Tweet
I don’t know what to make of this Matthew Yglesias post, in which he seems to weigh the merits of bombing innocent Afghans on some ends-justifies-means framework.
For one thing, I’m enough of a squish that I think “not abandoning the population of Afghanistan to civil war and Taliban rules” makes perfect sense. And it’s also very reasonable to see the situation in Afghanistan as tied in with the situation in Pakistan and to see preventing the collapse of the Pakistani state as an important American policy goal.
But if these are our real objectives, then certain things follow from that. Consider air strikes. If you define the goal as “eliminate safe havens” then maybe airstrikes that accidentally kill Afghan civilians aren’t that big a deal. By contrast, if we’re there to help Afghan civilians, then killing Afghan civilians is a very big deal.
I don’t remotely believe Yglesias is indifferent to the killing of innocent people. But putting aside whether the two goals he lists are inconsistent, what does he mean? Is he saying that it’s more okay to bomb Afghan citizens if we believe that helps stabilize Pakistan? How does it follow that killing those citizens helps any legitimate excuse we claim for interfering in Pakistan, and how does that goal justify the killings?
And where do we — and it’s hardly just Yglesias — get the notion that our bombing of Aghan villages/towns results only in "accidentally" killing Afghan citizens? If we deliberately drop bombs in civilian areas, while recognizing that civilians are likely to be killed, it’s not accidental when they’re killed. It’s intentional. The principle is the same as recklessly driving your car down a sidewalk with pedestrians; you’re not allowed to argue as an excuse that it wasn’t your purpose to run over pedestrians but only to hit a particular sidewalk vendor.
It might help folks struggling with these questions to ask whether we should bomb towns, neighborhoods and buildings in NY City, Chicago, or Washington, D.C., knowing there are likely to be innocent people in those towns, neighborhoods and buildings. Would we tell the police and special forces to blow up buildings whenever we think a suspected violent criminal might be hiding there?
My guess (or is it only a hope?) is that we wouldn’t tolerate such reckless endangerment and likely killing of innocent Americans. Why we apply a different calculation when the victims are Afghans has always escaped me.
48 Comments
“Why we apply a different calculation when the victims are Afghanis has always escaped me.” Scarecrow, it goes back to the concept of ‘American Exceptionalism’.
Personally, I think the framing of the question by Yglesias is mistaken and backing that perspective up is “But if these are our real objectives” ; what REALLY are the U.S. objectives?
What I do know is that ‘Generals and Majors always seem so unhappy ‘less they got a war’
Perhaps. Of course, if the hallmark of “exceptionalism” is that you value other peoples’ lives much less than your own nationals, its hardly something to brag about.
“its hardly something to brag about.”; concur but it is done anyway.
Killing civilians is official policy rather than an accident. This is from the US Rules of Engagement in Iraq (2005). No reason to assume that there would be any difference in Afghanistan. Whether or not civilians will be targeted depends on the estimated number. If the estimate is 30, or more, the authorization to attack must come from the Secretary of Defense.
*******************
” Among several interesting nuggets in the ROE, it provides indications that U.S. attacks likely to result in civilian deaths required authorization at the top of the Pentagon, by the SECDEF (Secretary of Defense). Thus, the ROE states repeatedly; “If the target is in a HIGH CD [collateral damage] area, SECDEF approval is required.” And what is the definition of a High Collateral Damage area? The ROE contains a set of explicit definitions of its terms. There we find High Collateral Damage Targets defined as:
“Those targets that, if struck, have a ten percent probability of causing collateral damage through blast debris and fragmentation and are estimated to result in significant collateral effects on noncombatant persons and structures, including: (A) Non-combatant casualties estimated at 30 or greater; (B) Significant effects on Category I No Strike protected sites in accordance with Ref D; (C) In the case of dual-use facilities, effects that significantly impact the non-combatant population, including significant effects on the environment/facilities/infrastructure not related to an adversary’s war making ability; or (D) Targets in close proximity to known human shields.”
