From: tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel)
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 91 13:19:42 EST
To: harelb@cabot.dartmouth.edu (Harel Barzilai)
In-Reply-To: harelb@cabot.dartmouth.edu's message of 1 Feb 91 07:43:08 GMT
Subject: Report: OVER 100,000 IRAQIS SLAUGHTERED

   NOTE: While it is customary to de-humanize "the enemy" during wartime,
   and even the deaths of Iraqi civilians are trivialized, I would like
   to point out that Iraqi soldiers, not just American soldiers, are
   "boys" to their families, and include draftees and others who had
   little or no choice but to be in their current possition --not that
   choice would morally have justified their murder. While the mass-
   murder of Iraqi civilians is even more clealry an unnecessary atrocity
   which an increasing number of Americans are condemning, let not a
   single inch of moral ground be yielded on the issue of the life of
   the Iraqi soldiers being anything less than human, with blood as red
   as every American soldiers, as red as ours. --HB

Iraq could have avoided this war: the occupation of Kuwait is clearly
illegal, and Saddam Hussein had ample time to withdraw. The alliance
was absolutely clear about the fact that they would remove the Iraqi
troops by force and that they would make any effort to minimize allied
casualties. Even if Saddam Hussein believes that he was justified in
invading Kuwait, at least the fact that he was facing an opponent of
incomparable military strength should have convinced him to settle
for a dishonorable but peaceful solution; instead he chose to gamble
with the life of his people.

I am reasonably confident that the allied forces do not deliberately
massacre civillians, as you seem to be implying, and none of the sources
you cite indicate anything to the contrary. But, for example, given the
choice between the possibility of Saddam Hussein acquiring nuclear or
biological weapons or, alternatively, possibly exposing the Iraqi
civillian population to contamination from facilities producing such
weapons, the allied forces will logically choose the latter.

Personally, I would have preferred if the US had waited longer and
been more flexible on the question of linkage. The Iraqi and
Palestinian positions are not as arbitrary and unreasonable as they
are portrayed in the western press.  A compromise would have saved a
large number of Iraqi lives, allied lives, not to mention lots of
money.

But, in the end, Saddam Hussein is the only person morally responsible
for the suffering of his people. He could have avoided the war completely,
and he could end it any time.