Stardate 20030204.1319

(On Screen): Sean-Paul, "The Agonist", is strongly leftist but has with great reluctance concluded that war against Iraq is a necessary evil. But he wants to make sure that people like me, who have been advocating war for a long time, don't feel any satisfaction in helping to convince him of this, and proceeds to castigate us all. He knows war is evil and hates it but has become convinced that it is necessary. The rest of us, on the other hand, are heartless bastards who are fascinated with war because we see it as a grand version of a video game; we don't understand the cost and don't care about the pain and suffering. We're too stupid and insensitive to have any concept of what we're really after. So his advocacy of war is moral and profound; our comparable advocacy of war is immoral and venal.

What I do want to say is that all of you warbloggers out there are fucking pathetic. Young American men and women are going to die very soon. And like the poem I quoted in the previous post you are all "smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by" and you mother fuckers better "sneak home and pray you'll never know/The hell where youth and laughter go."

People like Andrew Sullivan and countless others are sickening. Your asses will never be in the firing line. You'll never have bullets whizzing around your head. You'll never see bloated, distended and putrefying flesh. You will never smell death on the battle field. So how fucking dare you sorry ass chicken hawks root for war. You are the worst of the worst. You are worse than those stupid fucking A.N.S.W.E.R. people. Why?

Because all you will do is sit at home and watch the bombs drop on Fox News and think it is all like a video game. You people make me sick.

War is an awful burden. You treat it like it is Doom 3.1 or something.

I am not into predicting anything. But I will make this one prediction, once. If the war goes badly you will be the first to condemn it. And your cowardice will mark you till your dying days.

So save your fucking rhetoric and start praying. Americans will soon be dying so that you can remain an ass.

The only advocate for war that he explicitly names is Andrew Sullivan, and I do wonder if he may end up using a "no true Scotsman" argument here for others, such that each time a war advocate is shown to clearly understand the gravity of war he would simply say that those were not the guys he was talking about.

For example, there are the people over at Sergeant Stryker's Daily Briefing. All of them are either veterans or are currently serving. Some of them have actually been in combat. They have personal friends who have been mobilized. Sergeant Mom's daughter, Corporal Blondie, is in the Marines and has been deployed to the Gulf. These are not people unfamiliar with the reality of war, but they're in favor of this one.

Donald Sensing is a retired military officer; he served in the artillery. After he left the service he went through divinity school and became a minister. After the war began, he attempted to reenlist to become a military chaplain (which, by the way, is not the safest job in the Army).

I never served. But I have no illusions about the terrible things which happen in a war, and I've written many times here about that. I worry about our own soldiers, and I worry about the soldiers of the enemy. In January I wrote:

And as is always the case for me in the days before combat begins, I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I have been advocating this war all along. I still do. We must fight it. We cannot wait any longer.

But there are a lot of good people in those ships, who are going to put themselves into harm's way for the rest of us, and I know that some of them won't come back. I'm terribly afraid for them.

I know they'll fight well. I am absolutely certain that they'll prevail. I know that none of them are eager for combat, but they're all ready for it, and they're as prepared as it is possible for them to be. They are tough and they are confident and they will do what they need to do.

And I know that they're fighting in a good cause, and I have no doubts about the decision to send them. But all we can do, here on the home front, is to sweat it out and hope for the best (and pray if you got 'em).

When you read the headlines, as combat begins and as the war develops, remember that we're not moving counters around on a map. It's not a real-life replay of the SuperBowl. The people who fall down don't get back up. They're real people fighting for us; they're our neighbors and our friends; our sons and daughters and cousins; some of them are mothers and fathers. The Iraqis will be shooting real bullets at them. This is no sporting event. It's deeply serious and horribly ugly and incredibly dangerous.

We must fight and we must win, and we will. But we will pay a high price to do so, and we must remember the price, and remember those who pay it, and know that victory is always dearly bought, even if there's only one casualty.

