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Military officials say that civilian casualties in Marjah, Afghanistan are "inevitable" as U.S. and allied forces launch Operation Moshtarak, the largest military action since the U.S-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Thanks in part to conflicting messages from ISAF and in part due to some residents’ inability to flee, many civilians remain in Marjah, in the crossfire.
Statements from Brig. Gen. Nicholson, commander of the operation, indicate that he feels he has leeway to use airstrikes in the civilian area, and that he intends to use fast, furious attacks to try to overwhelm the Taliban. The problem: airstrikes in support of troops in contact are the leading cause of U.S.-caused civilian deaths.
In the L.A. Times article on the upcoming operation in Marja, the U.S. commander says all the right words when it comes to the issue of insulating the non-combatants from the carnage:
…[I]n the weeks leading up to the imminent offensive to take the Helmand River Valley town of Marja in southern Afghanistan, the Marines’ commander, Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, sat with dozens of Afghan tribal elders, drinking endless cups of sweet tea and offering reassurances that his top priority will be the safety of Afghan civilians.
“In counterinsurgency, the people are the prize,” Nicholson said…
…except Nicholson is talking out of both sides of his mouth:
US Second Marine Expeditionary Force commander Larry Nicholson said that the evacuation of most civilians would give commanders leeway to use air-to-ground missiles, declaring that he was “not looking for a fair fight.”
ABC News quotes Nicholson explaining some truly worrisome logic:
Nicholson underscored the point saying a heavy handed approach will reduce the chance for civilian casualties.
“Our feeling is if you go big, strong and fast, you lessen the possibility of civilian casualties as opposed to a slow methodical rolling assault. You go in and you dominate. You overwhelm the enemy,” he said.
Okay, let’s put these two things together. Nicholson is telegraphing he’s letting the air strikes off the chain and that he intends to use rapid, furious attacks in Marja, and somehow that is supposed to lead to reduced civilian casualties. Well, that would be great if we didn’t already know that the single greatest cause of U.S.-caused civilian casualties was airstrikes in support of troops involved in intense firefights.
All of this is very, very bad news for civilians in Marjah. And it’s bad news for the troops in the fight as well.
69 Comments
Seems that the general has no real intentions of being careful. The civilians will take terrible losses if they use airstrikes.
Twain: Yes, they will.
Internet gods: Please get the ad for a game called “Holy War” off my f*king post.
Sure. As soon as the Soros checks clear.
LOL
Let’s put these things together, Derrick. This is an absurdly well-announced battle.
You don’t send general officers to meet with local leaders prior to the battle if you don’t give a damn about their reaction.
Therefore, we don’t care if we kill big bunches of the people that our soldiers will, post-battle, be stationed among.
Might be a flaw there.
Long time no see, macaquerman:
Having a feeling about whether people live or die doesn’t mean you’re doing what’s necessary to actually not kill them. Here’s something I wrote on another thread:
hey, Derrick.
MM is a persistent ole cuss, eh…? ;-)
pretty much on target, Tuttle. If Derrick had directed that comment at me, we would have needed to have packed two lunches and still send out for snacks.
that wasn’t one of his better ones.
I’m so lost LOL
I’ll leave a trail of pizza crust crumbs.
Derrick,
I also was reminded of Katrina as I was reading yesterday about how this campaign had been announced for an extended time and with many leaflet drops and yet only a few hundred families, at most, evacuated an area of population approaching 100,000. Our “planners” simply didn’t take into account the many factors which prevented a larger evacuation and now are forced into warning the civilians to “shelter in place” which amounts to sitting in their houses praying the bombs somehow miss. As you point out, conditions are now set for large civilian losses that will be blamed on Taliban fighters using civilians as human shields (as they no doubt will do).
Thanks for continuing to go beyond the headlines.
Also, the winning comment from that other thread:
If you want to put things together, let’s do a study on U.S. counterinsurgency history. Here’s what Colonel Gian P. Gentile, director of the Military History Program at the US Military Academy wrote last year:
I’d also note the sober analysis of Tara McKelvey at The American Prospect:
I’ll say it more bluntly: the counterinsurgency doctrine is a cover for brutal occupation and war fought at the level of the “people”, e.g., raiding homes, supposedly to win their “hearts and minds”, but really to subdue them.
Well said.
One of the messages Phoenix sent to surrounding villages was, “This could happen to you if you support the Viet Cong.”
Thanks, Jeff, for the history.
I thought that the topic was this coming battle, but thanks.
I think this and the whole concept of “shock and awe.” is held by minds that do expect to win hearts and minds.
