Logic of Bombing German Civilian
Infrastructure in World War II Not Applicable to bin Laden in Afghanistan
September 18, 2001
Those of us strongly opposing
the bombing of the civilian infrastructure of Afghanistan or any other
country are often met by the argument that "we did it in World War II
against the Germans."
The situations are not
analogous.
In World War II the United
States was fighting the standing multi-million man German army. The
civilian population of Germany provided the men for that army, grew the food
to feed that army, make the guns, planes and other weapons that army used to
fight with, and through taxes provided the funds that army used to purchase
anything else it needed.
So destroying the civilian
infrastructure of German could at least be said to have been directly
related to cutting off the German army's supply of men, food, weapons and
everything else it needed to survive.
Afghanistan Situation Not
Like World War II
In the case of Afghanistan,
the opposite is true. Bin Laden's "troops" don't by and
large come from the Afghan population, but from other Arab countries.
Bin Laden's money doesn't come from taxes paid to the Afghan government;
rather, bin Laden is himself wealthy, and his group also receives funds from
individual contributors from countries outside of Afghanistan. Afghan
factories certainly don't manufacture the weapons that bin Laden purchases.
So destroying the civilian
infrastructure of Afghanistan would not have anything to do with cutting off
bin Laden's source of personnel, weapons or money.
Assuming bin Laden purchases
his food locally, destroying the civilian infrastructure could, if it
produced widespread starvation in Afghanistan, reduce bin Laden's food
supply.
But as discussed yesterday in evaluating
Bill O'Reilly's call to starve the Afghan population to force them to
overthrow their government, such a course of action would constitute
terrorism by our country: targeting civilians for injury or death in order
to further our political goals.
That would bring us down to
bin Laden's level, and forfeit our claim to moral superiority in our
campaign against him.
There are legitimate
diplomatic and military ways to bring down bin Laden, and those are the ones
that we should employ, not killing innocent Afghan civilians. |
