"Accidents" of War: The Time Has Come for an Honest Discussion of Air Power

"Accidents" of War: The Time Has Come for an Honest Discussion of Air Power

By Tom Engelhardt

Created Jul 10 2007 - 9:32am

- from TomDispatch [1]

The first news stories about the most notorious massacre of the Vietnam War

were picked up the morning after from an Army publicity release. These

proved fairly typical for the war. On its front page, the New York Times

labeled the operation in and around a village called My Lai 4 (or

"Pinkville," as it was known to U.S. forces in the area) a significant

success. "American troops caught a North Vietnamese force in a pincer

movement on the central coastal plain yesterday, killing 128 enemy soldiers

in day-long fighting." United Press International termed what happened there

an "impressive victory," and added a bit of patriotic color: "The Vietcong

broke and ran for their hide-out tunnels. Six-and-a-half hours later, 'Pink

Village' had become 'Red, White and Blue Village."

All these dispatches from the "front" were, of course, military fairy tales.

(There were no reporters in the vicinity.) It took over a year for a former

GI named Ronald Ridenhour, who had heard about the bloody massacre from

participants, and a young former AP reporter named Seymour Hersh working in

Washington for a news service no one had ever heard of, to break the story,

revealing that "red, white, and blue village" had just been red village --

the red of Vietnamese peasant blood. Over 400 elderly men, women, children,

and babies had been slaughtered there by Charlie Company of Task Force

Barker in a nearly day-long rampage.

Things move somewhat faster these days -- after all, Vietnamese villagers

and local officials didn't have access to cell phones to tell their side of

the slaughter -- but from the military point of view, the stories these last

years have all still seemed to start the same way. Whether in Afghanistan or

Iraq, they have been presented by U.S. military spokesmen, or in military

press releases, as straightforward successes. The newspaper stories that

followed would regularly announce that 17, or 30, or 65 "Taliban insurgents"

or "suspected insurgents," or "al-Qaeda gunmen" had been killed in battle

after "air strikes" were called in. These stories recorded daily military

victories over a determined, battle-hardened enemy.

Most of the time, that was the beginning and end of the matter: Air strike;

dead enemies; move on to the next day's bloody events. When it came to Iraq,

such air-strike successes generally did not make it into the American press

as stories at all, but as scattered, ho-hum paragraphs (based on military

announcements) in round-ups of a given day's action focused on far more

important matters -- IEDs, suicide car bombs, mortar attacks, sectarian

killings. In many cases, air strikes in that country simply went unreported.

From time to time, however, another version of what happened when air

strikes were called in on the rural areas of Afghanistan, or on heavily

populated neighborhoods in Iraq's cities and towns, filtered out. In this

story, noncombatants died, often in sizeable numbers. In the last few weeks

"incidents" like this have been reported with enough regularity in

Afghanistan to become a modest story in their own right.

In such news stories, a local caregiver or official or village elder is

reached by phone in some distant, reporter-unfriendly spot and recounts a

battle in which, by the time the planes arrive, the enemy has fled the

scene, or had never been there, or was present but, as is generally the case

in guerrilla wars, in close proximity to noncombatants going about their

daily lives in their own homes and fields. Such accounts record a grim

harvest of dead civilians -- and they almost invariably have a repeated

tagline when it comes to those dead: "including women and children." In an

increasing number of cases recently, reports on the carnage have taken not

over a year, or weeks, or even days to exfiltrate the scene, but have

actually beaten the military success story onto the news page.

In the past, when such civilian slaughters were reported, often days or even

weeks after the initial military account of the battle, what followed also

had a pattern to it. The first responses from the U.S. military would be

outright denials (undoubtedly on the assumption that, without reporters

present, the accounts of Afghan peasants or Iraqi slum dwellers would carry

little weight). Normally, given the competing he says/she says frame for the

reports and the inability of journalists to make it to the scene of the

reputed slaughter, sooner or later the story would simply fade away.

If, against all odds, evidence of civilian deaths piled up, the military

would, in strategic fashion, fall back from one heavily defended position to

the next. The numbers of noncombatant dead or wounded would be questioned

and lowered. Regrets would be offered. Explanations would be proffered. It

was perhaps an "accident" (a missile missed its target or faulty local

intelligence was responsible); or it wasn't an accident, because "the bad

guys" meant it to happen as it did. (In their cowardly way, they had turned

the civilian population into "human shields," thus causing the deaths in

question when U.S. forces reacted in "self-defense.")