Thus, all attacks, except those in self-defense or active pursuit, with a reasonable possibility of harming 30 or more civilians needed approval from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Presumably such approval would need to be in writing. The ROE thus suggest that there may exist an extensive documentary record of requests, and possibly Rumsfeld’s approval or rejection, for attacks with the potential for resulting in significant civilian casualties. Congress should demand access to these documents to determine the extent to which attacks resulting in civilian casualties were authorized, potentially providing insight into who was responsible for possible war crimes committed in the course of the occupation. “
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/US_I…..ent_leaked
Good question Scarecrow.
” The limits of Individual morality
This means that it takes the Secretary of Defense to authorize a strike with consequences on the order of the Columbine massacre (counting injured as casualties) and the Virginia Tech massacre.
Since we have no hesitation in describing these school shootings as massacres, and since we have no such proclivity (officially speaking) in the case of a mission authorized by our Defense Secretary, the difference would seem to be the stakes.
From the point of view of the state, a massacre is the killing of innocents when there is nothing to be gained (low stakes). When the Secretary of Defense orders a strike with a high collateral damage assessment, the justification is (and must always be) that there is sufficient gain involved (high stakes).
If the morality of an act cannot be ascertained save for its postulated benefit, then who gets to do the postulating? If we can agree that this matter cannot be left in individual hands, this leaves only a collection of hands (an abstraction).
If we regard this collection as valuable, we are led toward answering the question first proposed in the affirmative. We will have to alter our innate sense of morality.
To pose the weaker version of the question is to admit the abdication of individual morality, which can now be no more than a reflection of the collective.
To the extent that one’s patriotism manifests itself as allegiance to the state, such patriotism will involve a forfeiture of individual morality. This is less a statement about the merits of allegiance than it is about its limits.
It simply posits a necessary sacrifice, in this case distinct from the sacrosanct sacrifice (for one’s country) customarily thought of as patriotic. This is the sacrifice of one’s own morality. “
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/The_…..l_morality
Until Americans get outraged about Afghan civilians dead from our bombing raids, Afghan civilians will continue to die in bombing raids.
Planned colateral damage
Planned civilian casualties (dead and maimed humans)
Animal rights have a much higher bar
This is state murder
Murder:
Murder is when one person kills another person on purpose. It is only called “murder” when it is against the law.
So by authorizing it it is no longer murder but execution of civilians?
Well, given our lack of concern about Iraqi deaths, I’m not holding my breath on Afghanistan.
The entire “Pakistan is destabilized” motif requires some saner research as well – a number of experts on the region are questioning this as hype.
If you define the goal as “eliminate safe havens” then maybe airstrikes that accidentally kill Afghan civilians aren’t that big a deal.
I don’t think Yglesias is arguing for this position–he’s stating what is clear. If you’re in the camp that says eliminating havens (”safe havens” is redundant) then killing some civilians doesn’t matter. By leaving off the beginning of his sentence, you suggest he advocates that. But he’s simply stating a position.
War crimes and crimes against humanity are against the law…it is murder and that is a recruiting tool for terrorist.
The military needs an enemy (The bad guys”).
I have a friend in a Special Forces organization who have conventions. He says the military has to have war to keep forces with combat experience.
That does not mean ENDLESS WAR.
The war machine is well funded industry that is perpetuated by these crimes.
I don’t like strangelovian versions of “if a = c, then . . .blah blah blah,” as if there are no other considerations. I once read a little piece. If true it speaks volumes to me:
Gen. McKiernan was removed from Afghanistan recently. The cover story is about as weak as it gets. Let me tell you what I think the real story is.
Back in Nov. or Dec. of last yr Gen. McKiernan got into it with Gen. Craddock, the Supreme NATO Commander. Craddock had issued a illegal order that painted a target on the back of almost every Afghani in the country. Gen. McKiernan refused to follow the order and told his people not to follow it either. This was major news when it broke in Der Spiegel but the American media buried it. Over-simplified, Craddock had said that any Afghani involved in the Drug trade was a legal target and that no evidence of their guilt was needed as long as ten or less civilians died in the attack. Since Opium is the national crop and has been for decades, every Afghani knows someone, a farmer, a trader, shop owner, smuggler, etc, because for the most part those are the only jobs there are to support a family. The Taliban even forces some farmers to grow the Poppy.
