Catch 2,200
9 Propositions on the US Air War for Terror
Let’s start with a few simple propositions.
First, the farther away you are from the ground, the clearer things are likely to look, the more god-like you are likely to feel, the less human those you attack are likely to be to you. How much more so, of course, if you, the “pilot,” are actually sitting at a consol at an air base near Las Vegas, identifying a “suspect” thousands of miles away via video monitor, “following” that suspect into a house, and then letting loose a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone cruising somewhere over Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or the tribal areas of Pakistan.
Second, however “precise” your weaponry, however “surgical” your strike, however impressive the grainy snuff-film images you can put on television, war from the air is, and will remain, a most imprecise and destructive form of battle.
Third, in human terms, distance does not enhance accuracy. The farther away you are from a target, the more likely it is that you will have to guess who or what it is, based on spotty, difficult to interpret or bad information, not to speak of outright misinformation; whatever the theoretical accuracy of your weaponry, you are far more likely to miscalculate, make mistakes, mistarget, or target the misbegotten from the air.
Fourth, if you are conducting war this way and you are doing so in heavily populated urban neighborhoods, as is now the case almost every day in Iraq, then civilians will predictably die “by mistake” almost every day: the child who happens to be on the street but just beyond camera range; the “terrorist suspect” or insurgent who looks, at a distance, like he’s planting a roadside bomb, but is just scavenging; the neighbors who happen to be sitting down to dinner in the apartment or house next to the one you decide to hit.
Fifth, since World War II, air power has been the American way of war.
Sixth, since November 2001, the Bush administration has increasingly relied on air power in its Global War on Terror to “take out” the enemy, which has meant regular air strikes in cities and villages, and the no less regular, if largely unrecorded, deaths of civilians.
Seventh, in Afghanistan and especially in Iraq (as well as in the tribal areas along the Pakistani border), the use of air power has been “surging.” You can essentially no longer read an account of a skirmish or battle in one of Iraq’s cities in which air power is not called in. This means (see propositions 1-4) a war of constant “mistakes,” and of regularly mentioned “investigations” into the deaths of “militants” and “insurgents” who, on the ground, seem to morph into children, women, and elderly men being pulled from the rubble.
Eighth, force creates counterforce. The application of force, especially from the air, is a reliable engine for the creation of enemies. It is a force multiplier (and not just for U.S. forces either). Every time an air strike is called in anywhere on the planet, anyone who orders it should automatically assume that left in its wake will be grieving, angry husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, relatives, friends — people vowing revenge, a pool of potential candidates filled with the anger of genuine injustice. From the point of view of your actual enemies, you can’t bomb, missile, and strafe often enough, because when you do so, you are more or less guaranteed to create their newest recruits.
Ninth, U.S. air power has, in the last six and a half years, been an effective force in a war for terror, not against it.
Who’s Counting?
What does this mean in practice? It means something simple and relentless; it means dead people you might not have chosen to kill, but that you are responsible for killing nonetheless — and even if you don’t know that, or are unwilling to acknowledge it, others do know and will draw the logical conclusions.
What does this mean in practice? Consider just a typical collection of some of the small reports on air strikes in Iraq that have slipped into our world, barely noticed, in recent days:
Six U.S.-allied Sunni fighters from the “Awakening” movement were reportedly killed in strikes by an AH-64 Apache helicopter on two checkpoints in the city of Samarra on March 22. (”The U.S. military denied the checkpoint it attacked… was manned by friendly members of the so-called awakening councils and said those killed were behaving suspiciously in an area recently struck by a roadside bomb… It… said the incident was under investigation… AP Television News footage of the aftermath showed awakening council members loading bodies into a pickup.”)
