Rules of War or That's not Fair!

That old line. That refrain. Where have I heard it before?

       It’s a sure sign you’re not doing well in a war when you start accusing the other side of not fighting fair.

       I’ve noticed lately, people are saying the insurgents in Iraq are evil cowards because they use innocent civilians as human shields when they plant their bombs or stage ambushes. In other words, they’re not fighting the war the way we want them to.

       Our side are the good guys because they don’t fight that way (although there have been a lot of trials of Marines lately for murder and rape, one on a fourteen year old girl).

       This mind-set is fascinating, bizarre, sophomoric, simplistic, absolutely incredulous in its mind numbing imperviousness to common sense. Sociologically, I don’t think Americans have advanced much from the days when they went to afternoon Western movie matinees and rooted for the guy in the white hat (with the white horse).

       Forget for just a second who you think is all in the right, and who’s all in the wrong in the Iraq War. Throw that out. If you were a rag-tag religious fanatic hiding in a basement, would you come out in the open and fight a set-piece battle like the Battle of Waterloo with an opponent who is ten-million times more powerful than you in firepower and technology? Would you let that opponent enjoy these overwhelming advantages so that he could easily wipe you out? As a misbegotten shoeless bearded turbaned ragamuffin, would you fight the world’s most powerful super power in a way that would give the super power all the advantages of its firepower and technology?

       In other words. How do you fight an opponent in a boxing ring as a boxer with gloves on who’s younger than you, taller than you, faster than you, a better boxer than you, more powerful than you, and smarter than you? You fight dirty. Hit low. Or clinch and run. Otherwise you’ll be knocked out.

       No!

       No way man!

       You’ll sneak around and plant bombs. Hide in basements. Use people as shields. Whatever it takes to keep your movement and you alive.

       You’d do the same thing the Vietcong did in Vietnam. Or for that matter, the American Indians (Native Americans) in the Indian Wars of the 1870s. We accused them of fighting dirty too.

       Interestingly, we today have warmer, fairly normal relations with the former Vietcong. And though Indians believed in a different God and often mutilated their victims (scalping), I never hear anyone today call them “evil."

       The insurgents are fighting the way, the only way, they can. I’m not saying they are good people. I’m not justifying what they do. Or what they think.

       But what about what we’ve done?

       If using people as human shields is unethical, is the use of state-of-the-art helicopter gun ships to indiscriminately strafe blocks of apartments where terrorists are supposedly hiding, killing women and children. Is that honorable?

       Why don’t we just take a glove out and slap the other guy across the face and challenge him to a duel?

       War itself is an obscene act. Mayhem. To say there’s a fair way to fight it…..in some twisted sort of gentlemanly fashion, with some vague rules of humane gentility observed…is ludicrous.

       If they’ve (insurgents) done wrong, we helped.

       We unleashed this Pandora’s Box when we attacked them. We initiated hostilities. That means, we started the fight. We invaded their neighborhoods with our humvees.

       It’s their country. Not ours.

       They didn’t do 9-11. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Those were lies.

       We didn’t try hard enough for a more peaceful and less costly solution. All-out war is not the only means to deal with situations we don‘t like.

       We told the UN weapons inspectors get out of the way. It’s too late.

       It was reckless. We’re all paying the price.