In 2009, "civilian deaths have risen in recent months...about 1,500 civilians died in Afghanistan from the beginning of the year to August...the United Nations said civilian deaths jumped more than 20 percent this year compared with last year...a significant number of civilians were killed by airstrikes conducted by U.S. and NATO forces" (from a U.N. report).I hear all about governments across the world killing their civilians and think, "wow, that's really horrible". Sometimes I think "I'm glad our government isn't like that". But...is it? Maybe, just not in our country. These deaths aren't the necessary result of strategic military maneuvres, they are the result of hasty, poorly planned and executed air raids on Afghan villages. Our military isn't intentionally killing civilians (at least, I really hope not), but the lack of planning shows how little they care about innocent people in another country.
With all that the big-book-of-fun has been telling us about increasing voter participation in politics, I think this raises the question: how far down does responsibility go? Does it stop at the people who made the plans for the air strike, or the people who gave the ok to make the plan? Is it the fault of the people who voted for the people who gave the ok to plan? The people who don't protest outside civic center every day (us...)?
8 comments:
I'm glad your outraged that civilians are dying but I'm also guessing your against the Iraq War. Now that article shows a lot of civilian deaths due to air strikes and hopefully people are doing everything they can to avoid death but it is still a war. I found another article talking about Saddam Hussein's escapades.
"But they say that the Anfal massacres and the suppression of the Shiite uprising of 1991, which resulted in up to 150,000 deaths, are the two cases that go much more directly to the heart of Mr. Hussein's murderous rule, and could prove more cathartic for a vast majority of Iraqis."
"The Iraqi court trying Saddam Hussein announced Tuesday that it had charged him with genocide, saying he sought to annihilate the Kurdish people in 1988, when the military killed at least 50,000 Kurdish civilians and destroyed 2,000 villages."
So right there are two cases of Saddam killing over 200,000 people, clearly a genocide, yet everyone always tells me the war is completely unjustified or a bid for oil. Anyway I just wanted to point out the difference in outrage, if civilized countries kill a few thousand people there are meetings and press conferences, if crazed dictators kill hundreds of thousands people are still against a war to take them out of power.
Your fear of the US government randomly killing civilians and poor planning I'd say is far off base. Compared to wars in the past this one has been incredibly kind to civilians, as weapons become more modernized the less civilian death there is. I'd bet a graph of world war two civilian deaths would be much much worse.
I agree with you Anders, in that, yes, the US outing Saddam Hussein did help save the lives of many potential victims. However, I still think the US should be a little more careful when doing air strikes, as to not kill any more civilians. First, this is just hurting the US' image, in that, if they keep killing civilians, the world will probably think that the US just trying to get oil, since it clearly does not care for the civilians. Second, with all the technological advances, you would think that the number of civilians killed would be decreasing as the war progressed. Also, it is kind of inaccurate to compare the civilians deaths in WWII and the Iraq war, since, the technology was much worse, and there were dictators such as Hitler and certain Japanese army officials that ordered the massacre of many innocent civilians in European and Asian countries. Overall, I think the ousting of Saddam was a giant step towards helping the people of Iraq feel safer, but let's not taint that help by bombing more civilians.
-Henry Zhang
The problem is how do you know who's a Taliban and who's not by looking at him/her?
The answer is you really can't. That's probably why we end up killing the wrong people.
Remember that this is a war against insurgents. Insurgents don't wear uniforms; they are dressed like ordinary people.
Sorry forgot to post a name for the last comment. Here it is:
Good point, Kevin. I see that it is very hard to discern between a "Taliban" personnel and a regular citizen. However, I still think the US should at least do all that it can. Maybe before bombing a place, make sure that there is at least beyond a reasonable doubt that there are no civilians present. Sure, the Taliban insurgents may do their best to blend in, but maybe the US should counter by questioning locals (or other methods, I can't think of anymore) to better estimate where the insurgents are and where the civilians are. You don't want to kill civilians, yet, you want to kill insurgents who look exactly like them. Without mind-reading technology, this is very much a Catch-22.
- Henry Zhang
I agree with Henry that the U.S. needs to do all that it can to check if civilians are present before carrying out an air strike. And there's actually a designed method for doing so. There are "planned" air strikes, which rarely cause civilian deaths, and "unplanned" ones.
I found a Human Rights Watch article that explains it: planned attacks use "formal risk estimates" that "model and minimize civilian casualties," with a "'pattern of life analysis', which looks for civilians in the area for hours or days before an attack using 'eyes on the target' ranging from ground observers to technical reconnaissance. According to NATO Judge Advocate General (JAG) staff, the US and NATO also require positive visual identification of the target during a planned strike, allowing the pilot to look for civilians and call off an attack based on those observations. Planned strikes also allow the US and NATO to develop a target over time, thereby using far more detailed intelligence to understand who is and is not in the target area.”
Civilian casualties are almost always the result of unplanned air strikes, which are called for when US and NATO ground forces are in direct contact with enemy on the ground or they receive unreliable tips from Afghans on the ground, tips that have a "notorious history" of being motivated not by fact, but by personal acts of revenge among warring tribes. So tribes have been using US and NATO bombs to attack each others villages.
Additionally, "According to Colonel David Diner, a US Judge Advocate General, US planes have dropped bombs when they did not know for certain who was in a compound. So long as a valid military target is identified, such attacks are not unlawful on their face, but they raise concerns about whether "all feasible precautions" have been taken to minimize civilian loss, as required by the laws of war".
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/75157/section/7
Instead of asking why civilians were killed, we should really ask why we don't hear about our successes nearly so often. Yes it is indeed a sad thing that civilians died but often times these "civilians" are actually suspicious targets that are labeled innocent because every reporter loves a good American Military screw up story. Do we mess up, god yes, no one is perfect and the military sure isn't. But how exactly would you go about fighting a target that hides among the common people like a coward. We should be thankful that only this amount of civilians were killed. Because I bet you that there are a bunch of generals just itching to drop a nuke on them and just call it a day, if only it were that easy to solve terrorism, or anything.
I can see the commercials now, brand new Nuke-Away, just Nuke and all your problems melt away.
"I'm glad your outraged that civilians are dying but I'm also guessing your against the Iraq War. Now that article shows a lot of civilian deaths due to air strikes and hopefully people are doing everything they can to avoid death but it is still a war."
My response exactly. It's unfortunate, and whether or not we, the people, will know if the men in charge are just that careless, it is a war. Innocents will die. It's tragic, but it's remains fact.
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