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Sun. Jan 27, 2002

Modern War Myths

Modern War Myths and the Return of Anti-Americanism – This lengthy screed is a bit of an echo of past words, but it was freshly inspired by articles like this one, a small sample of the recent ugly tonality heard around the world.

”The New York Times was able to interrogate friends and family of the New York dead, but for the Afghans, we will have to imagine the hopes and dreams of those who died, especially the children, for whom forty or fifty years of mornings, love, friendship, sunsets and the sheer exhilaration of being alive were extinguished by monstrous machines sent over their land by men far away.”

A few short months ago in late September, when the smell of death still clung to lower Manhattan and body parts were removed daily from Ground Zero, the whole world seemed to understand: there’s going to be a war, and people are going to die.

Now that everyone seems to be getting back to normal, shock is being expressed that innocents died, and (gasp!) prisoners are being held captive. In cells! Naivete has re-entered the fold. Anti-Americanism is back out of the closet (although it was a bit too big to fully hide in there). And this American is sick of naive critics with no sense of history who either seem unable to recognize what has happened, or deliberately portray it as the opposite.

Any human with the most fragile grasp of history ought to know that in war, innocents die. It’s a tragic fact, and nothing has ever happened to change it. However, modern perceptions have changed, fueled by events like the Gulf War, in which war became a video game we watched from the comfort of our couch. A ground war against Iraq that was expected to be lengthy and deadly turned out to be a 100 hour exercise in American military might, with an amazingly small number of casualties.

In my opinion, this experience gave unexpected birth to a false new morality: For all practical purposes, America can win a war almost without killing, or being killed. Technology has made war just collection of video clip explosions of Only Bad Guys, and eliminated the need for thousands of bodybags.

When America does not meet these new ”moral standards” for war, we get condemned for it. Again, it’s naivete. The majority of people alive have never had to live through a meat grinder of a war, up close. Our collective memories seem to go back a decade or two at most. But war has always adversely affected civilians, no matter how much either side tries to minimize it.

However, technology has made things better, and that historical perspective seems to be lacking in this new war morality. In WWII, mission planners knew that 1 in 100 bombs dropped would actually hit the military target they were after. There was little in the way of precision attacks, they were ”area” attacks. They knew that non-combatant German men, women, and children would be killed by the 99 bombs that missed in order that one might hit. Did that stop them? No, they knew it was a tragic part of war, just as it was for the Brits who died from the thousands of bombs and missiles dropped on their country.

Even today, those who condemn the fact that 150,000 people were killed in Hiroshima by the first nuclear weapon dropped in anger have little to say about the fact an approximately equal number were killed in one night of conventional bombing in Dresden. In Vietnam, the ”hit ratio” might have improved to one in ten, and today, we hear of Afghan commanders testifying (anecdotally) that in the campaign against the Taliban, it appeared to them 99 out of 100 bombs hit their target …. and people still died, including American troops hit by stray bombs.

So it seems even though the ratio might have been reversed in very general terms, from 1 hit in 100, to one miss in 100, the US is held accountable as not being perfect. In war, there is no such thing as perfection. And the accountability is one sided; the civilian deaths are the fault of the dropped bomb, not the fact the military target was deliberately placed in a civilian area.

The Geneva Convention that everyone is all worked up about these days, well, it sees things a bit differently (from Amnesty International): ”Protocol I prohibits the use of civilians as human shields. Article 51(7) provides: ’The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations.’

Further, Article 58 obliges parties to a conflict to take all necessary precautions to protect civilians under their control against the dangers resulting from military operations, including by removing civilians from the vicinity of military objectives and avoiding locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas.”

But, hey, that’s just international law agreed to by 150 nations. The US is apparently held to a higher standard. And no one else is: ”The total number of unarmed Afghan civilians who have been killed by deliberate artillery attacks on residential areas in the past three years runs into the tens of thousands. Such killings have been reported from all parts of the country, although the vast majority of victims – more than 25,000 have been killed in Kabul” The result of US attacks? No, that’s from an Amnesty International report on Afghan war lords fighting for control in 90’s. I doubt the two words ”Geneva Convention” were even mentioned in that period by anyone. They certainly weren’t when the Taliban grossly violated the GC articles quoted above, placing civilians at risk. Meanwhile, we are being pilloried for civilian deaths that have overly generously been counted as 4,000 (according to the frequently debunked report from Prof. Herod), but more likely number around 1,000 (according to Human Rights Watch). At least we’ll assume that for the sake of historical comparison:

From RAWA: ”According to Los Angeles Times (4-26-99): ’In one terrible incident in 1993, documented by the State Department, Masoud’s troops rampaged through a rival neighborhood, raping, looting and killing as many as a thousand people.’ ” Yes, that would be the same Massoud who was killed by Taliban suicide bombers on September 9, and is now considered a hero by many Afghans. His forces appear to have killed as many civilians in that one incident as we did in the entire war.

I know, it’s difficult to make a relativistic argument that involves the deaths of a thousand. But the dual points need to be made [1] in war, innocents die, often in the thousands, and [2] (I have no numbers to corroborate this opinion, only historical background like the above) in this war, less innocents died per ton of bombs dropped than ever before. A tiny fraction of the number of innocents killed by Afghans themselves during their civil wars of the 90’s, nevermind the Soviets in the 80’s.

It’s a cold argument. But reality is a cold place. And naive arguments must be refuted coldly.

In war, people die. The US made an unprecedented effort to keep that number as low as possible. Other than the Gulf War, there is no historical comparison. No country has ever gone to such lengths. Look at the credit we get.

