Terms of Endearment
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
--Aragorn's speech at the Black Gate
Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
Where you've fallen, you will stay.
In the whole universe this one
and only place is the sole place
which you have made your very own
--On the Wall of a KZ Lager,
Janos Pilinszky
Everything a lie. Everything you hear,
everything you see. So much to spew out.
They just keep coming, one after another.
You're in a box. A moving box
They want you dead, or in their lie
--A Thin Red Line (1998)
__________________
When considering terrorism or the militarization of a society, the American Revolution is a good place to start.
Let us address terms so simple nobody knows what they mean, though they use them like common coin.
In the spectrum of conflict, what is terrorism – a term which should have been defined before basing a worldwide war upon it. What is a “conflict”? Is peacekeeping (PKO) an “act of war”? Is the latter a military or a political action? Both?
Is a revolution the same thing as a rebellion? Are rebels considered soldiers? Are revolutions wars? Are Civil Wars revolutions? Are revolutions guerrilla wars or unconventional wars? Can they be all three, and be so at the same time? Can a revolution be a conventional war?
Can Counterinsurgency be a conventional war? Does winning hearts and minds have any relevance to the battlefield? Do won hearts translate to positive action? Are hearts as fickle as minds?
If COIN is not a viable mode of warfare, then what is? Is COIN terrorism counteraction? Does a nation invade another in a presumptive strike to avoid a possibility of terrorism emanating from that source? Do such invasions affect hearts and minds negatively? Do invaders ever bring peace? Are invasion and peacekeeping polar opposites, or are they the same?
If COIN is not a valid theory, then what is? Are invasions sound preemptive policy? If COIN is not the prescription for terrorism, then what is? Are military options even viable? Are there any examples of successful military operations against terrorists on a national level? Are all armies based upon terror?
Is all military power terrorism? Is institutional (governmental) violence more legitimate than non-state use of terror?
Further, are police actions wars? Are they conflicts? Can both sides be right in a war? Are wars ever justified? If so, when? Is there “good” versus “bad” killing? Is assassination an act of war?
Do warriors conduct a legitimate form of violence? Are soldiers warriors? Are warriors covered by the Geneva Conventions? Are terrorists soldiers? Are partisans soldiers? Do partisans use terror as a tactic? Are Hellfire missiles a form of terror?
Are these questions answerable? Do we define these terms currently in a meaningful manner? Do our Army manuals address and reflect these questions? Do our leaders think in these terms?
If the American Revolution was legitimate, then why are not other revolutions? Why does the U.S. support some revolutions, start others via covert operations, and oppose others (sometimes doing all three concurrently)?
Why is a Civil War not right for Iraq and Afghanistan, but it was right for America? Why do we use sneak attacks after fighting a war, especially since we were “sneak-attacked” at Pearl Harbor? Is sneakiness o.k. for our Special Operations?
Are Black Operations legal? Why are they classified?
A few idle thoughts for your consideration.
Labels: phony war on terror, rebellion, spectrum of conflict, terms of endearment, terror, terrorism, UW/GW. unconventional warfare, warfare terms
posted by rangeragainstwar at 5:37 PM
4 Comments:
Great article, sorry I don't have any answers!
Jack
Hi Jim and Lisa,
"To question all things: never to turn away from any difficulty; to accept no doctrine either from ourselves or from other people without a rigid scrutiny by negative criticism; letting no fallacy, or incoherence, or confusion of thought, step by unperceived; above all, to insist on having the meaning of a word clearly understood before using it, and the meaning of a proposition before assenting to it…"
J. S. Mill
Somewhere in heaven, Mill smiles upon RAW.
Dave
Dave,
Thank you -- lovely.
Well, Tokugawa Ieyasu is supposed to have said that the only justification for rebellion is success (and given that he was a rebel against his "lawful" overlord, he might have given it some thought. I'd be willing to buy that definition.
And as for wars, soldiers, and soldiering, well, the definition of "law" and "legal" pretty much stops at the level of the authority that is accorded the power of making and enforcing laws. So wars, which are usually between "out-groups" are pretty much a legal nothing; completely outside the legal system entirely.
Morally that's a whole 'nother thing. I'd like to think that we've gotten over the sort of "for me but not for thee" morality that justified things like slavery, rape, and conquering other people, but your mileage may vary; again, there's no "authority" to enforce the issue of legality.
So what it then comes down to is not so much who is "right" but who is stronger. The victor will declare themselves righteous, and the defeated will suffer, a situation as old as people.
With that in mind, I guess the only real ethical solution I can think of is to choose not to do things like invade other people's cribs, take their stuff, and kill them out of hand. That seems pretty much Morality 101 to me, but obviously there is a huge YMMV gap there, too.
I mean, we can't seem to even agree that "torturing helpless prisoners is bad and should be punished". I doubt if any of these other, more difficult questions, will even get much of a public airing, much less be rejected as inhuman and wrong...
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