KILLING A REGIME, NOT A PEOPLE

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KILLING A REGIME, NOT A PEOPLE

James Joyner | Thursday, April 10, 2003

Charles Krauthammer has written his best column in some time–and that’s saying something. He points out the breathtaking precedent of this war:

Surgically removing a one-party police state while trying to leave the civilians and the infrastructure as untouched as possible is an operation of unusual difficulty. Yet the pictures from the opening nights of the war told the story: plumes of smoke from precision strikes on Saddam Hussein’s instruments of power while the city lights remained on and cars casually traversed the streets.

This kind of war is totally new. We have, of course, destroyed totalitarian regimes in the past, Nazi Germany and imperial Japan most notably. But in World War II, we made war not just on the regime but on the whole country. Cities were firebombed with the intent of breaking the people (”the Hun,” as Churchill liked to call the Germans) and destroying the whole of their industrial civilization. And we damn near succeeded. It took decades to rebuild those countries from the ashes.

Amazing. Krauthammer believes this is only the beginning:

It is one thing to depose tin-pot dictators. Anyone can do that. It is another thing to destroy a Stalinist demigod and his three-decade apparatus of repression — and leave the country standing. From Damascus to Pyongyang, totalitarians everywhere are watching this war with shock and awe.

Indeed.

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.

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