Sociology Talk

Gandalf Grey · Guest

Steel rain: We can't wage war without a wide moral latitude

By Robert C. Koehler

Created Jul 10 2008 - 9:09am

"Civilian casualties have been a continuing issue in Afghanistan, and
President Karzai has rebuked American and NATO forces for what he has called
carelessness in their military operations."

This is the genteel, bloodless language of geopolitics, spoken by the Gray
Lady and the heads of state and makers of policy whom she serves. You
wouldn't know that "carelessness" referred to killing a bride (and
twenty-some guests) on her wedding day, except that the observation comes at
the end of the New York Times' account of our July 6 bombing of an Afghani
wedding, which followed a Fourth of July missile strike in that country --
look at the fireworks, Mom! -- that killed 15 innocent civilians. Careless
superpower indeed.

What you would never guess is that "carelessness" meant a deliberate U.S.
policy of waging the war on terror from the air. But that has been our
policy all along, from "shock and awe" and "mission accomplished" to "the
surge is working." It is undebated, unreported, unquestioned, this policy
conceived with the vacuous single-mindedness of serial killers. The death it
has caused has not been calculated and is perhaps incalculable, especially
when you factor in the time-bomb effects of depleted uranium and other
deadly substances that bombing spreads both locally and around the world.

To my mind, nothing, not even the torture we practice at Guantanamo and
throughout the war on terror gulag, exemplifies the disconnect between U.S.
policy and the American people like the sanitized horror of the air war.

When the Nazis dropped 50 tons of explosives on the Spanish city of Guernica
in 1937, the world called it barbaric. Today, such a pummeling of some
hapless Third World region is routine, transformed by an embedded and
co-opted media into "humdrum ordinariness," as Tom Engelhardt has pointed
out. (You'll recall, of course, that Colin Powell, when he lied before the
U.N. General Assembly about Iraqi WMD shortly before we invaded, had the
tapestry reproduction of Picasso's "Guernica" covered up to avoid any
awkward triggering of conscience.)

That we have lost control of our government, money-dominated and obsessed
with secrecy as it is, is less surprising to me than the extent to which we
have lost our watchdog media, which can't even rouse itself awake long
enough to spot the patterns in its own routine coverage of the war. Shall we
take a stroll down Memory Lane?

"Ooh, that's gotta hurt," I recall a colleague of mine saying back in
mid-March of '03, as the invasion got under way and the shock-and-awe
campaign played nonstop on the tube. The relentless air assault on Baghdad
killed untold Iraqis but utterly failed in its intended purpose of
"decapitating" the Saddam Hussein regime, killing not a single high
government official.

In April 2003, we got word that Hussein and his two sons were meeting in a
building in the Mansur district of Baghdad. Within 45 minutes, we flattened
the building with four high explosive bombs, creating a crater 40 feet deep
and killing an unknown number of people, but not Hussein or his sons.

"They found one boy's body on the roof of that house over there," an Iraqi
later told a reporter. "I heard that the father went out for ice cream and
wouldn't let his children come with him. When we came back, they were dead.
He must be dying of grief."

Shortly before Christmas 2003, USA Today, in a rare instance of independent
war coverage, published the results of its four-month investigation of
cluster bomb usage in the first months of the war.

"Although U.S. forces sought to limit what they call 'collateral damage' in
the Iraq campaign, they defied international criticism and used nearly
10,800 cluster weapons; their British allies used almost 2,200," reporter
Paul Wiseman wrote. Describing the "steel rain" that devastated the central
Iraq city of Al Hillah, he noted that images of the aftermath, "including
footage of a baby torn in half, were so gruesome that Western television
networks refused to air them."

Back to Afghanistan, where Taliban-hunting with bombs and missiles has been
commonplace. University of New Hampshire professor Marc Herold, who
monitored the early phases of the war, wrote in 2002 that "the documented
high level of civilian casualties" is caused by "the apparent willingness of
U.S. military strategists to fire missiles into, and drop bombs upon,
heavily populated areas of Afghanistan."

One example, from about a year ago: We bombed a school in eastern
Afghanistan; seven children died. A Pentagon spokesman explained: "If we
knew that there were children inside the building, there was no way that
that air strike would have occurred."

We can't wage war without a wide moral latitude. The public has limited
capacity for collateral damage even in the abstract, and none at all for
actual details, such as babies torn in half by cluster bombs. But this is
the war on terror, which we will never win until we face the truth about
what we're doing and stop doing it. Forever.

--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107

"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson

Blackwater · Guest

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:43:34 -0700, "Gandalf Grey"
<valinor20@gmail.com> wrote:

4117 Dead · Guest

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:07:40 GMT, bw@barrk.net (Blackwater) wrote:

Steve · Guest

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:46:58 -0700, 4117 Dead <zeppp@finestplanet.com>
wrote:

Jeffrey Turner · Guest

Blackwater wrote:

Joe Irvin · Guest

"4117 Dead" <zeppp@finestplanet.com> wrote in message
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Joe Irvin · Guest

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Jeffrey Turner · Guest

Joe Irvin wrote:

Joe Irvin · Guest

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Guest

On Jul 10, 12:07 pm, b...@barrk.net (Blackwater) wrote:

Gary DeWaay · Guest

In article <xY2dnT6s99W9BerV4p2dnAA@comporium.net>, ji3486@sccoast.net
Joe Irvin says...

Tom Sr. · Guest

On Jul 10, 1:43 pm, "Gandalf Grey" <valino...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jeffrey Turner · Guest

Joe Irvin wrote:

Joe Irvin · Guest

"Gary DeWaay" <dewaay2spikeNOT@sio.midco.net> wrote in message
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Joe Irvin · Guest

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