Fifteen people in a single family were reportedly killed by U.S. helicopters in the city of Baquba in northern Iraq on March 23rd. (”The US military forces were not available to comment on the reports…”)
In Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, five civilians, including a judge, Munaf Mehdi, were reportedly killed and ten wounded from strikes by “fixed-wing aircraft” in a “battle with suspected al-Qaeda Sunni Arab militants” on March 26. (”Preliminary assessment,” according to the U.S. military, “indicates that despite coalition forces’ efforts to protect them, several civilians were injured or killed during the ensuing gunbattle.”)
According to the Iraqi police, a U.S. plane strafed a house in the southern city of Basra, killing eight civilians, including two women and a child on March 29th.
According to Iraqi police sources, five people, including four policemen were killed and three wounded when U.S. helicopters struck the city of Hilla in southern Iraq. According to another report, two police cars were also destroyed and an ambulance fired upon.
A U.S. F/A-18 carried out a “precision strike” against a house in Basra, reportedly killing at least three civilians, two men and an elderly woman, while burying a father, mother, and young boy in the rubble on April 3rd. (”‘Coalition forces are unaware of any civilians killed in the strike but are currently looking into the matter,’ the military said… Associated Press Television News showed cranes and rescue workers searching for survivors in the concrete rubble from the two-story house that was leveled in the Shiite militia stronghold of Qibla.”)
In most of these cases, the facts remain in dispute (if anyone, other than the U.S. military, even cares to dispute them); the numbers of dead may, in the end, prove inaccurate; and the equivalent of he says/she says is unlikely to be settled because, most of the time, no reporter will follow up or investigate. Such cases generally follow a pattern: The U.S. military issues a brief battle description in which so many militants/insurgents/terrorists have been taken out from the air; local officials or witnesses claim that the dead were, in part or whole, ordinary citizens; the U.S. military offers a denial that civilians were killed; if the story doesn’t die, the military announces that an investigation is underway, which no one generally ever hears about again. Only on rare occasions, in our world, do such incidents actually rise to the level of real news that anyone attends to.
There may be an Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website and an Iraq Body Count website, but there is no Afghan version of the same, nor is there a global body count (www.gbc.com) to consult on such War on Terror civilian deaths from the air. Usually, when such events recur, there aren’t even names to put with the dead bodies and the reports themselves drop almost instantaneously beneath the waves (of news) without ever really catching our attention. Even if you believe that ours is the only world that really matters, that we are the only people whose lives have real value, that doesn’t mean such deaths won’t matter to you in the long run.
After all, what we don’t know, or don’t care to know, others care greatly about. Who forgets when a loved one is suddenly killed in such a manner? Even if we aren’t counting bodies in the air-war subsection of the President’s Global War on Terror, others are. Those whom we think of, if at all, as “collateral damage” know just what’s happened to them and to their neighbors. And they have undoubtedly drawn the obvious conclusions.
Our “Strike Weapons” and Theirs
Here’s the sorry reality: Such occurrences in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the “arc” of territory that the Bush administration has, in a mere few years, helped set aflame are the norm. Our “mistakes,” that is, are legion and, in the process of making them, our planes, drones, and helicopters have killed villagers by the score, attacked a convoy of friendly Afghan “elders,” and blown away wedding parties. For us, “incidents” like these pass by in an instant, but not for those who are on the receiving end.
The attacks of 9/11 are usually not placed in such a context. We consider ourselves special, even unique, for having experienced them. But think of them another way: One day, out of the blue, death arrives from the air. It arrives in a moment of ultimate terror. It kills innocent civilians who were simply living their lives.
This happened to us once in a manner so spectacular, so devastating as to make global headlines. But small-scale versions of this happen regularly to people in that “arc of instability” — and, if there were to be a global body count organization for such events, it would long ago have toted up a death toll that reached past that of September 11, 2001.
Let’s remember that, after 9/11, Americans, from the President on down, spent months, if not years in mourning, performing rites of remembrance, and swearing revenge against those who had done this to us. Do we not imagine that others, even when the spotlight isn’t on them, react similarly? Do we not think that they, too, are capable of swearing revenge and acting accordingly?
