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Afghan Casualties Remind of War's Waste
Besides stupidity and arrogance, the root cause of every modern war boils down to a failure of empathy. Afghanistan and Iraq are the poster children of pointless, fear-based wars in this era. It just happens that we own them both.
Last week, the Taliban shot down a Chinook helicopter leaving Helmand Province after a firefight in southern Afghanistan. Thirty Americans and eight Afghans were killed by what investigators suspect was an attack on the slow-moving copter by one shoulder-fired missile. It was the costliest day in Afghanistan for the American military since the war began.
It happened to a squad of elite American fighters, but that doesn't make it any more tragic than if it had been an Afghan village decimated by a Predator missile strike because military intelligence mistook a wedding party for an al-Qaida jamboree.
On a scale of deadly, absurdist folly, it is at least equal to the misery visited on Afghanistan by NATO forces in the name of freedom every day. The Taliban soldier who brought down that helicopter is no less a hero to his comrades than the members of SEAL Team 6 who took out Osama bin Laden a few months ago. The ironic thing about war is that the more savage it is, the more "heroes" it produces on both sides.
In the cold calculus of war, such moral equivalence is easy. We're justifiably sick to our stomachs over the loss of so many American lives. We forget that the men we're trying to kill are defending themselves and their "strange" way of life in their own country.
The "rightness" of our cause doesn't matter to young Taliban fighters who were children at the time of 9/11. All they've ever known is American occupation and death.
We're losing this war because the Taliban aren't as interested in writing history as we are. They know history is on their side, so they're indifferent about how they'll be portrayed in books written by others.
Meanwhile, our elected leaders invent new rationalizations every day to explain why we're still in Afghanistan. Every day we spend there is a testament to short-term thinking about our national honor.
Americans are finally beginning to object to the war in greater numbers, but not because of its inherent immorality. Ordinary Americans are increasingly appalled by Afghanistan's trillion-dollar drag on our economy.
But that kind of moral outrage has more in common with buyers' remorse about a gas guzzler sitting in the driveway than a genuine attack of morality over the human cost of the war for both sides.
Afghanistan is a particularly sad case because our civilian leaders defer to military leaders who have no idea how to win this war. They talk in terms of eventually training a fourth-world army to go against thousands of years of tribal behavior. It is impossible, yet we -- the world's most quixotic superpower -- insist that raising up an Afghan defense force in our image is a viable mission.
We instinctively know that most wars are costly and stupid. We also know that there has never been anything practical or moral about 99.9 percent of them.
The ironic thing about war is that the more savage it is, the more "heroes" it produces on both sides.
Even the occasional "good war" only comes around once a millennium or so. Those who fought in World War II and had the time to reflect on what that conflict meant decades later hesitate to call it a "good war." They know enough about killing the enemy not to romanticize it the way their children and grandchildren have over the years. War on such a scale is nothing but a charnel house.
Still, America has been without a sense of national purpose when it comes to war ever since the Japanese and the Germans surrendered their imperial ambitions 66 years ago.
Because our wars are now fought primarily by the children of the working class, society isn't expected to sacrifice anything for the cause. We barely demand that the government provide a rationale for killing in our name.
The fact that most Americans can't find Afghanistan on a map is the biggest hint that it doesn't occupy a very big part of our national imagination.
All that most Americans ask is that the government win whatever damn war it sees fit to fight and not bother us with a military draft or requests for higher taxes to finance those wars; nor do we want any lectures about the culture of the people we're trying to kill. Oh, and keep those returning coffins and funerals off our television screens and front pages.
When we're at war, we're not in the mood to be empathetic, even when it comes to American soldiers.
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6 Comments so far
Show Allits not that the americans do not oppose this immoral, illegal, costly war : most do. but we are not respected or represented by those in power. i have spent hours in congressperson's offices and in the street about this for 10 years ; all a total waste of time...... our so called representatives neither represent our views or what is good for the country : the up front cost of this war is 12 billion a month. good place to start the budget cuts ? never even discussed.
we need another, EFFECTIVE way of stopping this waste...... any ideas ?
"It happened to a squad of elite American fighters, but that doesn't make it any more tragic than if it had been an Afghan village decimated by a Predator missile strike because military intelligence mistook a wedding party for an al-Qaida jamboree."
I disagree. The deaths of soldiers is much less tragic than the deaths of villagers. Soldiers live by the sword and die by the sword. According to the reports, the soldiers were leaving after a raid when they got shot down. How many innocent villagers did they murder before some relative of the dead villagers shot them down with a shoulder fired missile?
