The way I came across his despicable writing was by researching the idea that it is OK to kill innocents in war, that it is justified and moral. As recently as World War II, both sides targeted and killed civilians. It wasn't until 1949 that the U.S. signed the Geneva Accords which outlawed the killing of civilians. It was supposed to end after that, but the civilian death toll in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War were astronomical. Brown University just came out with its report that direct deaths from violence in the War on Terror are 801,000, and total deaths are at at least 3 million That's 3 million men, women, and children. Now on to Mr. Ghate's statements, and note that these statements of his were made when we were on verge of attacking Iraq in 2003.
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If President Bush makes the solemn decision to go to war with Iraq in self-defense, he must not shackle our nation — as he did in Afghanistan — with his own personal religious or altruistic notions. As president, he has no right to worry about civilian causalities in enemy territory. As president, his chosen obligation is to achieve U.S. victory while safeguarding the lives of each and every one of the courageous Americans who have volunteered to defend America.
The government of a free nation is simply the agent of its citizens, charged with one fundamental responsibility: to secure the individual rights — and very lives — of its citizens through the use of retaliatory force. An aspect of this responsibility is to uphold each citizen’s right to self-defense, a responsibility our government in part meets by eliminating terrorist states that threaten U.S. citizens.
If, however, in waging war our government considers the deaths of civilians in terrorist states as a cost that must be weighed against the deaths of our own soldiers (or civilians), or as a cost that must be weighed against achieving victory over the enemy, our government thereby violates its most basic function. It becomes not an agent for our self-defense, but theirs.
Morally, the U.S. government must destroy our aggressors by whatever means are necessary and minimize U.S. casualties in the process.
To be victorious in war, a free nation has to destroy enough of the aggressor to break his will to continue attacking (and, then, dismantle his war apparatus and, where necessary, replace his government). In modern warfare, this almost always necessitates “collateral damage,” i.e., the killing of civilians.
In fact, victory with a minimum of one’s own casualties sometimes requires a free nation to deliberately target the civilians of an aggressor nation in order to cripple its economic production and/or break its will. This is what the U.S. did in WWII when it dropped fire bombs on Dresden and Hamburg and atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These bombings were moral acts. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for instance, precipitated Japan’s surrender and so achieved victory with no further U.S. casualties. In that context, to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers in a ground attack on Japan would have been morally monstrous.
But, it will be objected, is it not more monstrous to kill all those innocent civilians?
No. The moral principle is: the responsibility for all deaths in war lies with the aggressor who initiates force, not with those who defend themselves. (Similarly, if in self-defense you shoot a hit man about to kill you, and also strike the innocent bystander the hit man was deliberately using as a shield, moral responsibility for the bystander’s death lies with the hit man not you.)
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That is incredible! It is surreal. That he defends the firebombing of Dresden, a sanctuary city that was completely devoid of military significance, and the nuking of the population centers Hiroshima and Nagasaki is amazing. And he doesn't even know the history. The U.S. was already in talks with the Japanese about surrender, and they had already agreed in principle to surrender. They had only one sticking point: they wanted their Emperor Hirohito exempted from being charged with war crimes since he was not a military or political leader. We were demanding unconditional surrender, and they did unconditionally surrender after we dropped the bombs. But, the fact is that we never did go after Hirohito, and he lived a long life, dying of natural causes in 1989.
Ghate's rant was written some months before the start of the Iraq War, before it was widely known that every single excuse for launching that war was a falsehood and a lie. And amazingly, he thought that Iraq was the aggressor in that war. WE CROSSED THE OCEAN TO ATTACK THEM, not vice versa. Yet somehow, that twisted, deranged freak actually referred to them as the aggressor. For having done what?
Of course, I am aware that Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1989, and I don't defend that. But, a war was already fought over that, and you can't use it again to start a new war.
What about the fact that Saddam Hussein gassed his own people in the 1980s? Well, Ghate can't use that as a reason because he made it clear that he only cares about American lives, not Iraqi lives. But, the fact is that many respected researchers say that Saddam did not gas the Kurds.
http://themillenniumreport.com/2018/04/even-the-court-proceedings-prove-saddam-hussein-never-gassed-the-kurds/
But, even if you don't believe that, the fact is no one is entitled to start a war in 2003 over something that happened in 1988 and which they have known about for 15 years. After 15 years, it's not a reason to start a war; it is an excuse to start one.