While Craddock was forced to rescind that order if you look at the recent news the raids on Opium, Poppy fields,and the workers has escalated radically. I’d bet they had to remove Gen. McKiernan because of his stand against the wholesale bombing of civilians as the Craddock order would of caused. I hope that all made sense.
Perhaps the strawman is that the choice is either abandoning a foreign civil population to violence at the hands of an indigenous violent band or to the violence of being bombed by us. I suspect most of the world imagines there are more and better choices.
Obama’s decision to build up in Afghanistan looks like moving the war from Vietnam to Laos. It’s keeping our imperial soldiery in theater, ready for the next political assignment. That it exhausts them and us, our goodwill and credibility, hardly seems to enter the equation.
Is Matt having a question of conscience moment?
World and Peace
Magnificent ‘Merican Murder Machine.
That’s who we are ,that’s what we do. Thats what sunday school teachers ,doctors, lawyers, your neighbors do.
We love killing others, the killing fields and spilling other peoples blood in greater quantity than ours get spilled.
We are USA #1 in world wide gun sales and military equipment.
How do you create demand? Fire power display on the killing fields, where no one matters, just bring the newest, bestest killing equipment on to the market. Cluster bombs, yea baby, Israel bought a ton with our tax dollars after Iraq 1.0. But there’s got to be a profit some how, otherwise how could dick the snake be worth over $100,000,000 without the requisite fire power display. Come on we lit up Baghdad and we had AWE, now didn’t we? Most people were impressed with the HELLSTORM OF DEATH we visited upon those innocents that lived in the cradle of civilization, it puffs out an ‘merican chest with the amount of outright murder we can commit in an hour.
Bitter, you bet when my mother died of breast cancer at 50 because our research was into death not life. And we love the killing machines unmatched by anything this side of hell.
I can’t say you quoted him out of context…because the context is all there. But you seem to have misread his words and made a big assumption that Iglesias is speaking of his own views. Try again:
“If you define the goal as “eliminate safe havens” then maybe airstrikes that accidentally kill Afghan civilians aren’t that big a deal.”
The really lame statement in his post was where he blithely claims that it “makes perfect sense” to stay in Afghanistan because the alternative is to “abandon” the Afghans to the Taliban. Perfect sense? Not perfect. Debatable, terribly risky and definitely bloody and expensive.
What’s stunning is that question need be asked at this point in time at all.
It’s a false war based on lies, with no clear publicly defined mission to this very day. Only pursuit of future natural resources in the region (and removal routes) makes sense.
it was never about Osama or the Taliban, much less the civilians of those nations.
Once these things are clear.. and they long ago should have been to sane readers and writers in the progressive blogos. This type of discussion is just ignoring those salient points. Points of lies, hubris, hegemony, which will never change, no matter the outcome.
Why are so many who know these points trying to keep from pressuring O and the Dems from doing the right things, immediately?
If folks like Yglesias want play Risk or what I now call neo footsie… they should do their very best to bring thre troops home first.
The rubicon of bombing civilians was crossed by the Brits in WWII, who bombed the shit out of every German city they could reach, for no military reason whatsoever. The U.S. carved that principle in stone with the firebombings of Japanese paper & wooden cities, even before the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb. You know, the “good war.”
The retrospective on bombing civilians seems to be that it prolongs the war because it pisses them off.
I remember the days right after 9/11, when everyone was earnestly demanding that the country of Afghanistan be turned into glass. I think the Telegraph in London actually ran an editorial on 9/13 that tried to justify the country’s nuking. Let’s hope we’re past that by now.
Nope. So much about war boils down to revenge. Thou shalt not cross the Super Power, otherwise all retribution shall fall on thee.
thank you scarecrow. that’s it exactly.
we have no right to do to others what we would would call wrong if it was done to us.
