[thechat] name of Operation Infinite Justice to be changed

[Martin]

Bill Haenel wrote on 21/9/01 7:49 pm

>> >At that time, large numbers of Americans stood up and said WAR SUCKS, WE
>> >DON'T WANT WAR. Have Americans changed their minds since then? Or will we
>> >hold true to those ideals that so many spoke out for during our
>> presence in
>> >Vietnam.
>>
>> But is that because
>> a) War which kills people we know is an inconvenient thing
>> b) War which kills people we know is a non-ethical thing
>
>This seems to me to be a particularly cynical and hopeless outlook(?).
>
>I was under the distinct impression it was because of something much more
>significant than inconvenience. Maybe I was just taking the bait. Maybe I've
>been had. I don't know - Does your question come from a loss of faith in
>Humanity, or just Americans? Or are you posing the question just for the
>sake of doing so? I sense incredible suspicion in your question, Martin. Am
>I reading you right?

Sorry, no, I didn't put that very well.

I meant a genuine question - it seemed to me that there were two
strands of opposition to Vietnam:

1) The moral argument - we're bombing the shite out of a poor country
    just to show the Russians that we're no pushover, and that
    "My weenie's bigger" is no justification

2) This is killing lots of our kids for no good reason - why are we
    sending our 19-year-olds off to a foreign land we don't actually
    care much about for them to return in body bags?

And I didn't know which mattered most. Which do you think it was?

Now most conflicts that the US has been part of since then have avoided
question 2 by either being so easy as to almost not count as wars at all
(eg Gulf War & Grenada), or by being carried out by proxy - the CIA
training and funding local groups to do all the nasty stuff (Afghanistan
is a good example).

Now I'm pretty sure that all of those examples are interesting
cases of the manufacture of consent - that the US gained all the
good stuff of war (patriotism, medals (8,000 medals for gallantry
were awarded to the troops who beat up a handful of Cubans in
Grenada), economic benefits to armaments manufacturers etc),
without the bad stuff (body bags primarily) - and that they
weren't thought of in the same way as 'real' wars (WWII,
Vietnam, Korea).

But I'm not sure that that adds up to a consensus that WAR (per
se) SUCKS.

Cheers
Martin

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