There has been a recent hubbub of activity around the forums about the war in Iraq. There has also been a few suggestions on how to win it, including using torture and targeting civilians. This is simply not the way to go about it, and here's why:
First, what are the objectives? There is more to this war than a body count. These are the possible objectives I have heard so far:
1. WMDs
2. "Liberating" the Iraqi people from Saddam
3. Fighting terrorism
4. Oil
Now, for the purposesd of this article, we can ignore number 1, as there were no WMDs.
Now on to number two. Liberating the the Iraqi people. Yes, Saddam is gone. However, the reason why he was so bad in the first place is that the tortured and killed innocent Iraqis. Now, if American forces target civilians, they will be no better than Saddam. Also, if they stoop down to the level of using torture, there will always be some innocent Iraqis that get detained. First, the torturer usually doesn't like it when the torturee says "I don't know. I had nothing to do with it." So now we have the problem of torturing and killing innocent Iraqis, which makes the American forces no better than Saddam and #2 can't be part of the objectives, because if Saddam had to be removed because he was torturing and killing innocent Iraqis, and is replaced with someone who is torturing and killing innocent Iraqis, then logically the second force that removed Saddam did not intend to liberate the Iraqi people from the torturing and killing.
Fighting terrorism. I'll start with an example:
Say aliens invade the US because they found out that Bush stole the election and they need to restore democracy to America (a little farfetched, but I'm just trying to put the shoe on the other foot).
Your house is targeted in a raid. It is destroyed and your kids are killed. What are you most likely to do?
A. Realize that your kids were killed in order to liberate them and support the aliens killed your kids and blew up your house
B. Respect the aliens and support them, as the only things you understand and respect are power and violence
C. Kick some green alien ass!
Your brother is detained on suspicion of "terrorist activities." You know he was innocent, yet he is tortured and killed. What are you most likely to do?
A. Believe the aliens who say he was trying to kill you
B. Realize that he was a danger to your liberation and had to be killed
C. Kick some green alien ass!
Targeting civilians and using killing and torture can only create more terrorists. This is obviously counter-productive, and shows that objective three isn't important because the tactics used will not help in completing objective three.
There is one objective that this will help complete, though. Objective four. Killing off all the Iraqis and supporting a government that will allow American corporations (say, Halliburton, for example) to take control of Iraqi oil under the giuise of reconstrucion, using means of torture, killing and targeting civilians will accomplish objective four, and prove that objective four was the only one that really mattered. Yes, you wil "win" in Iraq if you fulfill this objective, however you will not fulfill any of the noble objectives, and it will be a victory for neocolonialism and the American empire, not for Iraq.
