February 16, 2006

Dear Mr. Barton,

I appreciate that you have taken the time to reply to me at length.

At the moment I am somewhat busy and -- since I want to give you a

full and fair reply -- I'll simply say that I'll get back as soon as I

can.

Sincerely,

Bert Sacks

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February 19, 2006

Dear Mr. Barton,

It's a cold Sunday and I am finally sitting down to reply.

I have been to Ground Zero in NYC, to the Federal Building in Oklahoma

City, even to Auschwitz and Dachau. What is so awful for me about

these places -- and I'm sure for you too -- is the deliberate killing

of civilians who are innocent of any crimes.

I was 3 when WWII ended, but I have read that when Hitler began

bombing London there was great shock in the world that a civilian

population would be targeted in this way, even in war. By the end of

the war, we had firebombed German and Japanese cities (killing more

civilians than with atomic bombs).

If you argue that killing civilians is an acceptable way of

"destroying civilian morale as a part of winning" then the first

questions are: Did this policy really help win? Will it now?

I've read, in the memoirs of General Eisenhower and Admiral Leahy

(Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), their repugnance and

renunciation of our use of the atomic bombs against Japan. Both men

say that it wasn't needed to end the war. Leahy calls it "barbaric"

to wage war this way against women and children.

In the movie "Fog of War" Robert McNamara says that his part in the

fire bombing of Japanese cities makes him a war criminal. If we lost

the war he says he'd be prosecuted.

But we didn't lose the war. If this really was needed to win WWII --

without conceding that it was -- is it still true today?

Technology has changed our current "war against terrorism" in three

major ways: it has made the weapons of war much more deadly (on all

sides); it has made fixed battles of armies more a thing of the past;

and it has made information about wars more available to peoples all

around the world much more quickly.

In the kind of guerrilla war that went on in Vietnam and now in Iraq

-- as Congress Member John Murtha points out -- it is a battle for

"the hearts and minds of the people." He claims we've lost this

battle and (as best I understand) our US generals speak to him as much

as to any other member of Congress.

I conclude -- from a strictly military, pragmatic, Machiavellian point

of view -- that past US policies (which I write about in the op-ed you

criticize) have alienated the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people

and contributed to our losing this war, not winning it.

From this same perspective -- leaving aside any consideration of

morality -- if you read Martin Luther King's Riverside Church speech

about Vietnam, what he says about the relation of our policies there

to the Vietnamese people is very relevant in Iraq.

But now I'd like to turn to the legal and moral issues involved.

Our legal definition of terrorism is the endangering or taking of

civilian life to coerce or intimidate a population or government.

If we argue that killing civilians is acceptable to "destroy civilian

morale" in order to win (whether it actually does or not), the next

questions are: How can we say this isn't terrorism? Don't the

terrorists say the same thing when they want to win? Or do we say

there are two kinds of terrorism, "good terrorism" (for our "good

goals") and "bad terrorism" (for their "bad goals")?

You may feel this is some kind of academic legalistic exercise. But

in the Middle East (and throughout much of the 1.2 billion Muslims in

the world) our policies are not seen this way.

In 1996, when Madeleine Albright was our ambassador to the UN, she

said to Leslie Stahl on CBS' 60 Minutes that the deaths of half a

million Iraqi children were "worth the price." This is a statement

that has been heard around the world.

So, I come to my final response to what you've written: "Had Saddam

focused his efforts on the well being of his people, most of the

deaths could have been avoided ..." and that "Saddam Hussein spent the

bulk of the oil-for-food income on many luxurious palaces and weapons

of mass destruction."

To this, I say simply that it is not true.

I don't say it in defense of Saddam Hussein -- a brutal ruler (we

supported for years) -- but to speak the truth as best I know it.

If you read the statements of the US Pentagon bombing planners from

the URL I emailed you -- www.concernforiraq.org/infrastructure -- you

will see that we "took out" 96% of Iraq's electricity for "long-term

leverage" knowing the lethal effect on water and sewage in order to

"accelerate the effect of the sanctions."

Within the next 8 months, the New England Journal of Medicine reported

that there were 46,900 excess deaths of Iraqi children under the age

of five from epidemics of water-borne disease. In Oklahoma City,

Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people, almost all civilians, to influence

the US government. The New England report comes to 195 Iraqi

children's deaths a day for 8 months.

It took 6 years before there was an oil-for-food program at all.

Madeleine Albright's famous statement came half a year *before* it

began. I do not report this to demonize her; I am grateful to her for

her candor, as much as she regrets saying it.

On that same CBS program, she reported what you have said: Saddam

spend "an enormous amount of money, $1.5 billion, building palaces."

If you do the arithmetic, over 5 years that comes to $1.25 a month for

each of 20 million Iraqis. Meanwhile, Paul Bremer said Iraq needs

$100 billion to repair its civilian infrastructure -- a real cause of

deaths in Iraq.

