RALL VS. PATTON:

Drop the Bomb: Why War Talk Is Cheap (Ted Rall, September 17, 2002, AlterNet)

Whenever presidents want to flex American muscle, they bomb. This has been particularly true when leaders don't care to justify the use of military force to the public, as with Ronald Reagan's bombing of Libya and Bill Clinton's cruise missile attacks against Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998. Both strikes hit the wrong targets -- the latter taking out a pharmaceutical plant, the former Col. Khaddafi's young daughter -- but a potential PR debacle was avoided by the fact that American lives were neither risked nor lost. This is precisely why bombs should be banned.

Don't laugh -- war can be made more civilized. [...]

If the people of a nation feel a strong moral compulsion to attack another nation, if they truly believe in the righteousness of their cause, the least that they can do to demonstrate that resolve is to send their young men and women into harm's way to fight. Those who seek to take the lives of others ought to be willing to risk their own. [...]

Ultimately, bombs make war too easy. Leaders are less likely to engage in military aggression if going to war will cost the lives of their own people. The risk of large-scale loss is a big political gamble. By their nature, bombs make "enemy" lives cheap and "your" lives expensive. We see this phenomenon as Americans discuss attacking Iraq; sure, we're willing to kill thousands of Iraqis, but only if we lose very few Americans in the process. It's all too cold and painless.

You have to give Ted Rall credit for consistency anyway, he's so far Left he even wants to impose egalitarianism on warfare. Of course, any decent person will find ridiculous the idea that Americans need to die to prove we're serious about fighting dictatorship. Perhaps Mr. Rall has forgotten General George S. Patton's dictum: "Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." Crank up the Enola Gay and let the other poor dumb bastards die defending evil. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 21, 2002 10:04 AM