Hacker News Reader

Comment by robonerd | Hacker News Reader

Have you heard of the 'Highway of Death'? Iraqi forces were retreating on that highway, on their way back to Iraq. Coalition forces did not want to permit that, and slaughtered them. Thousands of vehicles destroyed, hundreds+ soldiers killed, thousands more captured.

I can't say I feel much sympathy towards the Iraqis here, but it does seem a tad bit vindictive.

View on HN

Human tragedy aside (and it absolutely is, no doubt about it, on all sides), it really depends on the context.

Striking the retreating army is the 'easiest' way to 'neutralize' it, Clausewitz writes about it, and I am sure it's been practiced for thousand(s?) of years before that.

For a timely comparison: would it be 'vindictive' when Ukraine strikes the retreating Russian army in the Kyiv area before they regroup and attack the Donbas? I don't think so. Seems like a good idea, actually.

It's how battles have been won for thousands of years. The two army's approach each other and take minor casualties until one sides moral collapses, they break, and route. 90% of the deaths happened after the route.

Reminds me of the sinking of the General Belgrano during the Falklands War. The story at the time was that the Belgrano, an Argentinian warship, was leaving the Falklands to return to Argentina, when a British submarine sunk her; there were many in the UK who considered this an outrage, on the grounds that she was no longer contributing the occupation of the Falklands, so should have been left alone.

That analysis never made much sense to me, and apparently it later came out that the Belgrano wasn't leaving the Falklands anyway, and much later on the captain of the Belgrano said he thought that the British were quite right to sink it [1]!

[1] https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-was-right-to-sink-th...

Well, it probably saved Kurdish lives to some degree. Remember that Iraq is a British Empire construction of three opposing ethnic groups (Shia, Sunni, Kurd) and Saddam was a Sunni oppressing the other two.

Wiping out his best soldiers may have reduced his ability to suppress the other two ethnic groups.

Or it made Shia and Kurds more active and sowed MORE conflict. Who can predict such things.

But from realist international puppet string wannabes, it neutered Saddam's military and ability to threaten Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. The US was just a mercenary army for the Kuwait and Saudi royal families in this "war".

It is obviously a matter of context. Russian army in Kyiv is indeed able to regroup and attack again. Iraqi army was by all means a defeated force that was running for its life into Iraq where civil war just started. The risk of it attacking Kuwait again was zero.

A defeated force can still regroup in, say, Baghdad and make the city much harder to take.

They were retreating, not surrendering. They were bringing with them all their arms and armor (literally, bringing their tanks back). We stopped them because they very well could have regrouped to when they were back in Iraq. They were not 'hors de combat'.

"I can't say I feel much sympathy towards the Iraqis here"

Why wouldn't you feel sympathy for people who were killed or maimed, and their families?

It's funny how I got some comments insinuating that I have too much sympathy, and yours which seems to say I have too little. I'll address both in this single comment.

What little sympathy I have, is because people died. I don't have more sympathy because 1) those Iraqis invaded another country. 2) They didn't surrender. I am well aware that retreating but not surrendering soldiers get shot in wars, and I'm not particularly upset about it when those soldiers are on the belligerent side. I have some shred of sympathy for them, only because they are still human.

>I can't say I feel much sympathy towards the Iraqis here, but it does seem a tad bit vindictive.

they could have always surrender and become POW.

I have mo idea what your background is. How do you imagine a cog in an authoritarian country to surrender during a war. Mutiny, summary executions, retaliation against family, shamed as a coward.

Many did when command and control broke down

Do you think the Ukrainians were in the wrong when they killed Russians during their withdrawal? Or are rules different for the underdog?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com