Into Harm's Way?

By: Vindictive | 04November2001

On 13May1985, the Philadelphia police department -- attempting to dislodge a few members of a group called MOVE who were disturbing the peace with a high-powered loudspeaker -- dropped a satchel bomb on their home at 6221 Osage Avenue. A fire broke out (what a surprise, huh?) but the police department wouldn't let the fire department put it out. As a result, sixty-one homes were destroyed and eleven people (including five children) died. The incident was widely considered to be a Really Bad Idea. This is, however, the method by which America has preferred to wage war, at least since World War 2, with the firebombing of Tokyo and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Civilized War Once upon a time, the willingness to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants was a major characteristic of civilized nations. War was generally considered to be the last step in the resolution of differences between nations (not individuals), and it was not a step to be taken lightly. When they went to war, civilized nations sent their trained armies against each other. Purposefully terrorizing or killing untrained, unarmed civilians was cowardly, dishonorable and evidence of barbarianism, not the sort of thing that gentlemen soldiers did. In spite of the Judeo-Christian God Jehovah's Old Testament insistence that the Israelites kill every Gentile man, woman and child in order to reinhabit the Promised Land, respect for non-combatant status during times of war became a tenet of many religious belief systems, particularly Islam. "Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors." --Quran 2:190   "Do not kill any old person, any child or any woman... She was not fighting. How then she came to be killed?" --The Prophet Mohammed (...which proves that the terrorists of September 11th, 2001 are no more representative of Islam than the KKK would be representative of Christianity.) In 1949, after the horrors of two global wars, new Geneva Conventions were developed to write laws for armed conflict with regard to how combatants treated non-combatants. These Conventions were among the most important human rights treaties ever codified. The fundamental concept of the 1949 Geneva Conventions was that every possible effort should be made to protect civilians caught up in fighting through no fault of their own. For humanitarian considerations, the Conventions required that combatants (1) wear uniforms, (2) carry their weapons openly, and (3) obey the other laws of war. Terrorism and War Members of the French Resistance One vestige of American belief that war ought to have rules is our use of the word terrorism. Compare their definitions: ter·ror·ism n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons. war n. A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties. The period of such conflict. The techniques and procedures of war; military science. The dictionary doesn't say it, but nations don't usually go to war out of boredom, or because it might stimulate the economy. Just like terrorism, wars are fought with the intention of intimidation or coercion, usually for ideological or political reasons. It doesn't seem like most people like to think so, but terrorism = war = terrorism -- especially if war is not waged according to recognized rules -- just on different scales, each with their own causes and internal logic. The only difference of any importance that I can detect between between terrorism and war is that terrorism is 'unlawful'. The presumption, therefore, is that making war in the traditional sense is legal. The term terrorist seems to be popularly used when the aggressors are smaller than a nation. It is impractical for a small group, with certain political or ideological aims, to "declare war" and dispatch troops to a battlefield against the armies of an overwhelmingly superior nation. So they resort to secrecy and surprise attacks. They strike, then (usually) run and hide to live to fight another day. During the American revolutionary war, while the rebels were shooting at numerically superior British troops from behind rocks and trees, I have no doubt that the 'legal' government in London thought of the colonists as terrorists. During the Nazi occupation of France (which occurred as a result of a 'legal' war), the Resistance were terrorists by virtue of their numerical inferiority as well as their methods. Does that mean I believe terrorism can ever be justifiable? Judge it by the same criteria that you would judge any military conflict: Is freedom the political objective? Does the conflict involve the loss of civilian, non-combatant life? If there can be such a thing as a 'good war', waged for justifiable reasons, than terrorists can be 'freedom fighters', just as Osama bin Laden was considered to be, back when he being funded by the CIA and opposing the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Criminal War An Afghani anti-Soviet terrorist (aka Freedom Fighter) The great loss of life at the World Trade Center (and to some degree, at the Pentagon, although -- one might remember -- it was a military target) has seriously pissed off most Americans. It is the loss of civilian life -- Afghani non-combatants -- that has both angered and saddened me about American retaliation. Once again, America's facade has slipped, exposing our true colors. Every school I attended during my long journey through juvenile education seemed to have at least one bully who -- it turned out -- was also a coward. This would be the little