US Air Power Deadly for Iraqi Civilians
The Bushites, especially Prince John McBush, Republican monarch in waiting, blindly and falsely keep trumpeting the success of the US occupation in the sinkhole that is Iraq and the success of the "surge" including air strikes from US "enduring" aka permanent bases in Iraq.
As Tom Englehardt points out in his recent post about the US air strikes in that devastated country, "...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.
"...in human terms, distance does not enhance accuracy...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.
"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."
He then lists reports of civilian casualties of US air strikes, most of which are denied by the US military who continue to claim and persist in believing that these are "precision strikes" with no collateral damage except insurgents. Iraqis who have lost family and friends in these air strikes know better.
He states, "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.
"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 weddingparties. For us, 'incidents' like these pass by in an instant, but not for those who are on the receiving end."
The Bushite invasion and five year occupation of Iraq and these "incidents" continue to create more enemies for the US in Iraq and elsewhere. With millions of Iraqi refugees, hundreds of thousands killed, and their country destroyed, no wonder the majority of Iraqis want the US to leave Iraq.
As Tom Englehardt points out in his recent post about the US air strikes in that devastated country, "...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.
"...in human terms, distance does not enhance accuracy...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.
"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."
He then lists reports of civilian casualties of US air strikes, most of which are denied by the US military who continue to claim and persist in believing that these are "precision strikes" with no collateral damage except insurgents. Iraqis who have lost family and friends in these air strikes know better.
He states, "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.
"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 weddingparties. For us, 'incidents' like these pass by in an instant, but not for those who are on the receiving end."
The Bushite invasion and five year occupation of Iraq and these "incidents" continue to create more enemies for the US in Iraq and elsewhere. With millions of Iraqi refugees, hundreds of thousands killed, and their country destroyed, no wonder the majority of Iraqis want the US to leave Iraq.
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