If the story nonetheless persisted, an "investigation" (by the military, of

course) would be announced -- again, meant to fade away. In rare cases,

"consolation payments" and limited apologies would be offered. In extreme

instances, when the killings of civilians were especially grotesque and the

result of boots-on-the-ground -- as at Haditha -- lower-ranking soldiers

might finally be brought up on charges. With the exception of a friendly

fire incident [2] in which two U.S. National Guard pilots killed four

Canadian soldiers and injured six others on the ground in Afghanistan, air

strikes were exempt from such charges, no matter what had happened. (In the

Canadian case, the U.S. pilot, originally threatened with a court-martial on

manslaughter charges, was found guilty of "dereliction of duty,"

reprimanded, and fined $5,600.)

American (and NATO) officials regularly make the point that the enemy's

barbarism -- and from car-bombs to a six year-old boy [3] sent to attack

Afghan soldiers wearing a suicide vest, their acts have indeed been

barbarous -- is always intentional; the killing of noncombatants by American

planes is always an "inadvertent" incident, an "accident," and so, of

course, the regrettable "collateral damage" of modern warfare.

Recently, however, in Afghanistan, such isolated incidents from U.S. or NATO

(often still U.S.) air attacks have been occurring in startling numbers.

They have, in fact, become so commonplace that, in the news, they begin to

blur into what looks, more and more, like a single, ongoing airborne

slaughter of civilians. Protest over the killings of noncombatants from the

air, itself a modest story, is on the rise. Afghan President Hamid Karzai,

dubbed "the mayor of Kabul," has bitterly and repeatedly complained about

NATO and U.S. bombing policies. ACBAR, an umbrella organization for Afghan

and international relief and human rights organizations, has received

attention for claiming that marginally more civilians [4] have died this

year at the hands of the Western powers than the Taliban; and, most

recently, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon [5] has made a "'strong' appeal

to military commanders in Afghanistan to avoid civilian casualties."

In all of this, the weakening of the American and NATO position in

Afghanistan, and of the American one in Iraq, continue to play crucial

roles -- while these repeated air-power "incidents" lead into conceptual

territory that is simply never touched upon in our mainstream media.

A Blur of Civilian Deaths

But first things first. Let's start with a partial list of recently reported

air power "incidents" (dates approximate), all of which resulted in

significant civilian casualties:

June 18: An "airstrike against a suspected al-Qaeda hideout" in the

southeastern Afghan province of Paktika is ordered [6] after "nefarious

activities" have been observed at the site, which includes a mosque and a

madrassa (religious school). Almost immediately, news arrives that seven

children [7] have been killed in the attack. The initial response: "Maj.

Chris Belcher, spokesman for the coalition, said there had been no sign of

children at the facility in the hours before the strike, and blamed al-Qaeda

for trying to use a civilian facility as a shield." (According to another

spokesman, Sgt. 1st Class Dean Welch, "If we knew that there were children

inside the building, there was no way that that air strike would have

occurred.")

Later, up to 100 civilians [8] are reported to have been killed in related

fighting, though the figures vary with the news story. Subsequently, [9]

U.S. military officials admit that the air strike "likely missed its primary

target," an al-Qaeda commander, and that "contrary to previous statements,

the U.S. military knew there were children at the compound." Thinking they

had a key al-Qaeda figure in their sights, they launched the attack anyway.

June 21: A U.S. air strike aimed [10] at a "booby-trapped house" in the

Iraqi city of Baquba misses its target and "accidentally" hits another

house, wounding 11 civilians, according to the U.S. military. The incident

is declared "under investigation."

In the larger Baquba incursion, Operation Arrowhead Ripper, part of the

President's "surge plan" for the country, civilian casualties from the air

(and ground) are evidently significantly more widespread than generally

reported in the American media. A BBC report notes [11] at least 12 civilian

casualties, including three women, on the operation's first day and quotes

the head of the city's emergency service as saying that there were

"certainly more.... but ambulances were being prevented by U.S. troops from

going in to evacuate them." (A Sunni political party in Prime Minister

Maliki's government claims [12] 350 dead civilians in Baquba, mainly due to

helicopter attacks.)

Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post [13], reporting on the Baquba

operation, quotes Iraqi refugee Amer Hussein Jasm, a refugee from a nearby

town, saying: "The airplanes have been shooting all the houses and people

are getting scared, so they ran away." Partlow also quotes an American

lieutenant threatening Iraqis his unit has picked up: "Our planes can blow

up this whole city. They have that capability. If we didn't care about you

guys, we wouldn't place ourselves in danger walking around trying to

separate the bad guys from the good guys. When you guys tell us where the

bad guys are, you keep innocent people from being hurt."

June 21: "At least 25 civilians, including nine women, three infants and an

elderly village mullah," are killed [14] in "crossfire" in Helmand province

in southern Afghanistan when U.S. air strikes are called in. ("'In choosing

to conduct such attacks in this location at this time, the risk to civilians

was probably deliberate,' [NATO spokesman Lt. Col. Mike] Smith said [of the

Taliban]. 'It is this irresponsible action that may have led to

casualties.'")

June 22: The U.S. military announces [15] that it has killed "17 al-Qaeda

gunmen" infiltrating an Iraqi village north of Baquba. ("Iraqi police were

conducting security operations in and around the village when Coalition

attack helicopters from the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade and ground forces

from 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, observed more than 15

armed men attempting to circumvent the IPs and infiltrate the village....

The attack helicopters, armed with missiles, engaged and killed 17 al-Qaeda

gunmen and destroyed the vehicle they were using.")

A BBC report [16] later reveals that the dead are 11 village guards ("some

of their bodies cut into small pieces by the munitions used against them").

They were assisting the Iraqi police in trying to protect their village from

possible al-Qaeda attacks when rocketed and strafed by American helicopters.

June 22: "NATO and U.S.-led coalition forces killed 60 insurgents [in

Afghanistan] near the border with Pakistan, in what was described as the

largest insurgent formation crossing the region in six months, the military

said Saturday." That was how the story was first presented [17], before news

of civilian casualties started to trickle out. Later, more defensively, U.S.

Commander Col. Martin P. Schweitzer would insist that his forces had only

targeted "bad guys": "These individuals clearly had weapons and used them

against our aircraft as well as shooting rockets against our positions," he

said. "This required their removal from the battle-space."

The first accounting of noncombatant dead, reportedly from a U.S. rocket,

includes at least five men, three women, and one child, according to a

Pakistani Army spokesman. These deaths occurred on the Pakistani side of the

border. (According to the Pakistanis, civilians also died on the Afghan side

of the border.) This figure is later

raised [18] to 12; the place hit identified as a "small hotel"; and the

airpower identified as possibly B-52s and Apache helicopters. A report in

the Egyptian paper al-Ahram [19] adds: "Sources in Pakistan's tribal

areas.... say 31 of the supposed slain 'insurgents' were in fact Pakistan

tribesmen and their families, including women and children."

June 30: In air strikes, again in Helmand province, munitions "slammed into

civilian homes." At least 30 insurgents and civilians are initially reported

[20] to have been killed, "including women and children." These figures

later rise [21] precipitously. ("'More than 100 people have been killed. But

they weren't Taliban. The Taliban were far away from there,' said Wali Khan,

a member of parliament who represents the area.") Other reports have 45

civilians and 62 insurgents dying. NATO spokesman later claim civilian

deaths were "an order of magnitude less" and that Taliban fighters were

firing from well-dug trenches and "continuing their tactic of using women

and children as human shields in close combat."

Given the ongoing uproar over civilian casualties in Afghanistan, an

investigation [22] is launched. According to Haji Zahir [23], "a tribal

elder who said he had been in touch with residents of bombed villages":

"People tried to escape from the area with their cars, trucks and tractors,

and the coalition airplanes bombed them because they thought they were the

enemy fleeing. They told me that they had buried 170 bodies so far."

Thirty-five villagers "fleeing in a tractor-trailer" were reportedly hit

from the air -- with only two survivors, an old man and his severely wounded

son. NATO (American) spokesmen beg to disagree: "The allies returned fire

and called in air support, aimed at 'clearly identified firing positions.'"

July 2: An intense mortar barrage aimed at a U.S. base near the largely

Shiite city of Diwaniya leads to air strikes by two F-16s that reportedly

kill 10 civilians [24] along with Shia militiamen. Among them, it is said,

are six children [25] under the age of 12. ("'Coalition forces are reviewing

the incident to ensure that appropriate and proportionate force was used in

responding to the intense attack,' a U.S. statement said, without referring

to any Iraqi casualties.")