thug who -- especially if he was bigger (having been held back a couple of grades) -- threatened the other kids. Once in awhile, however, an intended victim dared to stand up to him. Usually, with a quick kick in the nuts, he would fold like a unstarched sheet at the Laundromat. Most Americans don't seem to realize how the US -- the only remaining superpower and self-ordained world policeman -- looks like a bully to most of the rest of the world. The primary reason that White House press secretary Ari Fleischer responded so egregiously to Politically Incorrect's Bill Maher's comment... [I am no fan of Politically Correct. I've watched it a couple times, and thought it was quite inane. I'm as interested in the political opinions of celebrities as I am of their opinions on the subject of computer programming. Choosing guests on the basis of their celebrity status makes as much sense to me as choosing politicos to discuss non-Euclidean geometry, or chicken farmers to discuss literature.] ..."We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away..." was that in a very real sense, he was telling the truth. Maher explained later that he wasn't criticizing the military (whom, after all, take orders from civilian government) and Fleischer, as a government official, was particularly sensitive to this little nugget of insight. The fact is, for the last several years, the United States has engaged in a lot of risk-free symbolic strikes against the likes of Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and Osama bin Laden. We have only been willing to engage in military operations that didn't include a lot of US body bags as part of the consequences. It was imperative that the US retaliate for September 11th. The terrorist strikes in Manhattan and the District of Columbia (America's biggest kick in the nuts, so far), plus the possible threat of more terrorist activity, required action. In order to appease millions of Americans who were calling for blood, and retain a sense of national dignity, something had to be done. Unfortunately, being terrorists (as opposed to an aggressive nation), the enemy didn't have borders to invade. Sending soldiers to dig out the terrorists who were actually responsible (presumably, Al Quaida) would have been risky. Our soldiers would have had to invade foreign borders, navigate difficult landscape full of mines, and search for people who -- after all -- probably don't wear name tags that read 'Evildoer', while people were shooting at them. Remember, the US government is particularly sensitive to press coverage of US soldiers in body bags. For reasons that continue to elude me, I keep hearing that this war on terrorism is about preserving freedom. Long before considering a right to freedom (or privacy, or a right to express oneself without fear of being molested by government, et al.), it must be recognized that human beings have the essential right to their own lives. This is the basis of all law. As I implied above, there is no particular nobility in protecting your own skin, or the lives of your family, or people in your own clan. This behavior is merely a human instinct, shared by saints and murderers alike. The concept of human rights goes far beyond self-preservation or ethnocentrism. Respect for human rights includes respect for the rights of people who are altogether unlike your own ethnic group. Racist War Nevertheless, the US opted to take the safer course: make Afghanistan -- where the terrorists are presumably based -- the target of our retaliation. After all: The Afghan government had been sheltering bin Laden, and refused to hand him over on our word that he was guilty... at least, without seeing some evidence. Given their human rights abuses and treatment of women, the Taliban wasn't particularly popular anyway. Afghanistan was already the poorest nation on the planet. They couldn't possibly put up much resistance. Afghanistan has been at war with someone -- including themselves -- for years. How much difference would a few thousand more bombs make? They don't worship the same god as most people in the Western world do. They wear funny clothes. I wish I had bought the newspaper a few weeks ago, so I'd have that front page picture with the galling caption here with me now. Normally, my sources are major (and lesser-known) news web sites plus whatever I happen to hear on the local NPR affiliate. But on that day, I should have -- not for the AP picture on the front depicting a small building flattened by US bombers or cruise missiles (there's plenty of those pictures) -- but for the caption. It read something like: "Afghan man stands near what is left of what he claims was his home, destroyed by a US bomb" and so on. I found the verbiage of what he claims to be askew and offensive, since the caption's writer obviously intended readers to doubt that the heap of rubble actually had been his home. The inference was that, unlike people in 'civilized' countries, you can't trust an Afghani to tell the truth about even such a simple thing as identifying the remnants of his own home. Meanwhile, yesterday America dropped bombs on Afghanistan, destroying homes and killing non-combatants. Today, the same thing is happening. Tomorrow, we will do it again. And few people outside of Afghanistan seem to give a rat's ass. Facts about this War US newspapers are not carrying many stories that even hint of US war atrocities. (In the current climate, such coverage would be considered non-patriotic.) If you want to know what's really happening, you have to find news sources