiny segment of people be righteous, the cities would have been spared. The same applies here - had one or 2 souls in a village been brave enough to stand up for their own country and their own people, they could have saved that village.
The war has been mismanaged. Thus it has turned into a tragedy. It will not be a success until the Iraqi people truly are willing to stand up for themselves, and secure their own freedom with their own blood. Yes, sometimes they don't talk out of fear. Thankfully, there ARE a fair number that step forward and help cleanse their villages of insurgents. Those are the true Iraqi patriots - and they have saved countless lives. Lives of their fellow Iraqi's, and lives of US and allied soldiers. May Iraq find more of them among its people, and then they could truly have their freedom, and we could come home.
To those brave Iraqi's, just as I do with our own servicemen and women.... I salute you.