It is the mindset of many rapists. They seek affection believing that, the shock and awe of the male anatomy and demonstrated power will induce worship in the woman.
Remember the rape scene in The Fountainhead?
The flaw is in defending the war against civilians the US Military, especially Marines, has been carrying out since the first day they bombed a peaceful Baghdad.
This particular adventure is a remake of Fallujah. (btw have you seen the high incidence of birth defects in Fallujah now?)
Shock and Awe. Sure works well doesn’t it?
FOOLS!
If this particular battle is simply another iteration of (either battle of) Fallajuh, you might then have a point.
Not so much as of yet.
Yes, whether we get a repeat of a Fallujah-type event is a critical question waiting to be answered. My new diary discusses other aspects of this operation that seem to have us trapped in an endless loop.
Wasn’t my comparison, twas the Stick’s
I don’t thin my logic is that twisted. Same rhetoric. Same tactics. Since we have no power to stop it time will prove out.
I don’t say that your logic is all that twisted, nor would I say that your concern is misplaced.
I think that you assume too much, and we’ll have to see if what ensues is what you expect.
Aloha, Derrick…! I’ll be posting a new Seminal Diary on Marjah too…
The AFP is already saying…
Tuttle, allow the annoying guy to remind you to track back to the source. Read the opening line from the ICRC .
http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/afghanistan-update-100210!OpenDocument
Sweet. I’ll look for it.
DC
Everything about all of this is just as wrong as it could possibly be.
though I probably woulda paid for the snacks.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/07/08/dining/difara2.jpg
Let’s open up the topic just a bit.
“Civilian casualties” is an interesting term to use in an ill-defined military occupation and counter-insurgency kept alive by politicians. Could the list of wrongful victims of air strikes in the upcoming battles include everyone killed or injured by an air strike at all?
When the political leadership can’t explain how Afghanistan is threatening us at all, and the political leadership can’t explain what its real intent or strategy is in Afghanistan, then it could be that the military’s occupation of Afghanistan is simply wrong. It could be Afghanis who are members of the Taliban are still Afghanis a lot more than our soldiers and they may be backwards, brutal fanatics, but its their land, not ours. It could be that our military is in the position (or the business) of killing people who one way or another are simply trying to fight off an egregious foreign military occupation.
Perhaps the General’s comments would be better received if first Obama and the Congressional leaders had explained to us precisely WHY the US is staying in Afghanistan, why we are propping up the Karzai government despite cables from Ambassadors claiming this is a bad idea. Perhaps if Obama had explained before the General started talking why it is that the US must wage war in Afghanistan we would understand why the desperate and grave route of shooting missiles at largely defenseless people on the ground (“I’m not looking for a fair fight”) must be followed.
“Could the list of wrongful victims of air strikes in the upcoming battles include everyone killed or injured by an air strike at all?”
Yes..under Articles 5,6,7, and 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
http://untreaty.un.org/cod/icc/statute/99_corr/cstatute.htm
how so?
how do you get that undertaking military operations against the insurgents is nakedly criminal?
A moral compass that respects ALL human life.
Obama has “explained” why we’re in Afghanistan, to his imagined satisfaction. The logic is warmed-over Cheney.
I agree. Neither Bush nor Obama has defined an actual policy reason for our continued presence in Afghanistan other than we are already there.
As for increased civilian casualties, this was always the central contradiction in McChrystal’s strategy. You can not have increased large scale military operations and not have increased civilian deaths and injuries. So his plans become just a paraphrase of the Vietnam era “Sometimes you have to destroy a village in order to save it.”
“Perhaps if Obama had explained before the General started talking why it is that the US must wage war in Afghanistan we would understand why the desperate and grave route of shooting missiles at largely defenseless people on the ground (“I’m not looking for a fair fight”) must be followed.”
Obama explained that was what he was getting the Nobel Peace Prize for.
Not really.
Why is this diary not in the front page FDL Seminal reader diaries. It’s very surprising to me that it does not have enough recommendations.
Great work, as per usual, Derrick. Thanks so much for you labors on reporting the truth on the Afghanistan War.
Fuck.
Didn’t Obama say he was going to bring the troops home? Isn’t that what we voted for? They’re killing civilians in our name, shit they’re planning on it. It needs to stop.
Obama = cheap shit little liar.
Obama is a “fabulist”, transparit.
That means he is a “cheap shit” big “liar”, a sweet-talking flim-flam artiste and as low-down as a snake in a wagon-wheel rut (to paraphrase Hightower).
But a lot of people think that means he’s fab-u-lous.