from outside our borders: No doubt you heard the good news, that America was dropping food packages into Afghanistan, but did your source also tell you that the war itself has created more hungry refugees and closed borders to food aid that had been coming in before the bombing started? Did it mention what happens when starving villagers cross unfamiliar ground in the country that happens to have the greatest number of land mines, to get to the packages? Did it also mention that nothing in these packages meets strict Islamic requirements for food preparation, and that many of the people who are starved enough to eat it anyway suffer digestive problems because their malnourished stomachs can't cope with the rich, unfamiliar food? Has your preferred news magazine mentioned that the 1000-pound cluster bombs being dropped by American bombers are made up of 202 smaller bombs, most of which land intact, and are designed for "soft targets", i.e., people? Did it tell you that given their design -- cute little orange-yellow plastic soda can-shaped units with umbrellas -- it would be difficult to design a bomb that was more attractive to children? Was it on the network TV news when an American taxpayer-funded missile landed on a mosque in the suburbs of Jalalabad and killed fifteen worshippers and destroyed four houses? Your tax dollars at work: Dead children! Did you hear about it on your news radio station when an American bomb was dropped on a residential area of the town of Tarin Kot? Did you know that, in addition to injuring Sami Ullah who -- along with one cousin -- was pulled alive from the rubble, that the explosion killed Mr Ullah's wife, four children, both parents, and five brothers and sisters? Did you further hear about another American bomb that killed ten members of another family in Kabul? In your newspaper, did you read the story of the stray US missile that flattened the village of Kouram in the province of Nangarhar that killed at least fifty-three, and probably a hundred more, civilians? Did you read how the bodies were mutilated, and that the face of one victim, a man named Shaqib, was torn away? When asked about that incident, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld reacted angrily, and said, "There is no question but that when one is engaged militarily, then there is going to be unintended loss of life ... There's no question that I, nor anyone involved, regrets the loss of life." Each successive apology for "collateral damage" sounds more and more like they are from the man who, when confronted, is more angry that your dog was in the street than sorry that he ran it over. For that matter, did the American press tell you that sanctions against Iraq killed more than 500,000 innocent children? Did they tell you that bombing Yugoslavia killed more civilians than soldiers? Were you informed that lobbing cruise missiles at a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory resulted in the deaths of thousands of medicine-starved civilians? And if you heard about any of these stories, did it enrage you? Do you think that any of these victims are able to offhandedly dismiss "collateral damage" as an unfortunate byproduct of a "just war", as Rumsfeld, Powell, Cheney or Bush do? Each day, there are several stories in each issue of American newspapers about anthrax that has killed (so far) a double handful of American citizens, along with theories about who is responsible. Every day, dozens of innocent Afghani civilians are being maimed and slaughtered, we know precisely who is responsible, and the stories barely and rarely get a column. The Gist of this War For every single innocent person that we kill, the United States becomes that much more like those whom we are supposed to be 'bringing to justice'. I know, first-hand, the kind of destruction that American forces are capable of spreading among non-combatant men, women and children. Each report of deaths caused by the criminal government to which I must pay taxes makes me cringe in the same manner, and to no less degree, than I cringed when non-combatants were killed on 11Sep2001. If the majority of Americans truly believed that the citizens of far away Afghanistan were as human, as deserving of life, and as worthwhile as any citizen of America, and if they believed that they are as charitable and good to their neighbors as Americans, that they love their children... Dery Gul lies on a cot in Al-Khidmat Al-Hajeri hospital with her 10-year-old daughter, Najimu, and her baby named Hameed Ullah. The girls have bruises and cuts on their faces, and are lucky to have only those injuries. But to understand how lucky, you would have to see their mother. Her face is covered with bandages. She has an arm wrapped in plaster. The entire right side of her body is blackened from burning. When the American bombs began to fall, Ms Gul cradled her daughters, just like any human mother would. ...just like Americans do, then Mr Bush's war on terrorism would never have been waged in this manner. Soldiers would have been employed to do what they are trained to do, going into harm's way, taking risks that soldiers are expected to take, without feeling it was necessary to soften up opposition by turning an entire country into a graveyard. If, by a "different kind of war", Bush had meant different from other recent wars in which America has engaged, there would be more American body bags. But it would have been a war fought with honor, not a desperate attempt to rack up a number of murder victims that at least equals the terrorists' score.