Behind my appraoch to any large military engagement is the fact that I am a pacifict - up to a point. Of course I'll kill - or try to, anyway, it's not easy for most human being to kill others, that's part of why soldiers need intensive training - if my life or the life of someone dear to me is in danger and I can't se any other way of dealing with the situation.
As a philosophical choice, that runs all the way up - I'll support a small scale intervention (like that attempt to capture bin Laden I discussed above) if it's demonstrably the only way to deal with the situation.
I need to have a hell of a lot of evidence that everything else has been tried and nothing else can possibly work before I can feel that a large scale military intervention is justified.
Such a force requires the direct support of thousands of ordinary people. It receives support in the form of money and aid from hundreds of thousands. (Australians are know this well from Vietnam, which is studied in schools these days.) Legally, every one of them is a legitimate miltary target under the Geneva Convention.
I try to balance two points of view at once. I agree that people must be held accountable for their actions.
I also feel that people who have been victimised and forced or deceived into supporting a criminal action, committed either by a state or by an organisation located within a state and receiving support from that state, should not be victimised a second time.
It's far too clear to me that large scale engagements end up hurting not just the people who wanted to commit some form of aggression, and the people who were willing to provide support, but also the people who had no idea what was going on, the people who were terrorised into standing by, if not actively supporting, the wives and children and employees of supporters, who in many countries may have no way at all to choose other than their husband/father/employer has chosen, and so on.
I think we are seeing that bombing a country and killing large numbers of civilians - complicit or not - is not an effective way of saving the people of that country from oppressive and/or criminal leaderships.
I freely admit that I have no idea what might be an effective way, and I sometimes suspect that there is no way to do it - one has to wait until the people themselves are ready, and then, if you want to support them, fine, but leave them to lead the regime change in their own country. I am becoming more and more sure that military occupation or imposing "peace" or "democracy" isn't the answer.
Afterall, it was a totalitarian and military rule that kept warring factions in both the former Yugoslavia and in Hussein's Irag working relatively well together for decades in both countries - remove the force imposing peace from above, and chaos ensues.
no subject
As a philosophical choice, that runs all the way up - I'll support a small scale intervention (like that attempt to capture bin Laden I discussed above) if it's demonstrably the only way to deal with the situation.
I need to have a hell of a lot of evidence that everything else has been tried and nothing else can possibly work before I can feel that a large scale military intervention is justified.
Such a force requires the direct support of thousands of ordinary people. It receives support in the form of money and aid from hundreds of thousands. (Australians are know this well from Vietnam, which is studied in schools these days.) Legally, every one of them is a legitimate miltary target under the Geneva Convention.
I try to balance two points of view at once. I agree that people must be held accountable for their actions.
I also feel that people who have been victimised and forced or deceived into supporting a criminal action, committed either by a state or by an organisation located within a state and receiving support from that state, should not be victimised a second time.
It's far too clear to me that large scale engagements end up hurting not just the people who wanted to commit some form of aggression, and the people who were willing to provide support, but also the people who had no idea what was going on, the people who were terrorised into standing by, if not actively supporting, the wives and children and employees of supporters, who in many countries may have no way at all to choose other than their husband/father/employer has chosen, and so on.
I think we are seeing that bombing a country and killing large numbers of civilians - complicit or not - is not an effective way of saving the people of that country from oppressive and/or criminal leaderships.
I freely admit that I have no idea what might be an effective way, and I sometimes suspect that there is no way to do it - one has to wait until the people themselves are ready, and then, if you want to support them, fine, but leave them to lead the regime change in their own country. I am becoming more and more sure that military occupation or imposing "peace" or "democracy" isn't the answer.
Afterall, it was a totalitarian and military rule that kept warring factions in both the former Yugoslavia and in Hussein's Irag working relatively well together for decades in both countries - remove the force imposing peace from above, and chaos ensues.