Toward A Clean War?

Submitted by Alain Jean-Mairet (Switzerland), Apr 23, 2003 at 03:42

What I find interesting here is that it would have been fairly easy for the US forces to prevent, and, as the article points out, to foresee, the problem. It shows a lack of preparation, a deficiency of the concept of this (otherwise brilliant) intervention. It shows too that this war still is too much of a war, and not enough of a peacemaking action. In a genuinely "clean" war, the action of the armed forces should be subordinated to the project of bringing the conditions necessary to permit the natural construction of a democracy (of some sort). I have the feeling the US would have liked to do that, but didn't go far enough to do it for real? There clearly was the intention to make an excellent war (fast, targeted, with little civil casualties), but it wasn't yet the real thing.

Hence I think we should ask now: How should a war be organized, prepared, done, in order to actually promote peace? What does it imply, in means, people, money, sacrifice? How long the effort should be carried on? In which conditions would it be profitable (yes, also in plain economical terms)? Who, which institution or enterprise, would be adequate for studying such questions and bringing trustworthy elements of solutions?

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