Last week I wore a t-shirt to class that read
"Beat the Hell out of bin Laden" on the front and "Whoop!" on the back. I bought it with my girlfriend, who goes to Texas A&M, last month. The term "Whoop!" is a traditional crowd-chant at A&M football games, suggesting we go about this with all the intensity of a football team.
A few people in my 2A showed obvious revulsion at the statement but didn't seem up to talking to me about it. This hasn't been the first time I've heard of criticism for our current policy in Afghanistan or more broadly, the very idea of war itself. I'd just like to throw it all out on the table right now. Excuse me as I digress.
Starting at the specifics, some people are saying that the United States is only going to kill innocent people by bombing Afghanistan. References to Desert Storm are common, particularly among Government majors. "Well we bombed schools and orphanages in Baghdad, we obviously don't care about killing innocent people!"
A quick overview of other facts seems necessary here. Yes, the U.S. did bomb schools and orphanages in Baghdad, killing innocent people, but not because we were unscrupulous. Saddam Hussein specifically picked buildings that from the air resembled schools and orphanages to place anti-aircraft weaponry, communication apparatus, and other strategic targets for the U.S. military.
In other words, he used his own people as bait. In one instance he actually did place weaponry in a school daring the bombers to act, and they did. It was a clever although inhuman thing to do, and the bombers weren't perfect at identifying their targets.
Besides, if the mission were to be successful, it had to be done. I can only imagine how hard a decision that must have been for those pilots and their superiors.
Osama bin Laden is a criminal, regardless of his cause. I have no doubt he has real, legitimate issues with the United States, but intentionally targeting and killing innocent people who have no idea why he's angry is not the way to voice them. For a variety of reasons, the Taliban regime refuses to cooperate in bringing this criminal to justice, and so we are left with either saying "pretty please" or invading the country in order to get him.
Neither Bush nor Rumsfeld nor Powell are jumping up and down yelling "Alright, time to blow stuff up!" They see it as a necessary evil, as do I. If we do not fight, more innocent Americans will die and our very freedom is itself a target.
If you go to cnn.com you'll see that the bombing targets in Afghanistan haven't been schools or homes. They've been strategic installations such as anti-aircraft weaponry and airforce bases, and only those with guns pointing toward us have been killed.
I sincerely hope the rest of the campaign can be this clean, but then again I'm not fighting the war so I realize I might not have any understanding, much less a valid opinion, about how it is fought. That's not to say I cannot be critical of our policy, yet I have to be constantly aware of my ignorance in such matters. All I know is that we're doing the best we can and unfortunately there is no such thing as a perfect strategy.
I don't glorify war. I don't celebrate people killing each other. Yet I refuse to protest what is going on right now on the other side of the world, just as I refuse to disregard the debt I owe to the names on the wall on my way to my Hinman Box, or the little mugshots on the wall next to Collis Caf. Names and pictures of people who once passed through the very classrooms and libraries in which I now study. They are Dartmouth alumni who fought and died in France, the South Pacific, or Vietnam, and anyone who ever protested war on principle has spit on their graves.
"War is hell," some general once said, and sadly it has proven itself to be an ever-present apparition throughout human history. Whether the Babylonians, the Mongols, the Zulus, or Americans, history shows us that we have yet to find a way to solve all of our problems without resorting to armed combat. Do I wish it were different? You're damn right I do. Do I hope that one day it can be? I do.
But that time has not yet come, and for the freedoms and liberties all of us in this country enjoy, war must regrettably continue. If those who came before us were all pacifists during the World War I or World War II, for example, our great country would not even exist, and neither would this institution. Hell, we'd probably all be speaking German.
