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Special Operations Forces providing basic medical care. (photo: ISAFMedia on Flickr)
Yesterday, General David Petraeus kicked off a media offensive aimed at swaying public opinion in favor of extending full military involvement in Afghanistan beyond the planned July, 2011 date for withdrawal to begin. I want to return to one bit of information that easily could be overlooked in the media blitz.
Buried in the middle of the Washington Post extended interview is a list of "accomplishments" from Special Operations Forces first rattled off as rough numbers by Petraeus and then filled in with more accurate details by staff. Here is the version with the precise numbers:
Petraeus’s spokesman later provided a more detailed breakdown: Almost 2,900 Special Operations forces operations were conducted over a 90-day period ending Aug. 8, 2010. Those resulted in: 365 insurgent leaders killed or captured; 1,355 rank-and-file insurgents captured; 1,031 insurgents killed; and 11,587 Afghan civilians who received medical treatment from those forces. The treatment was humanitarian assistance, not the result of injuries sustained during those anti-insurgent operations.
What better example is needed to highlight the folly of how misguided the US effort in Afghanistan has become than to realize that troops from the same Special Operations Command which is responsible for the night raids that provoke civilian outrage are also attempting to provide primary medical care to the population? Oh yes, when innocent civilians are killed or imprisoned without trial by the same group that presents itself to provide medical care, those civilians will be won over in an instant, won’t they?
Back in February, the United Nations announced that it would not participate in the reconstruction of Marjeh because of the militarization of humanitarian aid. As stated in the New York Times:
Senior United Nations officials in Afghanistan on Wednesday criticized NATO forces for what one referred to as “the militarization of humanitarian aid,” and said United Nations agencies would not participate in the military’s reconstruction strategy in Marja as part of its current offensive there.
“We are not part of that process, we do not want to be part of it,” said Robert Watkins, the deputy special representative of the secretary general, at a news conference attended by other officials to announce the United Nations’ Humanitarian Action Plan for 2010. “We will not be part of that military strategy.”
The photo above comes from the ISAFMedia Flickr feed. The photo was taken on November 12, 2009 and the caption supplied by ISAFMedia provides for interesting reading:
After discovering that a pregnant Afghan woman who entered the Jeremy Chandler Center for Medicine, Nov. 12, 2009, complaining of abdominal pain has gall stones, medical team members from the Forward Surgical Team (FST) and the Special Operations Forces (SOF) use an interpreter to explain that it would be safer for her baby if she waits until after she gives birth to have the stones surgically removed, Farah, Afghanistan. The medics offered her some antibiotics and vitamins to help her stay healthy throughout the pregnancy and offered for her to come back to the clinic, which is located just outside Forward Operating Base (FOB) Farah. Members of the FST, the Farah Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) medical team, 82nd Airborne medics and SOF medics, provide medical care to locals at the SOF Clinic twice a week. (Farah Provincial Reconstruction Team Photo by Master Sgt. Tracy DeMarco)
Yes, there are huge risks for private medical teams providing care in Afghanistan, but it hardly seems like Special Operations Forces providing that care is the answer to that problem. What is wrong with US forces providing security for private groups or even for medical teams from other branches of the military, such as Army medical teams, providing the primary care? When the medical teams come from the very same organization that disappears innocent people in the middle of the night, the US effort in Afghanistan has become completely detached from sanity.
The medical team described above is affiliated with the provincial reconstruction team and both come from Special Operations. By militarizing these vital functions which could be part of helping the Afghan population, the military is pushing aside neutral groups such as the UN and other non-governmental organizations. With these "services" being provided by US Special Forces personnel, it is no wonder that resentment of the US presence in Afghanistan only continues to get stronger. By making choices with such horrible associations, it is almost as though the effort is to turn "hearts and minds" against the US rather than win them over.
22 Comments
You disappeared my neighbors, would you please surgically remove the bullet that you shot me with last night? No I know you don’t know me, I was one house down sleeping. Oh and I’ve got some shrapnel from when one of your drones blew up my daughter and best friend so you could brag about killing bin ladens chauffeur, can you take that out too?
So Petraeus is going to argue that this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?ref=world
was just a matter of a gall stone removal gone wrong?
Really good points made – thank you for this piece. I sometimes wonder about a kind of companion concept in Iraq. No one mentions the 7 figure Iraqi refugees for whom we tak no responsiblity and who included so many skilled resources – doctors, nurses, engineers, etc.
When humanitarian aid is militarized, it makes targets of all who do humanitarian aid. After all, the ones not dressed in military costumes could be military in disguise, making them valid targets. In fact, how many of those who claim to be non-military providers of aid ARE actually military in disguise?
Jim. Thank you so much for bringing this aspect of the Petraeus way of war. With neo-con encouragement the military in recent years has taken the philosophy that a totalitarian chain of command militarized world is the best of all worlds.
My aging brain drops things like through a sieve so I have no idea the attribution but I read a few days ago a commentary on the fact that the US and Israel are the only two major nations holding to the principles of militarization as the solution for all challenges.
Coming soon to a D.C. near you, a military dictatorship, aka Petraeus for prez.
You got that right!
