The innocent dead in a coward's war

The price in blood that has already been paid for America's war against terror is only now starting to become clear. Not by Britain or the US, nor even so far by the al-Qaida and Taliban leaders held responsible for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. It has instead been paid by ordinary Afghans, who had nothing whatever to do with the atrocities, didn't elect the Taliban theocrats who ruled over them and had no say in the decision to give house room to Bin Laden and his friends.

The Pentagon has been characteristically coy about how many people it believes have died under the missiles it has showered on Afghanistan. Acutely sensitive to the impact on international support for the war, spokespeople have usually batted away reports of civilian casualties with a casual "these cannot be independently confirmed", or sometimes simply denied the deaths occurred at all. The US media have been particularly helpful. Seven weeks into the bombing campaign, the Los Angeles Times only felt able to hazard the guess that "at least dozens of civilians" had been killed.

Now, for the first time, a systematic independent study has been carried out into civilian casualties in Afghanistan by Marc Herold, a US economics professor at the University of New Hampshire. Based on corroborated reports from aid agencies, the UN, eyewitnesses, TV stations, newspapers and news agencies around the world, Herold estimates that at least 3,767 civilians were killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10. That is an average of 62 innocent deaths a day - and an even higher figure than the 3,234 now thought to have been killed in New York and Washington on September 11.

Of course, Herold's total is only an estimate. But what is impressive about his work is not only the meticulous cross-checking, but the conservative assumptions he applies to each reported incident. The figure does not include those who died later of bomb injuries; nor those killed in the past 10 days; nor those who have died from cold and hunger because of the interruption of aid supplies or because they were forced to become refugees by the bombardment. It does not include military deaths (estimated by some analysts, partly on the basis of previous experience of the effects of carpet-bombing, to be upwards of 10,000), or those prisoners who were slaughtered in Mazar-i-Sharif, Qala-i-Janghi, Kandahar airport and elsewhere.

Champions of the war insist that such casualties are an unfortunate, but necessary, byproduct of a just campaign to root out global terror networks. They are a world apart, they argue, from the civilian victims of the attacks on the World Trade Centre because, in the case of the Afghan civilians, the US did not intend to kill them.

In fact, the moral distinction is far fuzzier, to put it at its most generous. As Herold argues, the high Afghan civilian death rate flows directly from US (and British) tactics and targeting. The decision to rely heavily on high-altitude air power, target urban infrastructure and repeatedly attack heavily populated towns and villages has reflected a deliberate trade-off of the lives of American pilots and soldiers, not with those of their declared Taliban enemies, but with Afghan civilians.

Thousands of innocents have died over the past two months, not mainly as an accidental byproduct of the decision to overthrow the Taliban regime, but because of the low value put on Afghan civilian lives by US military planners.

Raids on targets such as the Kajakai dam power station, Kabul's telephone exchange, the al-Jazeera TV station office, lorries and buses filled with refugees and civilian fuel trucks were not mistakes. Nor were the deaths that they caused. The same goes for the use of anti-personnel cluster bombs in urban areas. But western public opinion has become increasingly desensitised to what has been done in its name. After US AC-130 gunships strafed the farming village of Chowkar-Karez in October, killing at least 93 civilians, a Pentagon official felt able to remark: "the people there are dead because we wanted them dead", while US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld commented: "I cannot deal with that particular village."

Yesterday, Rumsfeld inadvertently conceded what little impact the Afghan campaign (yet to achieve its primary aim of bringing Bin Laden and the al-Qaida leadership to justice) has had on the terrorist threat, by speculating about ever more cataclysmic attacks, including on London. There will be no official two-minute silence for the Afghan dead, no newspaper obituaries or memorial services attended by the prime minister, as there were for the victims of the twin towers. But what has been cruelly demonstrated is that the US and its camp followers are prepared to sacrifice thousands of innocents in a coward's war.

Mr. Milne,

I think if a country attacks us and kills innocent Americans, I believe in the 1000 fold philosophy. For every single American killed we should kill a thousand of theirs. Now that might not sit well with some & they are entitled to their opinion, but it will damn sure make our enemies think before they act. The Taliban should have thought more before they put their people at risk, if you want someone to blame for the innocent Afghans. Well then talk to the B@stards that are responsible for it, the Taliban & Bin Laden not the U.S. By the way, get a life.

HELLRAISER II

Why don't you read the author's report (I have read it, and it's very meticulous) instead of callously excusing these inhumane attacks against innocent civilians. The Afghans who died in these attacks were no different from you are I. Many of them had a wife or husband, children, relatives and loved ones who were blown to smithereens by American bombs. There is no difference between the terrorism inflicted on innocent U.S. civilians on Sept. 11 and the terrorism inflicted by the U.S. on the Aghan people during the past two months. Both are inexcusable and immoral acts.