The above list of incidents covers just a couple of weeks in one embattled country — and just the moments that made it into minor news reports that I happened to stumble across. But if you read reports from Iraq carefully these days, few describing U.S. military operations in that country seem to lack at least a sentence or two on air operations — on what is really a little noticed “air surge” over that country’s cities and especially the heavily populated slum “suburb” of eastern Baghdad, Sadr City (once known as Saddam City) largely controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. With perhaps two and a half million inhabitants, if it were a separate city, it would be the country’s second largest.
Here, for instance, are a few lines from a recent Los Angeles Times piece by Tina Susman on escalating fighting in Baghdad: “American helicopters fired at least four Hellfire missiles and an Air Force jet dropped a bomb on a suspected militia target… A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steven Stover, rejected Iraqi allegations that U.S. airstrikes and gunfire have killed mainly civilians. ‘There might be some civilians that are getting caught, but for the most part, we’re killing the bad guys.’ ‘We’re very precise,’ he said, adding that many airstrikes had been called off when it was not possible to get a ‘clean hit’ that would avoid hitting noncombatants.” Or this from Sameer N. Yacoub of the Associated Press: “The U.S. military said one of its drones launched a Hellfire missile during the night at two gunmen shooting at government forces in a different part of Sadr City.” Or this: “Three US airstrikes in northeastern Baghdad have killed 12 suspected gunmen and wounded 15 civilians, Iraqi police and US military say.”
Each of these came out while this piece was being written, as did this: According to the AP, air strikes in a remote province of Afghanistan aimed at a warlord allied with the Taliban may have killed numerous civilians. (”Other provincial leaders said many civilians were killed in the hours-long clash, which included airstrikes in the remote villages of Shok and Kendal… U.S. officials and the Afghan Defense Ministry have denied that any civilians were killed.”)
Whatever happened in these latest air attacks, the deaths of civilians are not some sideline result of the War on Terror; they lie at its heart. If your care is safety — a subject brought up repeatedly by Senators who wanted to know from U.S. commander General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker this week whether the surge had made “us” safer — then, the answer is: This does not make you safer.
And yet, don’t expect this counterproductive way of war to end any time soon. After all, the Air Force already has underway its “2018 bomber,” due for delivery the same year that, according to the chief American trainer of Iraqi forces, Lt. Gen. James Dubic, the Iraqi army will theoretically be able to guard the country’s frontiers effectively. And don’t forget the 2018 bomber’s successor, “a true ‘next generation’ long-range strike weapon” that “may be a traditional bomber or an exotic ’system of systems,’ with features such as hypersonic speed.” Maybe by then, the Iraqis will actually be successfully defending their borders.
Until then, think of the U.S. air war for terror as a Catch 2,200 — every application of force from the air resulting in the creation of a counterforce on the ground, another kind of “strike weapon” for the future, while those collateral bodies pile ever higher. Perhaps, by 2018 or 2035, worldbodycount.com will be operative.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute’s Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has been updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture’s crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
[Note: The invaluable website Antiwar.com was especially invaluable this time around when it came to tracking news accounts of recent U.S. air attacks. Please note, though, that the dates given in the piece for the attacks are approximate. All I had were the datelines on news stories, which may not reflect the actual day of each attack.]
Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt
I wonder how politicians that vote for funding these terrorist weapons of long range warfare, that murder numerous innocent civilians for every “terrorist (freedom fighter)” they get, can sleep at night? You can’t fight a war effectively without “getting your hands dirty” snd the politicians that vote for it should be doing the fighting. All the more reason to not give these spendthrift politicians any tax money to spend on their murderous toys.
Do you think all this murder is for one reason to reduce the population of Iraq for generations to come? Took the page right from the Israeli control of Palestine note book. We are getting about 1/1000th the info out of Iraq we should be getting. The USA I am sorry to say is no better than the other mass murders of the passed.
