Highly Refined Evil

I’ve been somewhat disturbed by the Russian problems that have come to light today. By the “Russian problems” I mean the sale of GPS jammers to Iraq, the sale of night vision goggles and now the discovery Russian missiles that were produced within the last year. These are all significant problems, but I’ve been unsure how to approach a discussion of the issues.

I’ve been pondering on this for several hours, but during dinner my father called and asked how I thought this affected the humane concerns of this war. In regards to the GPS jammers, he brought up some very interesting points.

He pointed out that most of the bombs we are dropping in Baghdad are JDAM or other GPS guided weapons. We are using these weapons so as to minimize the civilian casualties in the city. With a jammer, the Iraqis would essentially turn our smart bombs into unguided dumb bombs with a corresponding increase in civilian casualties. Since the Iraqi regime doesn’t care about the lives of its citizens, the propaganda value of such misses would be immense.

The misses would also serve to make us doubt the effectiveness of our weapons. There are already reports that just the threat of GPS jammers caused us to slowdown the bombing of Baghdad while we evaluated the effectiveness of the jammers on our weapons.

We have flown thousands of bombing missions over Iraq now; with at last report, 3 civilian deaths. That is absolutely incredible. Never before in history has so much explosive power been used with such a small amount of collateral damage.

The lack of civilian deaths is directly attributable to our use of precision-guided weapons. We have still yet to drop a single dumb bomb. Not one. There is no carpet-bombing this time.

Our foe doesn’t like that. The Iraqis want us to kill civilians. They want to give ammunition to the anti-warriors of the world. Their use of GPS jammers with the intention of deflecting a bomb onto a civilian is proof that we have more concern for their citizens than they do. It is also a crime against humanity (GPS jammers are legit to deflect bombs into unpopulated areas, but not into the heart of a city’s population).

The Russians knew what the intention of the Iraqis was. They knew that the Iraqis would attempt to use these jammers in the commission of crimes against humanity. That tells me that all of the Russian posturing in the UN was a bunch of bunk. They had no concern for the Iraqi citizens – they only had concern for their commercial ties. Putin and Ivanov lied to us. Out and out lied to our faces.

Given their duplicity with the jammers, the NVGs and anti-tank rockets are not a surprise. I also believe that they were at least a legitimate sale in that those tools could really only be used against the US and coalition militaries. I still have a problem with the Russians selling Iraq weapons to use against us while claiming to be our friend, but that is not the same as selling a tool that they knew the Iraqis would use to kill civilians.

In this war, the US has made a concerted effort to bring humanity to the battle. We have gone to extraordinary lengths to protect Iraqi citizens. It is truly a shame to see that our “friends” who had such “concern for human rights” have been selling out the Iraqis human rights. It is a shame that our “friends” have no concern beyond the almighty dollar (or euro or ruble or whatever).

I’m ashamed that I have defended the Russians in the past on this blog. This makes me sick.