;~DW
iirc he said he’ll bring the troops home from iraq and increase the troops in afghanistan. unfortunately he’s been true to his word in afghanistan. may obama rot in hell. fallujah was hideous and obscene. this looks to be just as nasty.
Thanks for posting this story.
In our newspeak society we have interestingly ambiguous statements taken as if they are automatically positive.
Which could just as well mean that if you think you are going to lose a prize that can be used against you that you will do what it takes to avoid that. As well the phrase implies control since a prize is not free to decide it’s fate.
This prize is a subdued and manageable population tied to their land. Airstrikes against a farming population that clearly cannot safely move without first abandoning all of the worldly goods means control of the survivors and their land.
Don McCullin, Shaped by War.
http://audiovideo.economist.com/?fr_story=487c5d3339160a17745fc0c046d2774f9af39515
Excellent post, Derrick. Thank you.
They expected the Taliban to pack up and leave Marjah ahead of the offensive. Instead, they are digging in. Can you say “Fallujah”?
This is true:
“In counterinsurgency, the people are the prize,” Nicholson said…
This is not true:
“In counterinsurgency, the bodies are the prize,”
But, bodies are what we’ll get, well get bodies and new enemies.
How are bodies, every one attached to 10, 20 or 50 new supporters of the insurgency helpful to us?
Why is it the US now belives it can be a colonial power, when it spent the years since WW II tearing down colonial powers because of its suppport for local peoples’ rights for themselves?
This is the same as reacing to a wasp sting by flattening the neighborhood. Better to remove the wasp’s nest.
As much as this interrupts the latest “bipartisan” or “sarah palin” news update, that sad reality is……Americans don’t give a shit who is killed over there as long as it isn’t Americans. That’s the bottom line. If they did, instead of hearing great Obama speeches and fake Rethuglican evil narratives every damn day, Americans would instead be witnessing broadcasts of what their military is REALLY doing. Killing kids and women by the hundreds of thousands in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan and Yemen. Americans don’t care. But oh good lawrd if somebody somewhere says enough is enough, and retaliates the only way they can, that’s the end of the world. Face it. Americans generally love to kill people. If this wasn’t true, you would be hearing about these things in the media. You are not.
Sometimes one wonders, canadianbeaver, whether Americans can understand what war really means.
We’ve not had one, here, at home, for so long we have simply forgotten, those who haven’t been “there”.
It may be that we will, someday, understand …
(Wonder what it will take???)
… when the war comes “home” to the “homeland” …
That’s what is going to happen. Won’t be so easy protesting on blogs, and pretending one party are pathological liars, whilst the other one is the lesser of two evils, if/when it ever happens. The Obama Admin has already stated there WILL BE an attack on US soil in the next 3-6 months. Anybody that has to ask why, deserves no sympathy.
I don’t believe anyone is asking for your sympathy, Captain Canada.
911…”coalition of the willing”..’nuff said.
Fair enough, I appreciate that.
Actually, as long as the american we are killing (assassinating) has a funny muslim sounding name, is brown, and lives in a country full of brown people with funny sounding muslim names Americans dont give a shit about that either. Or so it has seemed since the Obama assasination hitlist was made public.
I’m a Republican… Bush was WRONG.
Not all Republicans are Neocons
But evidently some Dems are.
Obama is pursuing Bush Doctrine 2.0.
Are they both puppets or what and of what?
I think the original gambit really was to lay the groundwork for being able to invade Iraq, but where they have both ended up since then is that not only are there huge $$ interests involved in wanting to keep the wars going, but both have used the kinds of rhetoric now that Obama has become just as boxed as Bush. All rhetoric, no definable mission and everyone promising to fight “smarter” and be the “winners” and eventually politically you have to just keep going to keep going and assume either a miracle will happen or you will be able to just keep handing the war off to the next President, while keeping it low enough profile while you are in office that it doesn’t do you too much damage.
They have had the ability to disassociate from reality and divorce consequences from actions – they can drum up flag waving rhetoric about the “brave men and women” while at the same time not really thinking of them or of the national interests at stake as anything much more than game pieces – and gamepieces for a game that is taking far less commitement of their time and efforts than other political games at home. They don’t really care about the reality of the people being killed, Afghan and American, or the depths of the holes being dug. They just care about how to shape the talking points as and when needed and how to milk them, since “war” talking points can always be milked like no others.
Well said Mary, And they don’t care of the consequences that come home.
It has to be said. We are close to being a rogue nation. I am coming to agree with another blogger we have all already become so complicit it that it may well take the rest of the world to bring us to heel.
Have you all seen this? Link.