“…and then letting loose a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone cruising somewhere over Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or the tribal areas of Pakistan.”
Or Yemen: “A U.S. citizen was among the people killed in the pilot-less missile strike on suspected al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen Sunday.”
Or in California: “The U.S. Forest Service has bought a pair of flying drones to track down marijuana growers operating in remote California woodlands.”
Or near the US/Mexico border: “Feds to Fly More Drones Along US Borders.”
Or Florida: “The drones deployed to Florida would search for surface craft and low-flying planes carrying illegal immigrants or drugs, and submarines and semi-submersibles…”
And let us not forget Proposition Number 10: using an air force against an “enemy” that does not have an air force is a direct violation of the so-called “Laws of Armed Conflict,” under the section titled “Proportionality.”
There needs to be some sort of international agreement about the use of air power and civilian collateral damage … come to think of it, there probably already is … and we’re ignoring it.
It’s shameful enough that we ( the USA ) invaded and toppled the government/sovereignty of two nations — Iraq and Afghanistan — which were without air force of their own but also, for all intents and purposes, possessed of very little heavy artillery …. while we “shocked and awed” them with massive aerial bombardments … and more than five years later we are STILL using “air power” routinely against these same “primitively armed” combatants, who in the eyes of many could legitimately be considered nationalists opposing an ILLEGAL or barely legal occupation …
We hold up the governments of Karzai and Maliki as fig-leaves … “they asked for our help” … except that “they” represent the not-very-popular governments we virtually “installed” and which continue to exist and “rule” only with massive protective occupying support …
Supporting Maliki at this point — with his threats to keep the Al-Sadr/Mahdi population out of the upcoming provincial elections — with his apparent intention to “Sadr City” under his control — which is only imaginable with massive “air support” and civilian casualties — we are subverting, likely fatally, the promised “democracy” we use to justify our continued occupation ….
Look at Egypt’s recent elections, look at Iraq’s for what happens when significant portions of the population simply REFUSE to participate in their “democracy” … look at Iran … In the last Iraqi elections, only a minute fraction of the Sunni population voted — they BOYCOTTED — as many Eqyptians have recently done — as many Iranians have recently done …
legitimate provinicial elections (scheduled for October 2008) and legitimate national parliamentary elections (scheduled for late in 2009) are the everyone’s last best hope of averting a conflagration of extraordinary potential for regional destabilization …
Tom, your propositions include a number of opinions, generalizations, and points of ignorance. Therefore, you do not support your thesis, regardless of its standalone accuracy.
I am a progressive, and expect that progressive pundits raise themselves above the kind of handwaving, logical fallacy and mendacity that characterizes opinion pieces from the authoritarian right. We should all be intolerant and avoidant of this style, after facing decades of Rush Limbaugh spouting “because A, B and C are true, therefore D,” and then ranting for hours on D, when A, B and C were all false or inapplicable.
Your editorial does not rise to the level of discourse necessary to bring us out of the fetid quagmire that has become of political discussion. We have to take the rational objective road, consistently and without faltering.
Otherwise, we’re just slinging shit along with the other ignorant apes.
As long as our “politicians” continue to make profit from their investments in the war industry, I fear all this will continue. It should be illegal (it certainly is immoral) for elected officials to make profit from any industry over which they can make decisions. Isn’t this conflict of interest?
“Such cases generally follow a pattern: The U.S. military issues a brief battle description in which so many militants/insurgents/terrorists have been taken out from the air; local officials or witnesses claim that the dead were, in part or whole, ordinary citizens; the U.S. military offers a denial that civilians were killed;”
We did this in Vietnam. I know cause I flue army missions when we would kill innocent civilians. We had free fire zones. That was all permission we needed.
The military has not changed it’s behavior, never will.
The earth has reached and passed sustainability for the increasing population…
War is a good way to thin the herd, it seems. Specific populations just don’t count anymore…so they are chosen for starvation, disease, bombing and attrocities.