I say it is very easy to determine who is the aggressor in any war. You don't have to be an Ayn Rand scholar. In a war, the country that invades/attacks the other is the agressor. When the United States CROSSED AN OCEAN to invade/attack Iraq that made us the aggressor. As to our reasons for doing it, our charges against them, our fears about what they might do if they ever got this or that weapon, all of that was just talking points. It was all rationalizations. It was war propaganda; and, as it turned out, war lies.
The United States had no right to invade/attack Iraq in 2003, and that means that not only was our killing of Iraqi civilians monstrously wrong, but so was our killing of Iraqi soldiers. The soldiers of any nation's Military are mostly young men who either got drafted or they enlisted. There is no reason to think that the young Iraqi men who were fighting us, in their capacity as soldiers, were terrorists. We burst into their country and attacked them; not vice versa. How many times do I have to say it? The terrorists were us.
And there is some irony here. Since one country has to attack another in order for there to be a war, it is the civilians in the attacked country who are in peril. The attacker's civilians are safe back home. They aren't in harm's way. American civilians weren't at risk when we invaded Iraq; just Iraqi civilians. All the deaths are on us: all the military deaths of Iraqis and Americans, and all the deaths of Iraqi civilians.
This piece by Ankar Ghate is the most vile, disgusting, and monstrous thing I have ever read in my 68 years. It is the most extreme corruption of ethics and morality that anyone has ever voiced. It is truly the personification of Satan. And yet, it is exactly what the United States has become. This guy could have been a speechwriter for George W. Bush. Here's the rest of what he wrote.
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Moreover, the objection contains a mistaken assumption: it is false that every civilian in enemy territory — whether we are speaking of Hitler’s Germany or Hirohito’s Japan or the Taliban’s Afghanistan or Hussein’s Iraq — is innocent.
Many civilians in the Middle East, for example, hate us and actively support, materially and/or spiritually, those plotting our deaths. Can one seriously maintain, for instance, that the individuals in the Middle East who celebrated by dancing in the streets on September 11 are innocent?
Other civilians in enemy states are passive, unthinking followers. Their work and economic production, however meager, supports their terrorist governments and so they are in part responsible for the continued power of our enemies. They too are not innocent-and their deaths may be unavoidable in order for America to defend itself. (Remember too that today’s civilian is tomorrow’s soldier.)
But what of those who truly are innocent?
The civilians in enemy territory who actually oppose their dictatorial, terrorist governments are usually their governments’ first innocent victims. All such individuals who remain alive and outside of prison camps should try to flee their country or fight with us (as some did in Afghanistan).
And the truly innocent who live in countries that initiate force against other nations will acknowledge the moral right of a free nation to bomb their countries and destroy their governments — even if this jeopardizes their own lives. No truly innocent civilian in Nazi Germany, for example, would have questioned the morality of the Allies razing Germany, even if he knew he may die in the attacks. No truly innocent individual wishes to become a tool of or a shield for his murderous government; he wishes to see his government toppled.
Thus it should be unsurprising that a European think tank reported last year that “a significant number of those Iraqis interviewed, with surprising candor, expressed their view that, if [regime change] required an American-led attack, they would support it.”
As a free nation our goal is our own defense, not civilian deaths, but we must not allow human shields, innocent or otherwise, to deter us from defending ourselves.
The U.S. government recognized the truth of this on September 11 when, in order to defend those citizens it could, it ordered the shooting down of any more airplanes-become-missiles, even though this meant killing not only the terrorists but also the innocent American civilians captive onboard.
The government must now recognize that the same principle applies to civilian captives in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
War is terrible but sometimes necessary. To win the war on terrorism, we must not let a mistaken concern with “innocents” deter us. As a free nation, we have the moral right to defend ourselves, even if this requires mass civilian casualties in terrorist countries.
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Deranged thinking does not get any worse than this. That is as evil as evil gets. This is the worst monster-speak every spoken. And I realize that he, personally, has probably never killed anyone. But, to the extent that words can kill, and believe me, they can, these are the worst words that have ever been written. It is the worst thought that has ever been conceived by the human mind. * * * * * * * * * *
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