New reports of deaths from air strikes in Afghanistan continue to arrive --

108 noncombatants [26] "including women and children" killed in Farah

Province on July 6th and 33 killed [27] in Kunar Province, "11 of them on

Thursday [July 5th] during a bombardment, and 25 more on Friday as they

attended a funeral for the deceased." American denials are issued [28] and

Taliban propaganda blamed. ("[A] US official said Taliban fighters are

forcing villagers to say civilians died in fighting -- whether or not it is

true.")

Air War: Afghanistan

Even from such a partial list -- undoubtedly lacking information from Iraq,

where the air war has been notoriously overlooked by American reporters -- a

pattern can be seen. But beyond the loss of innocent lives (always, when

finally admitted, officially "regretted" by the U.S. military), why should

any of this matter?

Let's start this way: Barring an unexpected change of policy, some version

of this list of "errant" incidents, multiplied many times over, is likely to

represent the future for both Afghanistan and Iraq. The obvious math of the

military manpower situation in both countries tells us this is so -- as does

history.

In Afghanistan this year, Taliban suicide attacks alone have increased [29]

by 230%, while Iraq-style roadside IEDs are also a growing threat [30]. In

eastern Afghanistan, where the U.S. leads NATO operations, "militant

attacks" rose 250% compared to May 2006, according to the U.S. military.

NATO and American troop levels [31], now somewhere in the range of

46,000-50,000 -- approximately 20,000 of whom are from European countries

and Canada -- remain woefully inadequate for securing the country (if such a

thing were even possible) and NATO casualties are on the rise.

Afghanistan, after all, is far larger than Iraq and is being garrisoned by a

combined force less than a third the size of the occupying force in that

country, which itself is universally considered inadequate to the task. It's

a fair bet that the various European powers (and the Canadians) are

wondering how they ended up in this distant war in a land that has

historically been a graveyard for conquerors and occupiers. In Canada [32]

and various European countries, as casualties rise and success of any sort

seems beyond reach, the Afghan deployments are becoming increasingly

unpopular.

Don't expect reinforcements from NATO countries any time soon; while the

U.S. Army and Marines, already stretched beyond capacity by the recent

"surge" in Iraq, are probably incapable of reinforcing their Afghan

contingent in any significant way. By elimination, this leaves one weapon in

the American/NATO arsenal, air power, which is, in fact, ever more in use in

response to a surge in Taliban ambushes and limited takeovers of villages

(and even entire districts) in the Afghan south.

As the Europeans are well aware, air power -- given the civilian casualties

that invariably follow in its wake -- is intensely counterproductive in a

guerrilla war. "Every civilian dead means five new Taliban," was the way a

British officer just returned from Helmand Province put it [33] recently.

However, an air-power strategy fits American predilections to a tee. As a

Reuters piece [34] aptly headlined the matter, the Americans in Afghanistan

are "hooked on air power." Americans have long been so. After all, with the

singular exception of various Central American proxy wars during the Reagan

years, air war has essentially been the American way of war since World War

II. The Bush administration fought its Afghan War of 2001 largely from the

air in support of the well-paid-off ground forces of the Northern Alliance,

aided by Special Forces troops and lots of CIA money in suitcases. (In Iraq,

of course, the invasion of March 2003 started with a massive air attack

meant to "decapitate" Saddam Hussein's regime -- it did no such thing --

while having the side benefit of shocking-and-awing hostile states in the

region.)

Even after American ground forces moved in, Afghanistan has never ceased to

be an Air Force war. B-1 bombers have been called in relatively regularly

there (unlike in Iraq) and air strikes in the Afghan countryside have become

a commonplace. By November 2006, David Cloud of the New York Times -- who

flew on a B-1 mission over the country (and noted that a similar flight the

week he went up had "dropped its entire payload of eight 2,000-pound bombs

and six 500-pound bombs after ground units called for help") -- reported

[35] that the use of air power had risen sharply there. More than 2,000 air

strikes had been called in during the previous six months, with a

concomitant rise in civilian casualties. In addition, the Air Force's full

contingent of B-1s had been "shifted over the summer from the British air

base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to a Middle Eastern airfield closer

to Afghanistan," cutting mission flight time by a critical two hours.