Apart from their immorality, airstrikes can never “eliminate safe havens” because airstrikes galvanize resistance. Have we learned nothing from Viet Nam? Palestine?
Those plotting mass murder against US noncombatants remain a small subset of the larger collection of people who hold us, generally with some legitimacy, in contempt.
The more we flatter criminals by portraying them as world-class Enemies, the more we legitimize them in the eyes of the dispossessed.
You don’t bomb terrorists out of existence; you bomb them into existence. (I wish I wrote that; don’t know who did, but it can’t be repeated enough.)
Yes, it makes sense. The cover story, as you say, was weak and since it wasn’t covered well here, makes it even more suspicious. Plus his replacement, McChrystal, is special ops and a nasty-sounding guy.
“From 2003 to 2008, led the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees the military’s most sensitive forces, including the Army’s Delta Force. McChrystal’s leadership is credited with the December 2003 capture of Saddam Hussein.
• Oversaw a task force that was criticized in 2006 for abusing detainees and harsh interrogation methods at Baghdad’s Camp Nama.
snip
Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, describing McChrystal’s role in what he calls an “executive assassination wing” of the military’s joint special-operations command that Hersh claims reported directly to former Vice President Cheney’s office (NPR, March 30, 2009).”
more at this link:
http://www.time.com/time/polit…..42,00.html
the moral depravity and stupidity of blood lust.
you can bomb the world to pieces but you can’t bomb it into peace.
As I tried to make clear — but apparently wasn’t totally successful — I’m not assuming Yglesias is literally advocating an immoral policy; I assume, as others do here, that he’s laying out the logic of a hypothetical abtract concept, and its the concept, the logical framework for thinking about Afghanistan (or foreign military interventions generally), that I’m interested in. We often discuss the issue of Afghani deaths only from the point of view of our objectives, and I think that’s wrong even if you agree with our objectives.
We discuss our goals and our choices without seeing the Afghanis as having a relevant stake in the choices, let alone seeing them as entitled to a veto of choices that adversely affect them.
I’m sorry to hear about your mother. Not only do we invest in death, but the Rife Machine in the 30’s had great promise as a cancer cure. Rife was discredited by the *people* who prefer to invest in illness and death. Å bit off-topic, sorry.
You mean “hope and change?” :)
MY says “If you define the goal as “eliminate safe havens” then maybe airstrikes that accidentally kill Afghan civilians aren’t that big a deal.”
This is nuts from if to then. The US military considers, for example; in the latest massacre of civilians in Farah, their actions to have been an elimination of safe havens. They cite the bomber plane’s video as evidence of watching “a Taliban” run into a dwelling as proof of the dwelling therefore being a safe haven and therefore a legitimate target. Nevermind the civilians whose home you just obliterated and oh by the way we have no idea who was inside but we know for certain that there weren’t that many of those people we killed accidentally on purpose as the Afghans say.
Scarecrow, you state in your excellent and thoughtful post that “I don’t remotely believe Yglesias is indifferent to the killing of innocent people”; it is my impression that he is saying it certainly may be worth it. It is also my impression that he represents the majority mainstream US opinion. (present company excluded)
Bush really meant it when he used the word ‘crusade’. Many Muslims took his words as a declaration of war on Islam; looks like they were correct.
**************
” In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:
“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”
Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:
“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”.
There is a curious coda to this story. While a senior at Yale University George W. Bush was a member of the exclusive and secretive Skull & Bones society. His father, George H.W. Bush had also been a “Bonesman”, as indeed had his father. Skull & Bones’ initiates are assigned or take on nicknames. And what was George Bush Senior’s nickname? “Magog”. “
http://www.alternet.org/politi….._begins%22
Well,gee, Scarecrow, maybe he meant that if you’re fighting for decent reasons, accidently killing innocents in the effort to protect a vastly greater number of innocents, shouldn’t be a reason sufficient to derail the pursuit of your efforts.