But one thing we do know…the rich and powerful won’t starve…won’t be bombed by our government…won’t be a part of genocide(personally), and they will have the food and fuel inside their estates guarded by security forces…
Thinning the herd and protecting the resources…
But they will donate to a university and get their name put on the front of the building and get an award for being so generous.
How does it feel to be a part of “Wildlife Management”?
US serviceman using Predator drone controlled from thousands of miles away to kill innocent civilian / suspected terrorist = hero.
Disenfranchised Iraqi citizen with nothing to lose uses car bomb, kills US serviceman or corporate mercenary = terrorist.
Who is the coward in the above equation?
The original Buck Rogers appeared in a 1928 novella by Phillip Nowlan. He was not a space traveller clad in spandex, but a 20th century American who had traveled - like Rip Van Wrinkle - five centuries into the future.
In this future, America had been laid waste by an occupying force of aliens who had landed in Asia, established a colony, and then emerged from their fortress-like cities to destroy human civilization with fleets of airships wielding death-rays.
Buck Rogers found human survivors living in the shadows of great forests that had reclaimed North America. They had stolen advanced technology from the aliens and were conducting an insurgency, laying ambushes, shooting down the alien’s airships, and infiltrating their fortresses.
I thought that this story - written before WWI - was eerily prescient during the Vietnam war.
For instance, The Aliens used disintegrator rays to clear wide swaths of forest to create safe corridors between their cities, so their “airliners” could travel safely between them. We had to use Agent Orange - but similiar, no?
Today, the similarties are downright spooky.
BTW, in Nowlan’s story, the alien invaders were eventually defeated. Despite their “Green Zones”, their airpower, and their advanced technology, they fell victim to their own arrogance.
bughunter,
If arguing from disspasionate rationality with generous footnotes was effective, than why do people like Chomsky, Finkelstein, or Juan Cole work in obscurity, or are fired and condemned to obscurity.
Also, there is no way to dispassonaltely and scientifically argue a moral conviction. Remote-control murder in persuit of arrogamt power is vile and can only be argued in emotional terms.
But since you brought it up, can you please point out where you think the the factual errors are in Tom’s article?
A most precise and destructive form of desperation, this was very evident in Vietnam and bombing alone did not “win” World War II. What we see now is the collective frustration of empire, a bureaucratic embolism that seeks to soften resistance with violence, which never works. Any kind of “power” in this sense is simply going to bring out the worst qualities in others, seething resentment and more violence. When will these short sighted fools be assigned other work, far. far away from any pretense of security or defense?
yes, it’s become, essentially, “collective punishment as usual” …. too bad about your kid … too bad the bad guys invaded your neighborhood or some vindictive so-and-so fingered you … too bad … smithereens …
eta: I can’t help but think that this terrible inequality contributes to PTSD … the civilian “collateral damage” have literally nowhere to run to … finding out that a unarmed people, a child, a family, an old person was wiped off the face of the earth “prophylactially” … not because of anything they did or were about to do … wrong place/wrong time, like being in the market then the car bomb goes off, but with even less chance of survival.
USAn: Great response to BUGHUNTER.
I give much credit to Mr. Engelhardt for reminding us what the air war does and means. When I lived in Singapore in 2004 I used to go to internet places to do email and some research. Generally I was the only female in these establishments that mostly catered to teenage boys. In Singapore EVERY young man MUST do 2 years of military service, and these young men were using their computers to SIMULATE warfare. Note the parallel between the long range air war directors and the kid sitting before a computer using a game to do much the same thing by simulation. In both cases, any SENSE of humanity is obscured in that there is no real connection with a HUMAN target. This makes the premise that one is aiming at an enemy more palatable. Due to the modern statistics of war, that the majority of deaths go to civilians, these methods seem in themselves to violate The Geneva Conventions. OF course the concept of rules of war, or lawful war, is itself borderline insane.