Though no post-November 2006 figures are available, the recent spate of

reported "incidents" confirms that missions have risen again this year,

along with noncombatant deaths. According to Laura King of the Los Angeles

Times [36], in a piece typically headlined, "Errant Afghan Civilian Deaths

Surge": "More than 500 Afghan civilians have been reported killed this year,

and the rate has dramatically increased in the last month." Local

dissatisfaction and bitterness are also noticeably on the rise.

The Karzai government [37] remains weak, ineffective, and corrupt, while

Taliban strength grows in southern Afghanistan and across the border in the

Pakistani tribal areas. There, for instance, Jane Perlez and Ismail Khan of

the New York Times [38] reported that, according to a secret document from

the Pakistani Interior Ministry, "the Taliban have recently begun bombing

oil tank trucks that pass through the Khyber area near the border on their

way to Afghanistan for United States and NATO forces. A convoy of 12 of the

trucks was hit with grenades and gutted on Thursday night in the third such

incident in a month."

To all of this, air power is the "NATO" answer for the present and the

future, the only answer in sight, however counterproductive it may prove to

be.

According to a report in the British press, American General Dan McNeill,

commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, has already been dubbed [39]

"Bomber McNeill" (and it's not meant to be a compliment). Despite periodic

"reviews of procedures," nor is his strategy -- call in the planes -- likely

to change any time soon. The U.S. military (and NATO officials) have

essentially confirmed this. Despite a growing chorus of criticism in

Afghanistan (and among NATO allies), Army Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel has

praised the "extensive procedures" in place "to avoid civilian casualties."

"We think the procedures that we have in place are good -- they work," he

told reporters. U.S. spokespeople have recently indicated [40] that NATO is

not about to "change its use of air power against the Taliban."

So, in Afghanistan, the future is already clear enough. More Taliban attacks

mean more air strikes mean more dead noncombatants ("including women and

children") mean more alienated, angry Afghanis in a spiral of devolution to

which no end can yet be foreseen.

Air War: Iraq

Striking as this rise in civilian deaths may be for Afghanistan, it gains

extra importance for what it signals about the future of Iraq. Afghanistan

is, in a sense, the maimed, defeathered canary in the mine of American

air-power.

In Iraq, as all now know, the U.S. military has reached its on-the-ground

limits. With approximately 156,000 troops surged into place (and many tens

of thousands of armed private security contractors, or mercenaries, surging

into that country as well), the occupation forces have, it seems, reached

their maximum numbers. By next spring at the latest, unless tours of duty in

Iraq are lengthened from an already extended 15 months to 18 months -- a

notoriously unpopular move for a notorious unpopular administration -- the

President's "surge," like some tide, will have to recede.

Downsizing, if not withdrawal, will arrive whether anyone wants it to or

not. In fact, as Julian Barnes of the Los Angeles Times has reported [41],

U.S. commanders in Iraq already assume that such a downsizing is on the way;

that, by fall, Congress will impose some kind of timetable for a partial

withdrawal. They are adjusting their "surge" tactics accordingly.

With the President's approval ratings sinking into the mid-20% range [42],

senior Republican senators, including Richard Lugar, George Voinovich, Pete

Domenici [43], and possibly even John Warner are jumping the

administration's Iraqi ship (or, at least, edging toward the rail). Pressure

is building [44] in Congress and within the Republican Party for a change of

course. Bush himself has stopped promising Americans "victory," and is

instead pathetically begging for "patience" [45] on the home front until

"the job is done."

The next stage of the war in Iraq is, in a sense, already in sight. While

that might seem like mildly encouraging news to the ever-increasing numbers

of Americans who want to see it all over, it should give pause to Iraqis,

who are sure to be on the receiving end of what such a partial withdrawal

will mean.

The Wall Street Journal's Jochi Dreazen and Greg Jaffe, for instance,

recently reported [46] on planning for an ongoing occupation of Iraq by

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and "allies in the Bush administration"

("In Strategy Shift, Gates Envisions Iraq Troop Cuts"). The Secretary of

Defense, they revealed, is "seeking to build bipartisan support for a

long-term U.S. presence in Iraq by moving toward withdrawing significant

numbers of troops.... by the end of President Bush's term." He is in search

of a new Washington Consensus -- "a modern-day version of President Harry

Truman's 'Cold War consensus,'" as he puts it -- in which a far smaller U.S.

force (possibly 30,000-40,000 troops) would "operate out of large bases far

from Iraq's major cities" for years, even decades, to come.