This isn’t Petraeus’s way of war. Special Forces A teams provided local medical care to Hmung and Meo tribes in Vietnam and to Laotians who had no doctors. It was part of the “winning hearts and minds” strategy. True, that didn’t work and it won’t work here either, but this is in no way a new thing.
Kucinich should push for an immediate end to funding for this criminal endeavor because Petraeus has no intention of allowing his little career path enhancing war to end before he’s ready to retire.
I agree it is not novel to Petraeus but he seems particularly fanatical in his beliefs.
This is really bigger than providing some medical care, which as you point out has been done in the past. As far as I know throughout our history. I am positive back to WWI.
The broader vision of the military is based on the belief that the military way is the way for all aspects of human life and governing. They and our current and recent authoritarian administrations intend to expand intrusion into civilian institutions and private lives
Speaking of the militarization of everything, Yale enlists.
They’re trying to keep up with Hahvard.
Harvard has given us Jack Goldsmith’s “If your country is big and powerful, it can do anything it wants to anyone it wants – - and your political party can do the same domestically and use the Dept of Justice as it’s political doorknocker while they’re at it” as the international law they want to project, with Elena Kagan’s “let’s just throw lawyers who represent people the President doesn’t want represented in jail” as their domestic Goddess version of the woman who is worthy of moving laterally to the Sup Ct from Hahvard Halls.
Yeahle has to keep up with it’s Dean now penning the pardonus for civilian murders by drones and assassination squads throughout the world and now putting the assassination squads leader on staff.
Good times in America.
We’re No 11! USA! USA! USA!
Blue Texan’s regularly scheduled post is up: What’s Behind the Conservative Opposition to the “Ground Zero” [sic] Mosque
Welcome to January 12th 2010, when the Militarization of Humanitarian Aid dropped down on Haiti.
Your’re late…
We need to get out of there. I don’t care what good we are doing anymore. I feel horribly sorry for the plight of the Afghan people for all sorts of different reasons. We still need to get out of there. We are broke, we need to spend the money on our own medical care and infastructure. We need to stop killing innocent Afghani’s and our own people in a pointless, stupid war.
Petraeus, Obama and the rest of the cowboys & indians brigade are FUCKING INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If Obama thinks this is so valuable then he oughta get himself and Michelle dressed up in their little suits, strap on their guns and hightail it on over there and get out on the front lines. Otherwise…..bring the troops home. If the Afghani’s want to eat each other, let the Taliban rule them, beat their women, that’s their business. We will never control that unless we send in 500,000 of our troops minimally, which will NEVER happen. So get the hell out of there.
Was the cold-blooded execution of those 10 medical workers the first salvo in this new phase of the US War on AfPak? Maybe not but with this development any NGO in AfPak will be a target. Well, in any case this is a sure fire way to militarize ALL foreign personnel in country. The US military deepens the crisis by this takeover of medical responsibilities.
We shoot ‘em—we patch ‘em up…what could be fairer?
Think of the hearts and minds we’ll be winning.
I can hardly wait for Spencer Ackerman’s first thread on the genius of it.
“Then we dropped, hovered settled down into purple lz smoke, dozens of children broke from their hootches to run in toward the focus of our landing, the pilot laughing and saying ‘Vietnam, man, bomb ‘em and feed ‘em, bomb ‘em and feed ‘em.’”
Michael Herr, Dispatches
It seems to me like a clear-cut violation of the Hippocratic Oath for medical personnel to be providing care and compassion to people while at the same inflicting harm and misery on them. But I’m no longer shocked by any of this once Robert Parry, an investigative journalist who won the George Polk Award in 1984 for reporting on the Iran-Contra affair and uncovering Oliver North’s involvement in it, brought to my attention (see link below) that many military types (including the rather mild-mannered Colin Powell) believe there’s nothing wrong with gunned down unarmed civilians all in the name of this so-called “war on terrorism.” About the only way any invader or occupier, such as the US, to justify its duel role as killer and healer is to view its victims and its patients as being less than human. And now that our armed forces see little difference between innocent civilians and enemy combatants, I think it’s high time that we put an end to our never-ending war on terror.
Let me also mention that as long as terrorists aren’t being supported by any particular state or government, we have no business invading and occupying any country on the planet, which happens to harbor terrorists. As I’ve said before, the war on terror is similar to the war of drugs in that it can only be fought through covert actions. But because there’s a vicious cycle to terrorism, just as there is to the illicit drug trade (the harder we fight them, the bigger and more vicious they become), I have serious doubts that covert actions can put a lid on terrorism, much less stamp it out. So I think in the long run, the best way for us to battle terrorists and drug dealers alike is to distance ourselves from them, not to seek them out!
http://antiwar.com/radio/2008/11/05/robert-parry-7/
err — dual, not duel
I am sympathetic to most of what you say. Compassionate care to enemies has a long history. The US military has been providing medical care to enemies including enemy soldiers for as far as I know most of our history.
What is ethical anathema and I think a war crime is to make care conditional on the the basis of demands made by the military. I am aware Rumsfeld did have such a policy early in the war in Iraq. This is what we hate about the military. It is sickening.
I have a hard enough time trying to avoid the significant problems with western medicine. If I also had to avoid militarized western medicine, I don’t know what I’d do!
We just really don’t belong there.