Good article from Tom Engelhradt as usual, but not really honest enough, for that would mean saying very clearly that aggressive wars have been used as instruments of policy, in direct contravention of US ’superior’ law which states,”No grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced & condemned as an instrument of policy.” Pointless to think of influencing hoi polloi while hoodwinking them into believing a war of terror against innocent unarmed civilians can be plausibly called the opposite in Goebbellian fashion.
Just so we Americans know how enslaved we are to fighter jet waste/plunder, we could have today’s prosperity on 15 hour work weeks.
You may understand how by noting that hunter/gatherers subsist on 15 hour weeks, that JM Keynes projected 15 hour weeks as a modern goal, and by observing the level of production/consumption waste in the US economy. Other economies are closer to 15 hour weeks but not there yet, thanks to hyper-competition from the US and its protege China for world resources.
So the next time you hear about world solidarity, think healthy biosphere, 15 hour work weeks, enlightenment, peace and prosperity for all. And the next time you hear about “top gun” making “freedom safe”, think war without end, enslavement, plunder, poison, death/destruction.
good luck - US ‘is’ one of the mass murderers of the past, but population reduction a goal? What kind of info (that you say we are getting a fraction of) are we missing as we blow people up? A parallel to Palestine is that we won;t allow their choice of leaders. Iraqis want us out. Well then, gas up the aircraft. Not very democratic of us.
I have no idea where this occupation will lead. Do we bomb everthing but the oil fields? Al la Pete Seeger, you can’t kill all the unbelievers.
We’re trying.
Bombing defenseless people always looked to me like a war crime. when you do an air war, who you hit should have anti-aircraft on the ground and fighters in the sky to oppose you. Of course the u.s. assaults in Afghanistan and Iraq have never really been wars as we would usually think of them- two armies engaged in something resembling equal combat. I remember since the beginning of the attacks in Afghanistan reading about fierce “firefights” between the u.s. forces and whoever they imagine to be their enemies “40 Insurgents Killed! crows our press/military. no u.s. casualties. hmm. so when you read the story you find out our heros came under attack and called in air strikes. It’s how cowards fight- we can kill them but they can’t hurt us. And that still happens over and over again- twice just last week. The same kind of “firefights” occur in Iraq of course. In addition to those super heros in Nevada directing drones from their computer screens. i’ve seen videos of these guys at work. they see little green blips and pull the trigger. not sure if it’s a target, but hey- who cares? it’s a “war on terror”- so we don’t need rules.
war on terror. i wish there was a hell just to roast the person who thought that up, and the media lackeys who give it credence.
what goes around always comes around
The USA is nothing more than a lawless third-world nation with a large population of wealthy white men who thrive on violence.
USA = Untermenshen
Serving the
Anti-christ
Wehrner von Braun, inventor of the V1 and V2 self propelled rockets that blitzed London late in WW2, was commandeered to the US after the War to work on the US Rocket program. He wrote a book titled, “I Shoot For The Moon”. Bob Hope was asked if he had read the book. “Oh, yes”, he said. “I know that book, I Shoot For The Moon but Sometimes I Hit London”. Faulty equipment and/or Misses that land, possibly, miles from the target on either friendly nations our on our enemies will most certainly start WW3.
Arcing28- Wehrner vonBraun worked at Pennemunde, and was in charge as several tens of thousands of Eastern Europeans, Gypsies and Jews were worked to death as slave labor building his V-1 and V-2 terror weapons.
He was snapped up in the US military ‘Project Paperclip’ and lived out his life as an American hero who put man on the moon. Disney lauded him in animated propaganda pieces made for US domestic consumption about how wonderful the ’space age’ was going to be.
Armstrong’s boot prints on the moon, modern satellite and cable TV, the space shuttle, modern Predator drone warfare…all of it, drenched in the blood of innocent men, murdered by the political ancestors (literally in Bush’s case) of today’s US elite.
