Rall hits a new low Ted Rall manages to go three paragraphs without ranting about a stolen election, and he actually says stuff I agree with :

Consider Afghanistan. As of mid-June U.S. forces in Operation Enduring Freedom had only lost 30 soldiers--16 of whom died in helicopter and other accidents. Casualties were also amazingly low during the first Gulf War--only 148 troops were killed in combat. In both conflicts enemy were astronomical by comparison. At least 10,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters died in Afghanistan. We killed between 100,000 and 400,000 Iraqi troops in the Gulf War. This 600-to-1 death differential is explained by one word: bombs. The advent of mass bombing, during World War II, revolutionized warfare. Production plants and other industrial targets hundreds of miles behind enemy lines suddenly became vulnerable to attack. But the primary purpose of bombing was to "demoralize" the enemy by targeting civilians and combatants alike. The more bombs you drop, the fewer soldiers you lose. The 1975 fall of Saigon ended our century-long military winning streak, yet even this failed undertaking proved the efficacy of bombing: just over 58,000 American troops died in Vietnam, 47,000 in combat. Compare this appalling-enough figure to conservative estimates of soldiers lost by our opponents: at least 1.1 million. Additionally U.S. forces killed some 2 to 3 million Vietnamese civilians. Although the U.S. deployed 3.1 million men in Vietnam, 98 percent came home alive. Bombs--8 million tons of them, four times as many as used during all of World War II--made the difference.

Of course, he then goes on to advocate banning bombing ...with perhaps the most ridiculous argument I've ever heard from an antiwar writer:

Ultimately, bombs make war too easy. Leaders are less likely to engage in military aggression if going to war will cost the lives of their own people. The risk of large-scale loss is a big political gamble. By their nature, bombs make "enemy" lives cheap and "your" lives expensive. We see this phenomenon as Americans discuss attacking Iraq; sure, we're willing to kill thousands of Iraqis, but only if we lose very few Americans in the process. It's all too cold and painless. Of course nations should use every available tool to protect the safety of their military personnel when they send them into battle. But bombs, like land mines and mustard gas, shouldn't be counted among the available tools.

Yes, that's right - you read it correctly. Ted Rall is willing to sacrifice the lives of American soldiers because he doesn't like the efficiency of the American war machine. Rall doesn't like the fact that our advanced technology means we can fight clean conventional wars, with minimum damage to American soldiers, because such wars will encourage "imperialism". [1]The fact that our advanced technology means we can surgically kill enemy combatants and minimize civilian casualties goes unremarked, though Rall has whinged about imprecise bombing before. The fact that the other side is unlikely to unilaterally disarm likewise goes unnoticed. It's actually refreshing to see such a naked statement of the left wing "leveling" instinct. Any inequality must be unjust, even the military advantage that American troops have over Iraqi troops. Perhaps Rall will soon begin agitation for the reinstatement of the draft, on the grounds that it too would force Americans to think twice about preemptive strikes lest they pay a blood price. [1] Such a charge was far more understandable during the Cold War, when America actually did use military force to control the destiny of foreign lands in its battle against the USSR. However, in the post Cold War era, America's exercise of military power has largely been on the side of humanitarian interests and anti-terrorism missions. You can quibble about the US's motives, but you can't mount a serious defence of the regimes that the US has been bombing post 1991. In other words - we've only been hitting the bad guys.