Those who think war can be waged without innocent bloodshed are delusional. That’s why it should be waged so very rarely. Those who have a magic number in their head that constitutes ”acceptable collateral damage,” and condemn us when it is exceeded by one are not being intellectually honest. You have to know innocent civilians are going to die. If you feel that even one dying is unacceptable, you must oppose the war. If you support any military action, you have to accept some will be killed, and then look for intent …. that the casualties that do occur were near a legitimate military target. And even then, you must accept that some small percentage of either technical malfunction, bad targeting, or human error will result in some unnecessary deaths.

You have to accept it. It’s a fact of war. It is folly to think otherwise.

And there was less of it than ever before.

War is ugly. I have no doubt some innocent Afghans went through hell. And I have an idea of what it might have been like. Like the streets around Ground Zero the morning of 9-11. Some know even better than me, having lived through the cloud of death: ”I heard large pieces of the destroyed building hitting cars on the street. I heard more terrified screams. There was no air. I breathed through my handkerchief and even so, my mouth, nose and lungs were filled with black. There was no light. I could see nothing, only black. I slammed into a building, and a tree, and another building.”

It was ugly. I have no doubt it was equally ugly for some innocent citizens of Afghanistan. I knew it would be, because that’s war. And it’s a war we didn’t declare.

I know those innocent citizens had no more choice in what occurred than the innocent citizens who died on 9-11. But we had little choice in our response, as the enemy did not wear a uniform and array in the field for battle. In many cases, they hid their weapons and themselves among the people of Afghanistan, thus placing them at risk. Against that Geneva Convention everybody wants to bandy about in the aftermath.

But we managed to topple the Taliban (much to the apparent joy of the general populace … millions, not thousands) and mop up much of Al Qaeda in about 6 weeks. We’ve helped establish an interim government and the framework to build a permanent one of their own making. They’re getting (at this point) $5 Billion to rebuild, including $300 million from us this year, in addition to the $400 million in humantitarian aid we’ve already spent and/or pledged.

But it’s as though those things count for nothing, we just hear rhetoric about ”the blinded and maimed children, the weeping parents of Afghanistan” and the inhumane treatment of the detainees at Guantanamo (it’s so ridiculous that when I heard John Walker was being held in a 7.5 by 7.5 foot cell, I thought, that’s inhumane, the Al Qaeda guys have 8 foot by 8 foot cells!).

The US is expected to be perfect. To wage the perfect war (against acid throwing plane crashing suicide attackers), in which no one dies who isn’t determined to be ”a bad guy.” To remove any captured enemies from the judicial threat of stoning, dismemberment, death, and the harsh Afghan winter we’ve heard so much about, and instead let them winter in the Caribbean (oh wait, we’re doing that one). To generally mop up after itself perfectly in order to pass the white glove inspection of the world’s moral authorities that we see now in many ways.

War is sloppy. Messy. And, by definition, outside ”normal” moral judgement. Yes, it is abhorrent for any innocent to die in an unexpected fireball. Morally repugnant.

But in war, it happens every day. I’ve talked before about how going to war means ”You have flipped a switch to an alternate reality.” That cliche about ”all’s fair in love and war,” well, there is much truth behind it. By definition, you’re playing by different rules.

No rules. You’ve flipped a switch.

The whole world heard it flip. Remember the first week or so after 9-11? The general fear among those who generally fear any action by the US was that we were going to level Kabul. And many other places. There was a whole lot of Potsie talk, ”hey Fonz, we know you’re pissed, and we don’t blame you, but chill man, don’t turn that place into burnt cinders.” The worst was assumed.

In the end, the US negotiated this minefield very very well (except The Last Mile). Damn near perfect. But not quite. At least, in the opinion of some.

And therefore, in the world of global values, we get no credit. Zip.

Remember that switch I was telling you about? It’s been flipped the other way in the minds of many. Perhaps most. Getting back to normal means fault must be found. That warm well stuffed feeling of Thanksgiving, that of a job well done, surprisingly fast, with surprisingly few people hurt (remember, US military casualties were forecast as possibly in the thousands; can you imagine what the civilian toll would have been?), well, that feeling has been reassessed and found lacking.

We’re still the oppressive and morally questionable nation they’ve always thought we were. We might have fooled them for a while, even had some of them agreeing with us, but now they’re on to us. Who are ”they”? They are legion. Those who are now back in the familiar track of kneejerk criticism, be it of the US government or Republicans or the US military, now that there’s some distance from the pyschic trauma that was 9-11.

There’s some basic truths that haven’t changed. No matter how many died in Afghanistan, we had to all know it was going to happen. The fact is tragic, but the number becomes almost irrelevant.

To me, it is no more tragic whether it’s 100 or 10,000. It’s war. It is always tragic when even a single innocent dies, but it is a long known fact of war. The number is only relevant in historical terms, and the historical trend, be it world wide or Afghanistan specific, is a drastic drop in the number of civilian deaths. And it is a trend created almost entirely by the US military.

There’s no credit given for that, just fault found in the 1 in 100 bombs that missed. But you will never perfect war. There will always be undesireable results, even surrounded by victory.

It’s war. It flips a switch to an ugly alternate reality in which people die who did nothing. Blame those who started the war, not those who finished it in minimal time, with minimal loss.

And by the way: Unless you had a better alternate solution that would have achieved the same success at less human cost in less time, you’ve not got a leg to stand on with your naive criticism.