[IMC-Editorial] Op-Ed Submission: Stop Apologizing for Civilian Casualties

[ARI Media]

Dear Editor,

Please consider this Op-Ed submission from the Ayn Rand Institute. For
your convenience, you can download this Op-Ed from:
http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/civiliancasualties.shtml

Stop Apologizing for Civilian Casualties
The administration's policy of minimizing harm to civilians is an
unwarranted confession of guilt about waging a war strictly to safeguard
America.

By Peter Schwartz

In war, a country convinced of the rightness of its course expects its
forces to subordinate all considerations to the objective of military
victory. Our government, however, has adopted the indecisive policy of
"balancing" the goal of defeating the enemy in Iraq with the goal of
avoiding harm to civilians.

When General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
declares that great care is being taken to prevent civilian casualties,
he is not referring to the random  shooting of Iraqis; a free nation's
military does not engage in such wanton behavior. Rather, he explains:
"We're more likely to take a little bit more risk ourselves than to
bring the population in harm's way."

Thus our forces refrained from destroying Baghdad's vital power plants,
phone exchanges and television transmission towers. Even outright
military equipment was spared if it was near what the United Nations
deems a "historic site." As one military analyst at the Lexington
Institute, a Washington think tank, puts it: "We decided we would
restrain the use of air power for reasons of humanity and world image."

Here is the stark, daily meaning of this restraint, as described by a
New York Times reporter who interviewed two marines: "They were most
frustrated by the practice of some Iraqi soldiers to use unarmed women
and children as shields against American bullets. They called the tactic
cowardly but agreed that it had been effective. Both Sergeant [Eric]
Schrumpf and Corporal [Mikael] McIntosh said they had declined several
times to shoot at Iraqi soldiers out of fear they might hit civilians."

Hussein is saying, in effect, "Let me keep shooting at you, or I will
shoot my civilians"--and we're complying. Why? What right does anyone
have to demand that these marines let enemy soldiers go, in order to
avoid harming innocent civilians? Aren't the *marines* innocent victims?
Aren't all Americans, who have to worry about Hussein's criminal-state,
innocent victims?

Clearly, administration officials feel guilty for giving primacy to
*our* lives and *our* interests in waging this war. They believe that a
policy of using whatever force is necessary to win is morally
tainted--it is too "selfish." So we "balance" this by sacrificing our
safety for that of the civilians, or by diverting major resources and
manpower to feeding them, or by officially naming the campaign
"Operation Iraqi Freedom" rather than "Operation American Security," or
by promising to rebuild their country at our expense.

And when Iraqis shoot at our troops from inside a mosque, our troops
refuse to return fire. And even when they do target civilian structures,
or civilian personnel, our military authorities are very defensive in
justifying such action.

By any rational standard of morality, any wartime harm to the most
innocent of Iraqis is *entirely* the responsibility of their government.
Our moral right, and responsibility, is to do everything possible to
safeguard *American* lives, however many civilian casualties that goal
may require. We may lament the loss of innocent Iraqis during the war,
just as we lament the loss of innocent Americans. But we should not
*apologize*, since the blame, in both cases, rests entirely with the
enemy, who made it necessary for us to wage war to defend ourselves
against his threat.

President Bush thinks he can mollify our detractors, particularly in the
Muslim world, by showing how "humanitarian" we are. But his policy
simply *reinforces* their view of America as immoral for launching a
"selfish," imperialistic war. It is an open confession of guilt, and an
offer to atone by protecting the Iraqis at the cost of American lives.
By accepting responsibility for civilian casualties, President Bush is
announcing that a war fought solely to make Americans secure is morally
dubious.

And if moral legitimacy during the war comes from sacrificing our
interests to the needs of the civilians, then moral legitimacy after the
war may come from sacrificing our interests to the demands of the U.N.
Consider the views of Colin Powell, as described by the New York Times:
"Mr. Powell said that to counter global antiwar sentiments, the United
States would seek a major role for the United Nations in a democratic
postwar Iraq. . . . He said the United Nations was needed to provide
'international legitimacy' to the occupation." So he is willing to have
a postwar Iraq molded by the anti-American despots who dominate the
United Nations--a process that will undo politically everything that we
will have accomplished in Iraq militarily.

Like his father before him, a morally uncertain President Bush may end
up permitting "world opinion" to prevent America from eliminating the
Iraqi threat. He can avoid that path if his administration stops feeling
guilty for civilian casualties and stops undermining the justness of a
war waged strictly to protect America.
________________________________________________________________________
_________
Mr. Schwartz, editor and contributing author of Return of the Primitive:
The Anti-Industrial Revolution by Ayn Rand, is chairman of the board of
directors of the Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org) in Irvine, Calif.
The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas
Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

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with your publication's name and the expected date of publication. Thank
you.

David Holcberg
Ayn Rand Institute
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