All Is Fair in Love and War Crimes

Aftermath of a CIA drone-strike that killed 16 year old Tariq Aziz and 12 year old Waheed Khan. Waziristan, Pakistan.

Warfare has changed much in the decades following the carnage of the Second World War, and the brutal wholesale destruction of the A-bomb has been replaced by the lethal practicality of the unmanned drone. On one hand the effectiveness of drone strikes is clear. According to a New York Times article published in May of 2009 entitled "Death From Above, Outrage Down Below":

"The appeal of drone attacks for policy makers is clear. For one thing, their effects are measurable. Military commanders and intelligence officials point out that drone attacks have disrupted terrorist networks in Pakistan, killing key leaders and hampering operations. Drone attacks create a sense of insecurity among militants and constrain their interactions with suspected informers. And, because they kill remotely, drone strikes avoid American casualties." - David Kilcullen & Andrew Mcdonald Exum

But as the article continues to clarify, drone-strikes do more damage to the countries they are supposed to be freeing from tyranny than they do good; all at the expense of American prestige in the region. Drones simply kill too many civilians. whenever drones are used to destroy military targets abroad, it only increases the popularity of the militant extremists they are meant to target. People are more fearful of a faceless enemy that kills wantonly from hundreds of miles away than they are afraid of the extremists occupying their own communities.

Drone strikes kill vastly more civilians than they do actual terror suspects and terrorist leaders. According to human rights group Reprieve, that number comes out to 41 men targeted and 1,147 killed. That is a success rate of 3.5%, hardly accurate although accuracy is the very label these strikes have been sold under to the American public since even before the Bush administration. And these results are not partisan. Unmanned drone strikes have continued to overwhelmingly kill civilians under Obama's administration as the US continues its misguided military presence in the Levant.

What really should make the average citizen angry about these strikes is that the US government is never made to answer for these crimes the same way that despots and dictators in the Middle East and elsewhere are. If Assad is the one firing the missiles then he is a criminal, if it is the Pentagon ordering the strikes then it can just be chalked up to tactical error. But these are not error percentages on a computer screen, (or even more colloquially disdainful, 'bugsplats') these are innocent human lives being forfeited for the sake of preserving an American idea of peace in the communities in which they are trying to make a living. 

The United States will likely never have to answer for the lives of civilians taken in places like Pakistan or Iraq. When a Western power is at war, it seems only the country on the receiving end can be to blame. Even in the case of civilians. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't condemn these actions for what they are: acts of terror. An act of terror should not be labelled differently depending on who is the initiator and who is the recipient. 

East vs. West: The Superpower Squeeze of Sovereignty in Ukraine

Armed men in front of a tank. Donbas region.

There is a war raging in eastern Ukraine that threatens the stability of the entirety of Europe and possibly the world. It does not equal the Syrian Civil War in terms of casualties or refugees, but it reflects deeper underlying problems in the region that could lead to further bloodshed between Western powers and the Russian Federation.

In the winter of 2013-2014, Ukrainian nationalists in the Maidan revolution ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych and put pro-EU candidate Petro Poroshenko in power. Shortly after, Vladimir Putin seized control of the Crimea, a semi-autonomous region in the south of Ukraine which encouraged pro-Russian separatists in the east of Ukraine to then declare independence in a region known as Donbas. In the year and a half since then, the war has continued to rage in Donbas between the Ukrainian military and the rebel forces supported by Putin.

The United States has so far supported the new Ukrainian government because they are pro-Western and wish to be granted entry in the EU. Russia supports the secession of Donbas and defends their claims on Crimea because it is Putin's goal to create a Eurasian sphere of influence for Russia to once again reassert itself as a global power. When the Ukrainian people rejected his offer of inclusion in his newly formed Eurasian Union, in favor of the European Union, it was a great blow to Russian economic plans in Eastern Europe. Putin has also shown great initiative in the Middle East as an ally of Assad's fight against Daesh and other rebel groups in Syria; no matter the political implications. The Russian military is out-showing their rivals in NATO in that region. And so it is in Ukraine where it seems that despite crippling economic sanctions, Russia is unwilling to back down on their stance in the country.

Unlike the United States, the Russians also have a deep cultural impetus to gaining more control in Ukraine. The land that comprises Ukraine  forms the heartland of the ancient homeland of the Rus and some of the oldest Russian cities can be found there, including Kiev which is arguably even more historically significant to the Russian people than Moscow. The West is willing to offer paltry support to the Ukrainian government, but we do not feel the same deep connection to the land that the Russians do. That being said, neither the Russian government nor the Ukrainian government should be allowed to decide what determines the sovereignty of any particularly region of the country.