Dems have proven they are very capable of following in Bush’s clumsy footsteps when it comes to Afghanistan, presidential power, chumminess with Big Business. we need a real 3rd party–too bad the only candidate right now is the unhinged tea party
Further to your point about many civilians remaining in the cross hairs, this article on cutting of the “Taliban” escape routes
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100211/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan/print
which would seem to be the same escape routes civilians would use as well.
@43 – There’s a very fair point you’re making, especially with the difference in size and “fixedness” of the targets, but I don’t think in the end it is going to be whether you can compare the two battles that will make the difference. In the end, it’s about what mission this battle (and Fallujah for that matter) are undertaken in support of – and there’s where I think you have the rub. The article I link indicates that the sales pitch being given to the village elders is that the payback for the unavoidable aspects of civilian killing and bombing and destruction is going to be that once the Taliban are out, there will be all kinds of (impliedly non-corrupt or not-too-overboard-corrupt) services brought in for the area.
Do you realistically believe that is going to happen? And is that the mission in Afghanistan? If so, is the battle really the best way to support that mission (to bring services to the area) or is there really a different mission and the promise to provide services is just a collateral promise that can be shrugged off later as collateral damage? Does anyone in the Obama admin HAVE a definable mission they can put on the plate?
I like that you don’t let things go too far afield without a mild body check m, but I really wish you’d share more of what you think is going on too. YOu don’t have to, checks are kind of worthwhile in and of themselves, but it would be interesting I think.
I’m not worried about civilian casualties coming during the battle, Mary, it’s the big afterparty. The taliban raids and reprisals and ambushes and whether we accept the responsibility for not only protecting the population but also help them find a way to live decently.
Our record is spotty at best, and shitty of late, but maybe we might be putting up billboards with some backing…
I think even more than the afterparty, it’s why we went in to start with. From the AP story I linked, NATO is selling this line to the locals:
But this is a Pashtun area and the elders are being non-committal at best:
Meanwhile – Kharzai has ended Dostum’s exile and brought him back in as Chief of Staff of the Afghan Army (the Afghan Army that is participating with the marines in this assault – under the Uzbek man who was already accused of war crimes from the days he backed the Soviets against the Mujahadeen and up to the shipping container and other crimes laid at his door in the US offensive)
The end game for all this is …? I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that the end game is the NATO sales tag of “bringing public services” to the Pashtun area.
here’s another link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/asia/12afghan.html?ref=world
the end-game for this area is we announce that the taliban will be forced to leave and that they leave, without collecting their “tax” share of the profits from the spring harvest, for one thing.
for another, we attempt to control the Afghan police left in the area in hope of getting them to act less like a gang of thieves.
EPU land
The “end game” is going to be what happens this spring? I don’t think you believe in that as an endgame.
Meanwhile, yes those escape routes are the same ones civilians would be using
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021103331.html
No, I wish we really could see an endgame for our presence in Afghanistan, but I was offering one for the small battle, rather than the larger one.
I suspect that it’ll be another year before one is reasonably clear.
(btw, your link goes to that idiot Mukasey’s editorial, which I assume you’ve flagged for shredding.)
I couldn’t find the source of your quotation. I’ll look back later.
For when the horrors and crimes against humanity in Falluja arent enough, Marjah!
This is Falluja 2.0, and its abhorent. It was abhorent when Bush did it. Its still abhorent now that Obama is doing it.
Same deal with the massacre at Abu Jour in Iraq in 2007. They surrounded their ‘insurgents’, left civilians and insurgents no way out before the battle, then a firefight began which killed civilians in the crossfire. Painting number 4 or 5 in a series of peace vigil paintings is called Massacre at Abu Jour. The little girl in the field hospital was hit by an RPG. This is just murder:
http://web.mac.com/ctb3
You will need safari or firefox to see the paintings.
Thank you for sharing those compelling images. I have bookmarked them.
I can’t even look and listen. The people of Afghanistan have been subject to so many invasions, so much pain and suffering. Know I will be hearing from my friends who are there
Thanks for all the great comments. Here’s some more food for thought:
Marjah grows poppies because the soil is salty. The soil is salty because a U.S. backed irrigation project ended with the (salty) local water table rising and salting the soil. It was unintentional, but dang…
The Emperor has ordered his legions to march on Marjah. The people of Marjah will therefore be killed, maimed, orphaned and further impoverished. There will also be dead and wounded among the legionnaires. The considerable expense of perpetrating this crime will be born by the Emperor’s subjects. A hand full of old white rich men will get a little richer.
We must avenge the killing of 3,000 civilians by killing civilians that had nothing to do with it! Afghanistan is the good war, dontcha know?