Soldiers are murderers, just like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. Bundy and Dahmer killed because voices in their heads told them to. Soldiers kill because voices of their superiors tell them to. What is the moral difference? The victims in all the cases are innocents.
No one in America talks about how many thousands of young Afghan girls and women have been raped by US and coalition troops. Rapes occur in all wars and all armies commit rapes. Afghanistan is a society where the rape victim gets punished, rather than the rapist. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/159958.html
Our military has a huge problem with sexual assault against its own members. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/us/16military.html
If the military can't stop rape against our own troops here in America, how can they possibly stop rape in the battlefield in a culture where the victims can't report it?
We have opened up our military to many young men who could not have gotten into even the army 10 years ago. Young men with criminal records. We have officers corps with long standing cultures of violence against women. The military academies encourage sexism and that translates into rape on the battlefield.
We don't get a lot of reports on atrocities committed by US troops, but we get enough to know that there must be many more out there that have gone unreported because of lack of reporters and because of shill reporters embedded with the troops.
As further details dribble out in the after action reports concerning the shooting down of the Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan that resulted in over thirty US soldiers' deaths, the morality of war, waste-of-war issues discussed by Tony Norman in this article remain paramount. It is important, too, to recognize the potential significance of how the Taliban did what they did when the flag draped remains are being somberly unloaded at Dover.
Maybe it was mechanical failure, ground fire, or an RPG. Then again, maybe it was a Stinger missle. Maybe it was fog of war battlefield happenstance. Maybe it was a set up, a trap. The Vietnam War was loaded with incidents in which US forces in the field took fire, backup helicopters with reinforcements or Medivac teams were called in, and the whole episode turned out to be an ambush orchestrated from within.
The Tom Hanks movie "Charlie Wilson's War" gave a fictionalized, but fact-based account of how the CIA/Pakistani ISI support for the Afghan mujadaheen managed to dramatically alter the situation on the ground to bleed the Soviet occupation army dry through the introduction of shoulder-held Stinger missles to the Afghan and foreign jihadist insurgents arrayed against the Russians back in the 1980's. Quite frankly, I'm surprised there haven't been more incidents like the recent one that took the lives of these elite SEAL Team 6 commandoes.
Over twenty years ago, in the long run the Red Army with their mobile armored units, attack helicopters and hi tech superiority proved remarkably vulnerable to a single infantryman on the ground with an AK-47 supplemented by portable missle technology. If such an attack were set up by a prior "intelligence failure" that lured the helicpoter into harms way, then we're looking at hubris piled on top of hubris for the Pentagon to believe that in the long run US forces in Afghanistan will prevail where the Soviets failed.
With or without a new generation of upgraded stealth technology for protection of the occupation forces' soldiers, or another ghoulish Operation Phoenix counterinsurgency campaign (incorporating computers and biometrics) for our black ops spooks, Uncle Sam remains as much on the wrong side of history in Afghanistan today as America was in Vietnam nearly fifty years ago. Same dynamic, same end result.
Bill from Saginaw
"Even the occasional "good war" only comes around once a millennium or so. Those who fought in World War II and had the time to reflect on what that conflict meant decades later hesitate to call it a "good war." They know enough about killing the enemy not to romanticize it the way their children and grandchildren have over the years. War on such a scale is nothing but a charnel house." This is an important comment, the greatest moment in WWII for the people who fought it, was the moment it was over. It was a horror filled reality they were all glad to be done with, not a heroic romantic adventure.
Nice article Tony. American Supremacists will twist your words to make you sound un-American, but a lot of us know the truth about our self-righteousness. Keep up the clear thinking!
From another point of view....return to the 'law of the jungle' or 'an eye for an eye' thinking.
1st a group of paid, highly skilled assassins are sent to kill an adversary rather than bring him to face justice in a court of law and are lauded by our leaders and general society.
2nd, a group of paid, highly skilled assassins belonging to same unit are killed purportedly by an insurgent with a lucky shot from an RPG, while attempting to rescue another group of paid, highly skilled assassins carrying out an assassination attempt on a local Taliban leader
3rd a group of paid, highly skilled assassins tracks down a group of "less than 10" insurgents including target of previous operation, Mullah Mohibullah and the man who shot down the Chinook, and called in an airstrike from an F-16 fighter jet.
see "U.S. kills Taliban insurgents who downed SEALs' helicopter...
A U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan kills a senior Taliban operative in the area where the Chinook helicopter crashed and the man who shot down the chopper."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-helicopter-20110811,0,5466064.story
Wow, we really know how to kill...too bad we haven't applied our resources to getting along with others....but then that doesn't have the short term profits of war-profiteering rampant in the US, controlling our government.
I could be wrong....