There's nothing new in this, of course. Such a "Plan B" was, in fact, "Plan

A" when the Bush administration first rumbled into Baghdad in April 2003.

The administration's top officials always expected to draw-down U.S. forces

quickly into the 30,000 range and garrison them in four or more enormous

bases outside of Iraq's urban areas. This was the occupation they planned

for, not the one they got. It now goes under the rubric of the "Korea

model." [47]

If such a plan were indeed put into operation in 2008-2009, it would surely

mean one thing that is almost never mentioned in Washington, or even by

critics of the war: a significant increase in the use of U.S. air power.

Actually, bombs are already being dropped in Iraq in 2007 at almost twice

the rate [48] of the previous year. In this sense, the Afghan model is

available as an example of things to come, as is the historical model of the

Vietnam War in the period in which President Richard Nixon was employing

what might now be called the "Gates Plan." It was then called

"Vietnamization." Nixon was intent on withdrawing all American ground combat

troops, while leaving behind tens of thousands of American advisors, who

were to continue training the South Vietnamese military, as well as sizeable

numbers of troops to guard our enormous bases in that country. Not

surprisingly, that period saw an unprecedented escalation of the air war

over South Vietnam. It was a time of unparalleled (but under-reported)

brutality, destruction, and carnage in the Vietnamese countryside.

Any similar "Iraqification" plan would surely have an equivalent effect, the

gap in manpower being plugged by air power. And the Washington "consensus"

Gates hopes for is already forming. The two leading Democratic candidates

for President, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, adhere to it. Both call for

"withdrawal" from Iraq, but define withdrawal (as Gates would) as the

"redeployment" of U.S. "combat brigades" (possibly less than half the

American forces in that country at present).

In other words, we are almost guaranteed that, either this winter or in the

spring of 2008 (as the presidential election looms), some kind of drawdown,

surely to be headlined as a "withdrawal" plan, will begin and that

significantly lower levels of troops will be supported by a rise in air

strikes -- and in Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, this means the bombing not of

peasant villages but of urban neighborhoods.

This, in turn, means that we should prepare ourselves for a rise in

"incidents," in "mistakes," in the "inadvertent" or "errant" death of

civilians in escalating numbers. Whether in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq,

the formula, with a guerrilla war, is simple and unavoidable: Air Power =

Civilian Deaths. Or put another way, "Incidents" 'R Us.

A History of Mistakes

Let's start with the nature of modern war. The very phrase "collateral

damage" should be tossed onto the junk heap of history. For the last

century, war has increasingly targeted civilians. Between World War I and

the 1990s, according to Richard M. Garfield and Alfred I. Neugut in War and

Public Health, civilian deaths as a percentage of all deaths rose from 14%

to 90%. These figures are obviously approximate at best, but the trend line

is clear. In a sense, in modern warfare, it's the military deaths that often

are the "collateral damage"; civilian deaths -- "including women and

children" -- turn out to be central to the project. The Lancet study's [49]

figures for Iraq indicate as much.

If modern war has largely been war against noncombatant populations, then

the airplane -- which, even more than artillery, represented war from a

distance -- was its ultimate terror weapon. The invention of the atomic

bomb, the culmination of the dreams of air power as an "ultimate weapon,"

signaled this in an unforgettable way. In the post-World War II years, the

wars of the superpowers migrated to the "peripheries" where they could be

fought with less fear of a nuclear holocaust, of, as American first-strike

plans [50] had it, the deaths of hundreds of millions of noncombatants

across what was known as the "Communist bloc." Those wars began to be fought

largely against low-tech forces, propelled by powerful allegiances often to

national entities that did not yet exist. In those guerilla wars of

"national liberation," the enemy combatants were invariably mixed in with

civilian populations, which both provided support and a kind of protection.

Air war against such forces, then, had to be a war against noncombatant

populations. "Mistakes" would be constant.

Of course, even in World War II, the deaths of civilians in London in the

Blitz were no mistake; nor were the later deaths of the citizens of Hamburg

or Dresden; or the inhabitants of Tokyo and 59 other fire-bombed Japanese

cities as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were atomized. The deaths of

city dwellers in Pyongyang in the early 1950s were not a mistake; nor were

the mass killings of peasants in South Vietnam; nor Laotian villagers on the

Plain of Jars; nor the citizens of Hanoi over Christmas, 1972.

