POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY THE DAILY TELEGRAPH'S PETER FOSTER
The American doctrine has been clear since World War II.
The bombing of civilian Japan, even before the use of nuclear weapons, bordered on the insane.
General LeMay (later in the 1950s, Pentagon advocate of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Russia) was a psychopathic man in charge. Bombers could not even locate secondary targets in the last days.
General MacArthur wanted to use nuclear weapons on China during the Korean conflict. This kind of lunacy combined with a tendency to disobey orders was what got him sacked.
In Vietnam, the only way the U.S. managed to kill about 3 million people and leave a landscape permanently scarred by seas of Agent Orange and carpet-bombing was the horrendous use of air power.
The numbers of Iraqis killed in Desert Storm have never been released. American soldiers used bulldozers to create mass, unmarked graves on the desert.
The U.S. refused over and over to report the dead or send along effects to the Red Cross as they are obliged by Geneva Conventions treaty to do.
Estimates range from 100,000 to 250,000 in that extremely brief war (the U.S. lost 129 soldiers, part of them shot by their own troops). One American demographer estimated about 150,000, about forty percent women and children. The demographer was fired from her government job.
While Hussein did set the horrible fires to oil wells, generally gone unreported was the fact that a number of them were set by B-52s.
For a full decade after Desert Storm, America bombed Iraqis regularly on a small scale, always claiming there were violations of the 'no-fly' zone, something that seems a little preposterous in view of the horrendous defeat Iraq had sustained.
The deaths of tens of thousands of children during that period in Iraq had largely to do with the deliberate bombing destruction of electricity-generating and water purification during Desert Storm and the country's inability to repair them. Ghastly beyond words.
Of course, the American 'victory' in Afghanistan was little more than American planes bombing the crap out of the Taleban (and anyone else nearby) while the Northern Alliance advanced on the ground.
In Iraq, deaths from the invasion have been estimated by experts at 650,000. The U.S. used the nightmare concept of 'shock and awe' which so clearly is derived from Hitler's Blitzkrieg.
Tens of thousands of children were killed and mutilated. The pictures could be found on al Jazeera but never, never in American news broadcasts or newspapers.
The one hundred or so journalists killed largely by Americans there, an extraordinary number, show the American military's attitude toward truth. Bush openly considered bombing the network's offices.
This ugly doctrine has, I think, several roots. One, Americans just do not regard the rest of the planet's people the way they regard themselves. Poll after poll supports this. It wouldn't be such a problem were they not always invading people.
Two, if you have a power, unfortunately, sooner or later it will be used. The power to destroy many from the air is irresistible.
Three, this tendency is made more forceful by America's Moby Dick syndrome, always hunting for the great white whale. Hunting the Evil One, whether communists or Muslims, is something locked into the American psyche. It likely reflects its Puritan gene pool.
Four, of course, these are all supported by the impulse to protect one's own troops, but this impulse like any other can be out of proportion, and it is insanely so in America.
Little Suzy or Jimmy joined up to get a college education in many cases, enjoying also the idea of being considered patriotic for doing so, not to actually go to war.