The deep flaw in Sean-Paul's argument is the same one which inhabits all of the leftist anti-war arguments: they want to blame us (war advocates, nations which go to war) for the evils which will come (or may come) in the war, but refuse to take responsibility for the evils which would happen if we did not do so. Sean-Paul says that you'll never see bloated, distended and putrefying flesh. The biggest reason we need to fight in Iraq is to make sure that we here in the US don't see such things (though it should be pointed out that there are a million people in NYC who have first-hand experience with the reality of war). The point of fighting in Iraq is to try to make sure that we don't end up fighting here in the US instead. It is because I know only too well how awful war is that I advocate attacking Iraq.

If it were a choice between fighting in Iraq and not fighting at all, I would not advocate war. That seems to be the unspoken assumption in most anti-war (or anti-warblogger) rhetoric: the only reason there's going to be war is because we're going to cause it. If we just give up on that, no wars will happen at all. I don't believe that. What I think is that if we don't take the war to our enemies, they will eventually bring the war to us. My choice is not between war and no war, but between limited and controlled wars fought on our own terms elsewhere, and unlimited and devastating war fought in the US itself. I can't accept the latter, so I am forced to advocate the former.

But I categorically deny his final accusation: But I will make this one prediction, once. If the war goes badly you will be the first to condemn it. No, I won't.

Everything in life is a risk. Every decision we make, everything we do, involves a risk of tragedy. Even a decision to drive to the store to buy some bread involves a risk of getting in a serious car accident. When you go to the bank, you might be there when it's robbed. If you fly on a jet you might be on board when it's hijacked.

Some risks are recognizable and you can work to reduce them. My chance of getting in a car accident is low in part because I try to drive both safely and defensively. But some chances are not quantifiable; some you don't even know you're taking. Some you are aware of but can do nothing about.

When I worked in product development, I never worked on projects whose outcome directly involved risk to human lives. But I did risk millions of dollars which were not mine (belonging to stockholders) on engineering projects whose outcome was not certain. When you face major challenges like that, you do your best ahead of time to figure out all the risks, and you try to plan for the kinds of things which can go wrong. You make sure you have contingency plans. And once you commit, you try to monitor the process to see if you can spot problems and to fix them before they become catastrophic. You have to be versatile and ready to respond to the unexpected, for it is impossible to anticipate every problem.

And even if you do all those things, and perform to the best of your ability, sometimes it all goes sour. It's happened to me. Some projects don't succeed. Some lose money. When that happens I feel bad, of course, but all you can do in that case is to accept that this time you failed, and next time you'll try to do better. You learn from your mistake, accept the consequences of it, and move on.

Anyone who refuses to risk failure will never accomplish anything worthwhile. Anything worth doing involves some element of risk, and that means that sometimes you won't pull it out. Sometimes your opponent (such as a competing company) will do something you didn't expect. Sometimes the market will change. But refusing to risk failure is to guarantee failure.

I believe that this war in Iraq is necessary. I hope that our military planners will pull it off rapidly, with a relatively low body count. But if risks in business are great, in war they are immense. Our people on the spot will do the best they can, but it may turn out badly. I do not think there is any chance of us failing to win, but we might well win only after piling up an immense number of casualties both friendly and enemy. And if that happens, I will feel extremely bad, just as I do after a project fails only more so.

But I will not retroactively decide it was a mistake. I will see it as a risk which went badly. That happens, in life and in war. And I cannot avoid the problem; the problem won't go away just because I refuse to deal with it. I have a responsibility as a citizen to make and advocate a real choice on this, and everything I know about it tells me that the risk of disaster associated with fighting is bad, but the risk of disaster associated with not fighting is even worse.

Sean-Paul thinks he knows what we are risking. He thinks he knows what evil we must do. He reluctantly agrees that war is necessary anyway. Why is it that he has such a hard time accepting the idea that others may also know those things, and also advocate war? Why does he believe he is the only person who can advocate war and remain moral while doing so?