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I read the hersh article in the New Yorker two days ago, and I suppose I'm most appalled at how far Sy Hersh, who used to be a good journalist, has fallen. The article is likely to turn out to have all the staying power of TAILWIND or Hersh's KAL 007 book. Hersh seems to have fallen victim to a cultural fear I heard expressed throughout the war against Serbia: that it's somehow morally reprehensible-- unsporting --to fight a war and kill the enemy while losing few or none of your own men and tanks and aircraft. Hersh seems most upset that the 24th destroyed several hundred Iraqi armoured vehicles and killed large numbers of Iraqis while being itself unscathed. He seems to feel that it would've been better for the Iraqi units to have gone on to Basra to slaughter the Shi'a population, or for the fight to have been 'equal', or for the US forces to ignore any signs of belligerent behavior by a sizeable Iraqi force. I have no idea whether the commanding general of the 24th (and do note: as a major opponent of the 'war on drugs', I have no love for Barry McCaffery whatsoever)was simply flexing his division's muscles at Rumaila, or what his standing orders were. But it seems well within his rights to respond with overwhelming, punitive force against any enemy unit that refused to acknowledge its defeat or which presented even a ghost of a threat to US forces. The point of inflicting a defeat is to make the enemy openly and fully acknowledge his submission and his agreement not to present a threat any longer: if Rumaila taught the Iraqis that lesson, well and good. And, frankly-- every Iraqi tank burnt out, every Iraqi soldier killed on 2 March 1991 was just one that wouldn't have to be destroyed later. Unless Hersh can show that McCaffery deliberately disobeyed a direct order, and that such disobedience resulted in harm to the US military position-- what exactly has he shown with this article? Lohr E. Miller Louisiana State University
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