Now don’t ya feel prouder’n’shit?
“Perhaps, by 2018 or 2035, worldbodycount.com will be operative.” “Christian” nuts, some of them apocalyptic, are rampant in the USAF and have access to nuclear weapons. And, the USAF was created out of the US Army Air Corps because it acquired a new mission in WW2: deliberate mass bombing of civilian populations.
Perhaps, by 2018 or 2035, the USAF+USN+USMC+USA bombing nuts will have lit the nuclear fuse and there won’t be anybody to know what year it is.
Ironically, whether it is WW2 or Vietnam, post-war studies showed that bombing civilian populations killed a bunch, discouraged others, but got the rest really pissed off. It also teaches them how to be brave, an experience only a few still in the US military have had.
At least McCain is right. This type of warfare can be sustained for the next 100 years.
Bombing as a means of population control: the 20th century was a century of war. The world population rose from approximately 1.5 billion to 6 billion during this time. Not very effective in lowering population.
‘There might be some civilians that are getting caught, but for the most part, we’re killing the bad guys.’ ‘We’re very precise,’
And just how do they pick the “bad guys” from the crowd?
From the Winston Dictionary
INSURGENT: (adj) rebellious: rising up against civil or political athority, (n) A rebel insurgent.
INSURGENT: american politics, a member of the Republican party that has advocated progressive politics and oppose certain rules of the house.
So talk about calling the kettle black.
This is why I have never liked the term insurgent what Iraqis are doing in THEIR country it is not against civil athority it is against an invasion, resistance is more accuate. As for the US politics I feel it is 100% accurate. From now on Insurgent is the republican party’s new name.
Galen
Please clarify your final question. Now where in my post did I say I admired von Braun. Or, perhaps, I read it wrong.
I am fully aware of his background.
Seems to me everyone, starting with the author of this piece, is missing the essential point here. Englehardt’s main proposition is that air strikes are easy for the strikers but inevitably carry collateral damage–that they can’t really distinguish with sufficient accuracy between “bad guys” and “innocent civilians.” Excuse me, but in a war of occupation, how could anyone so distinguish, even if they were on the ground and fluent in the local language? We’re not talking about an “enemy” that is part of an army. We’re talking about people, native to an area, who choose to actively resist US occupation… or ally with local powers currently in opposition to whichever local powers the US is currently allying with. So the difference between “bad guys” and “collateral damage,” between “precision accuracy” and “mistakes” seems to be based on the gender and age of the victims, as there is an assumption that only young or middle-aged males unencumbered with children or women, can be “insurgents.” But since the difference between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” is a matter of the opinions in the heads of the victims, this surely is not accurate. There are no doubt plenty of women and not a few children who passionately hate the US–especially those who have encountered these air strikes in the past. As in any war, as the years pass the survivors increasingly conclude that both or all sides are evil. I imagine they become more religious, as they conclude that earthly power can be used only for evil purposes, and justice exists only in Heaven. If this makes them politically passive, than “we” will have “won” after all–since in reality when we say “we” as in “the US” we are actually referring to a tiny group of powerful, conscience-less, wealthy people using the US government to increase their own wealth and power–and when we say “win” we mean accomplishing their objectives, which I would guess to be the following: keep at least one war going at all times to suck up billions of dollars through the Pentagon, and to justify unconstitutional actions; terrorize the people living in areas with important natural resources into essentially ceding control to US-based powers; use this control to dictate to the entire world as the oil supplies dwindle and the pressure to deal with myriad environmental crises builds.
I think it odd that in these discussions people argue about the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of US attempts to “spread democracy in the Middle East” when it’s quite plain that a key objective is precisely to prevent any outbreak of democracy there.
Arcing28- My apologies.
(sigh)
I am just so tired of the ‘technology will save us’ line of bullcrap.
There is no happy shiny plastic Star Trek future.
The coming years will be the first two Mad Max films…then a quiet planet.