We need to care about what is happening in Ukraine. Not because we should wish to be the ones dominating the Ukrainian sphere of economics and politics rather than the Russians, but because both the Russians and the West are allowing this country to fall apart all for the sake of more power. It is this hunger for power that is truly reprehensible, that is causing a rift to form in Ukraine. Instead of competing for influence over a country that is too weak to be able to reform on its own, we should be joining together to figure out a solution to the issues in Ukraine so that all of its citizens may strive for a better and freer life.

Stop Calling Iraq War Vets Heroes

 Veteran’s Day is upon us, so here is something to think about?  Why do we call our veterans "heroes" when they return from deployment?  If our definition of a hero is someone who sacrificed so much for the good of so many, then the term perhaps applies to veterans of World War II, maybe Korea.  This is not to say that the sacrifices of Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan Veterans should not be acknowledged daily and honored consistently by our government and our society, but their sacrifices worked counter to the interests of the countries both in and for which they fought.  Vietnam is still a communist country; Iraqis and Afghans have seen their homes destroyed, their family members killed, and their land depleted of natural resources.  Veterans themselves are homeless and killing themselves at a rate of 22 per day.  The country in which their sacrifices largely go unnoticed or unappreciated is bankrupt and crippled economically, due to the War each vet has gone through in his or her own way.

In other words, calling Iraq War veterans "heroes" is not only something they don’t want, but it is also something which makes the mission seem more heroic than in reality.  This is a very dangerous thing.  If Americans are allowed to believe Iraq War Veterans are heroes, they might just start to believe that the Iraq War was a heroic effort by the American military that produced a great number of heroes, even though it was a most definitely a tragic effort from the start.  Even still, the mission of any soldier is never the mission of the president or his generals.  Those missions are almost always political.  An ordinary soldier’s mission is their brother-in-arms first and themselves second.  It is survival or, if they aren’t in combat, the mission is hard work and dedication to their job of cooking or cleaning or operating a radio, etc.

So, instead of treating vets as "heroes," we should be treating them as "survivors" – survivors of this American political process.  Vets are survivors of the American idiocy, ignorance, greed, arrogance, hypocrisy, and violence that landed them in brutal combat and then ignored their needs and the needs of their families.  They are not heroes of some political cause or global effort towards peace.  Heroes ought to exist in movies and comic books only.  When we call vets "heroes," we run the risk of thinking they can handle any stressful situation.  The instinctual tendency to call a veteran a "hero" is, therefore, most certainly linked to the absence of healthcare and mental healthcare for returning vets.  After all, why does Superman need a doctor?  Often our social problems in America are deeply rooted an ideological error in Americans’ heads regarding the issue.  Let’s try really hard to fix this one on Veteran’s Day, 2015, and every day after that.

Are You Addicted to War?  Then Why Is Your Country?

What happens when you buy a laptop, a shirt, a new car, a tennis racket?  You want to get the most use out of it as you can, don’t you?  You want to wear, drive or swing whatever it is you have spent your hard earned dollars on as much as you possibly can before you have to get rid of it or upgrade.  In other words, when people invest money into something, they have an “interest” in that particular something.  They feel obligated to take care of it, and find it hard to depart with a product without getting the full use or satisfaction out of that particular product.

The same principle of human psychology applies when, on a national scale, we commit ourselves to war.  War costs money and the United States of America spent a lot of it when we sustained (and continue to sustain) our 14-year-long, and counting, military involvement in the Middle East.  The difference in price between the U.S.’s war(s) in the Middle East and the price of a tennis racket is equal to the difference between how difficult it would be to part with a tennis racket, and how difficult it would be to part with something on which you spent 4 trillion dollars.

Politicians, media pundits, fellow bloggers, and others will say that we remain entrenched in our battle stances because of our “interests” in the region.  Well, the longer we stay there, the more money we spend, the more lives we lose in that forsaken desert, and the more our “interests” will grow.  Looking back, for example, to the moment Isis overtook Ramadi in May of this year, how ridiculous does it now seem to hear pundits and politicians pontificate about how “American lives were lost" to take a particular city during the Iraq War and Iraq insurgency,? 

There appeared to be this need to keep Ramadi because of the blood, money and oil we poured into it.  What more people, especially those in charge of our military, our finances and our political system need to understand is that the urgency for action in the Middle East comes not from its inherent problems as an unstable region, but from what the U.S. has already committed economically, militarily, and emotionally.  In many ways, our expensive wars are less like a casual shopping spree and more like a terrible gambling addiction.  Know when to fold ‘em America.