This administration should be ashamed of itself. And it should be held accountable. Unfortunately, the empire-builders and warmongers and their allies in the press will work overtime to make sure these revelations never see the light of day in the "mainstream press."

The decision to rely heavily on high-altitude air power, target urban infrastructure and repeatedly attack heavily populated towns and villages has reflected a deliberate trade-off of the lives of American pilots and soldiers, not with those of their declared Taliban enemies, but with Afghan civilians.

Imagine that! A nation chooses the lives of its own citizens over the lives of a combatant nation's citizens! The horror...

So an ECONOMICS PROFESSOR who is an EXPERT in ECONIOMICS collected UNSUBSTANUATED reports from HIGHLY UNRELIABLE SOURCES to come up with definative death count

LOL Reminds me of the dopey French Canadian economics professor the Gorons had testify during the post election trials. He too based his faulty findings on faulty data provided by the Dems, without verifying the facts.

Is this your BEST argument?

How about this:

As Commander on Chief, President Bush's mandate is to protect the citizens of his own nation first and foremost. If he can do that and spare the lives of civilians in the enemy country, so much the better. If not, the safety of our own troops and civilians must be paramount. On this, there can be no compromise.

Innocents ALWAYS die in war.
Is this your BEST argument?

How about this best argument ... I DON'T CARE!

200 years from now, I want their children's children's children's children to cower and cringe in fear whenever they hear the sounds of jet engines overhead because their legends tell of fire from the sky.

I want them to hide in dark caves and holes in the earth, shivering with terror whenever they hear the roar of diesel engines because the tales of their ancestors talk about metal monsters crawling over the earth, spitting death and destruction.

I want their mothers to be able to admonish them with "If you don't behave, the Pale Destroyers will come for you", and that will be enough to reduce them to quivering obesience.

I want the annihilation to be so complete that their mythology will tell them of the day of judgment when the stern gods from across the sea .. the powerful 'Mericans .. destroyed their forefathers' wickedness.

Kill them all ... nits make lice.
COL Chivington (Sand Creek)

Why don't you read the author's report (I have read it, and it's very meticulous) instead of callously excusing these inhumane attacks against innocent civilians Get a freakin life will ya!!!

Here are his sources. All of them unsubstantuated. No photos! No video! No proof of corpses! And if these are indeed "corroborated" then why is the final body total an "estimate"?

Based on corroborated reports from aid agencies, the UN, eyewitnesses, TV stations, newspapers and news agencies around the world, Herold estimates that at least 3,767 civilians were killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10.

Wanna know what CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CBS, ABC and ABC said were the TOTAL dead of the WTC? Over 7000! Know what it is? Less that 3000! The UN in the Bosinia war estimated mass Albania graves of dead Albanians close to 1 million. Actual graves found about 10,000, as a matter of fact there were more Serbian killed found in Mass graves than Albanians! Also how do you get an ESTIMATE of a precise number like 3,767 from unsubstantuated sources? Pop you head out of your propaganda an realize that unless a name is attached to a body, estimates are usually over inflated. Remember these are the same sources that said this war would be a quagmire, ESTIMATED to be in it for several years!

ME: Yes. For just one example, the Taliban shelled Kabul for a month in June 1996, killing (stable estimates say)more than 2000.

YOU:So, your argument is that we are no worse than the Taliban?

Apparently identifying arguements is not your strong suit, so I'll make it explicit. The point concerned the Guardian's knee - jerk anti - American reflex. If it were civilian casualties that troubled them they would have had many occasions to complain. That they choose to do so now indicates that it is something else that moves them to howling indignation. If you refrain from selective quotation it will probably help your clarity of thought.

Being a Quaker (in the Free Quaker vein) I find many of the statements made by the AFSC offensive. However I just find this quote quite funny:

"...One man, a 35-year-old farmer who lost his wife, her husband, and six of their seven children, said, "Before the bombing, the Taliban was always saying that American s were enemies of Muslims and of Islam, and we did not believe that. But nowadays, when [the US forces] are killing innocent people, we believe that what the Taliban was saying about America is true: they are trying to kill Muslims and finish Islam..."

I wasn't aware that the dead could speak? How many times does this man get counted?

That is the biggest pantload I have seen in some time, and you are truly despicable for trying to make such an asinine equivalence. The terrorists deliberately targeted two civilian buildings in New York and made efforts to maximize civilian casualties, and initiated force against this country. We responded by targeting military resources in the country that harbored the terrorist group responsible for the attack. In such situations, civilians will get killed, BUT THEY ARE NOT OUR PRIMARY TARGET NOR THE PURPOSE OF OUR MISSION. I defy your sorry ass to come up with a viable alternative that allows this country to take out an enemy that DELIBERATELY hides among civilians and uses them as shields. In earlier wars, the civilian death toll for such an operation would have been far higher, but you don't care about that, you just want to get a warm smug feeling (kinda like wetting your pants) decrying a legitimate military operation to defend this country against further attack.

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