I truly wish I could believe that the US policies didn't contribute to

500,000 Iraqi children's deaths. I don't doubt Saddam could have done

better, especially later on; but it's also true that we knew these

deaths would occur and did occur. We kept to this policy believing it

would coerce the Iraqis or their government.

I appreciate your willingness to engage in this exchange and would

welcome your thoughts on the things I've written.

Sincerely,

Bert Sacks

P.S. I realize I did not reply to many of the points you made in your

email to me, some of which I agree with and some not so much. But

I've focused on the issue of US bombing civilian infrastructure and

sanctions because a) it's what my op-ed was about and b) because, if

we don't discuss this I don't see how we can go far in agreeing on how

to 'win' a war on terrorism.

February 19, 2006

Bert Sachs

I have entered my comments following each paragraph where they apply.

John

Dear Mr. Barton,

It's a cold Sunday and I am finally sitting down to reply.

I have been to Ground Zero in NYC, to the Federal Building in Oklahoma

City, even to Auschwitz and Dachau. What is so awful for me about

these places -- and I'm sure for you too -- is the deliberate killing

of civilians who are innocent of any crimes.

I was 3 when WWII ended, but I have read that when Hitler began

bombing London there was great shock in the world that a civilian

population would be targeted in this way, even in war. By the end of

the war, we had firebombed German and Japanese cities (killing more

civilians than with atomic bombs).

If you argue that killing civilians is an acceptable way of

"destroying civilian morale as a part of winning" then the first

questions are: Did this policy really help win? Will it now?

USING ATOMIC WEAPONS: There are good arguments on both sides of this issue, but the view that makes sense to me is as follows: The closer our forces got to the Japanese mainland, the harder the Japanese struggled. It was thought that Okinawa (the first island we captured of traditional Japanese territory) was a preview of what was to come on the home island. We used PA systems to plead with the civilians to give themselves up, and that they would be treated humanly. Instead, we had mothers throwing their babies off of cliffs and then jumping after them to their deaths. Of course this came after the Japanese troops, for the most part, fought to their death rather than surrender.

Military strategists have extrapolated this never surrender attitude to the impact of US forces taking the Japanese mainland. Of course there is a range of expected US casualties, but the number I've heard the most frequent is one million US troops. The number we almost never hear is how many Japanese would have died. When one considers soldier vs. soldier, a common kill ratio is 2/1 for losers-to-winners. When you consider a civilian component, the ratio jumps to 5/1 to 10/1. Using this rationale, one can make an excellent case that millions of Japanese were saved by dropping the atomic bombs. I believe that this scenario has merit.

I've read, in the memoirs of General Eisenhower and Admiral Leahy

(Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), their repugnance and

renunciation of our use of the atomic bombs against Japan. Both men

say that it wasn't needed to end the war. Leahy calls it "barbaric"

to wage war this way against women and children.

MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACKING: It's easy to be repugnant of someone else's actions. The fire bombing of Dresden was thought by some to be a repugnant act.

In the movie "Fog of War" Robert McNamara says that his part in the

fire bombing of Japanese cities makes him a war criminal. If we lost

the war he says he'd be prosecuted.

WAR CRIMES: I am fairly certain that Germans were not tried for the massive bombing of London, nor were the Japanese tried for the cities they bombed.

But we didn't lose the war. If this really was needed to win WWII --

without conceding that it was -- is it still true today?

DEMORALIZED CIVILIAN POPULACE: It was true in the 1970s when it caused us the loss of the Vietnamese war, and it certainly seems to be a potential factor in the Iraq war of today.

Technology has changed our current "war against terrorism" in three

major ways: it has made the weapons of war much more deadly (on all

sides); it has made fixed battles of armies more a thing of the past;

and it has made information about wars more available to peoples all

around the world much more quickly.

TECHNOLOGY: Smart bombs are a blessing for civilians. In WW II, hundreds, if not thousands, of bombs were dropped to hit a single target. The result was often the death of hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians. It is my understanding that the Iraq war has had the lowest civilian-to-military death ratio in the history of modern warfare.

In the kind of guerrilla war that went on in Vietnam and now in Iraq

-- as Congress Member John Murtha points out -- it is a battle for

"the hearts and minds of the people." He claims we've lost this

battle and (as best I understand) our US generals speak to him as much

as to any other member of Congress.

REP. MURTHA: He's not talking to the generals that I've heard, nor to the troops in the field. The fact that re-enlistments are high indicates, to me, that the troops have confidence in what they are accomplishing in the field.

I conclude -- from a strictly military, pragmatic, Machiavellian point

of view -- that past US policies (which I write about in the op-ed you

criticize) have alienated the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people

and contributed to our losing this war, not winning it.

THE IRAQ WAR: We are not losing the war. Yes, the Iraq people do not want us there. But they also don't want us to leave until Iraq is stable. Our troops are being reduced as the Iraq army is built up. I expect that our forces will be under 100,000 by Election Day in November.