It’s quite scary that a centre-right interventionist like Yglesias will one day be an “opinion former” with a regular column in the Times.
Even scarier that apparently sane people like macaquerman would get behind this bloodthirsty nonsense.
Like hell I’m sane!! What I don’t understand is why explaining Yglesias means that I’m agreeing with him.
The last time I remember agreeing with anything Yglesias has written about world affairs was when he described the bombing of an entire family to kill one man as barbaric.
`Afghan’, not “Afghani”.
It was Iglesias who recommended that the US do business with the Taliban instead of fighting them, even though Taliban treatment of women is ‘inhumane.’ Now that’s a word that would have been appropriate to use in connection with, say, poultry. But it didn’t work for me in connection with humans.
I think Iglesias has a tough time identifying, and empathizing with, humans who are not Iglesias.
As someone who has actually written letters to the White House that sound very similar to what Matthew Yglesias wrote, I believe he is trying to say that killing civilians is unacceptable.
The point he is making about not abandoning Afghanistan to civil war and/or the Taliban is worthwhile. Pakistan is not currently destabilized, but they do have 2 million new refugees and a full scale war going on in Swat. That wasn’t ordered up by the U.S., not that the U.S. didn’t weigh in.
There is this document from 2004 in Berlin which came from another from 2002 in Bonn that specifies the internationally agreed upon mission in Afghanistan. There is no place in it for bombing civilians. It’s largely about reconstruction, de-mining, and local economics.
Agree with Homer, it’s Afghan.
Yglesias has clearly swallowed the militarist kool-aid in even offering it as a legitimate question. Are the civilian casualties worth it? Obviously Obama has joined the gamesmen of war and is surging Afghanistan. And elevating the “assassin/torture” poster boy, Gen. MacChrystal is disheartening. More pragmatism? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If all you have is the military hammer, EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE becomes a nail. I thought Obama was supposed to be smart? Not emotional intelligence, despite the savvy with rhetoric. Not morally intelligent. Not humane priorities.
After Oklahoma bombing, residents on tv said quite often, “Well, yes, we would expect this to happen in NYC. Not to us!” NYC is a village they could have detached from caring about, clearly.
Thanks for this discussion. I am wearing a black armband, but no one to talk to about it seriously, few feeling outrage and alarm enough to protest.
It’s the tax returns, it’s the Mengele records, it’s the building plans for Auschwitz, it’s all the records which remain on e-mail servers somewhere (or don’t and show lack of authorization).
I think we’ve tried to focus on the enemy and when we discovered our strikes were hitting innocents the attacks had to end. How to find the enemy and ensure as few innocent deaths as possible is the hard part for sure.
It sounds like Gen. Craddock was operating under standing orders from Bush.
Are you saying the Taleban weren’t selling drugs worldwide and weren’t religious fanatics before we bombed them? When exactly was that?
Same for Al Qaeda: when exactly did we bomb them into existence?
Hmm .. pls allow me to point out that “[B]ombing innocent Afghanis” should also read `bombing innocent Afghans’.
Thank you
What has this comment of yours got to do with the targeting of civilians? That is a war crime. That is official US policy.
Are you saying the Taleban weren’t selling drugs worldwide
They banned opium production after they came to power.
At the risk of reasoning with the willfully obtuse, my point was that responding to criminality with indiscriminately destructive military force creates more enemies, and stokes more criminality, than it destroys.
Yes, they did and now there are more poppy fields than ever before.
Didn’t have to..just had to supply the money for al CIA duh.
****************
“Video: Al Qaeda Doesn’t Exist!
Part One of the Al Qaeda Doesn’t Exist documentary from The Corbett Report, dealing with the founding and funding of what we know as Al Qaeda. This installment of the documentary goes into Zbigniew Brzezinski, Operation Cyclone, the CIA-MAK-US government funding circle and CIA connections to Osama Bin Laden. “
http://pakalert.wordpress.com/…..snt-exist/
The Taliban banned production because it was good p.r. and because they were sitting on an enormous surplus built up. They continued to sell.