When, in 1970, after a conversation with President Nixon, Henry Kissinger

passed on [51] to White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig by phone the

president's orders for "a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia," using

"anything that flies on anything that moves," it was not a mistake (nor,

undoubtedly, was the "unintelligible comment" on the transcript that

"sounded like Haig laughing.")

Here's the simplest truth of air power, then or now. No matter how

technologically "smart" our bombs or missiles, they will always be ordered

into action by us dumb humans; and if, in addition, they are released into

villages filled with civilians going about their lives, or heavily populated

urban neighborhoods where insurgents mix with city dwellers (who may or may

not support them), these weapons will, by the nature of things, by policy

decision, kill noncombatants. If an AC-130 or an Apache helicopter strafes

an urban block or a village street where people below are running, some

carrying weapons and believed to be "suspected insurgents," it will kill

civilians. The disadvantage of "distant war" is that you normally have no

way of knowing why someone is running, or why they are carrying a weapon, or

usually who they really are.

Once Americans find themselves engaged in a guerrilla war, the urge is

naturally to bring to bear military strengths and limit casualties -- and

the fear is always of sending American troops into an "urban jungle," or

simply a jungle, where the surroundings will serve to equalize a

disproportionate American advantage in the weaponry of high-tech

destruction. In distant war, particularly wars where Americans alone control

the skies and can fly in them with relative impunity, the trade-off is clear

indeed: our soldiers for their civilian dead "including women and children."

This is not an aberrant side effect of air war but its heart and soul. The

airplane is a weapon of war, but it is also a weapon of terror -- and it is

meant to be. From the beginning, it was used not to "win over" enemy

populations -- after all, how could that be done from the distant skies? --

but to crush or terrorize them into submission. (It has seldom worked that

way.)

Then, there's another factor that has to be added in. What if you don't

really care -- not all that much anyway -- who is running in the street

below you?

Since 1945, American air power has regularly been used to police the

imperial borders of the planet. It has, that is, been released against

people of color, against what used to be called the Third World. (Serbia in

1999 was the sole exception to this rule.) As Afghan President Karzai put

the matter [52] in response to recent reports of civilian casualties in his

country: "We want to cooperate with the international community. We are

thankful for their help to Afghanistan, but that does not mean that Afghan

lives have no value. Afghan life is not cheap and it should not be treated

as such." (His bitter comment eerily reflects another from the Vietnam era,

more than thirty years gone. "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price

on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the

Orient" -- so said [53] former commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam General

William Westmoreland in 1974.)

It may be that American administrations would have been no less willing to

release their bombs and missiles on white noncombatant populations (as was

the case with Germany in World War II); but it can at least be said that,

for the last half-century-plus, air power has functionally acted as an armed

form of racism, that the sense of "their lives" as cheaper, even if seldom

spoken aloud, has made it easier to use the helicopter, the bomber, the

Hellfire-missile-armed Predator drone. The fact is that air war always

cheapens human life. After all, from the heights, if seen at all, people

must have something of the appearance of scurrying insects. It is the nature

of such war, and an ingrained racism, seldom mentioned any more, only adds

to it.

Not so long from now, by the way, we may not even be able to use the term

"air power" without qualification. We may instead be talking about "distant

war" via the air, for the nature of air power itself is beginning to blur.

Artillery always represented a form of distant war, but the latest version

of artillery, a new weapons system evidently in operation in Afghanistan,

the High Mobility Artillery Rockets, or HIMARS, brings into play an

artillery man's version of air war. This truck-mounted rocket system fires

its weapons into the atmosphere, where they are "guided to the target by

either GPS or lasers." According to the Washington Post's [54] William

Arkin, HIMARS "can be configured to shoot a wide array of rockets and

missiles, from cluster bombs to a single missile system with a range up to

300 kilometers." One or more of these rockets may have been used [55] in the

Paktika attack that killed seven children and seems to have been used in the

killing of Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah in mid-May.

Beyond all else, there is the American attitude towards air power itself --

and, beyond that, toward modern war when fought on the planetary

"peripheries" (even if those peripheries turn out to be the oil heartlands

of our world). From World War II, through Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan

and Iraq, our air wars have always visited death and destruction on

civilians. In a future in which it is highly unlikely that American troops

will ever fight Russians or Chinese or the soldiers of any other major power

in set-piece battles, imperial war is likely to continue to take place in

heavily populated civilian areas against guerrillas and insurgents of

various sorts. Don't take my word for it. The Pentagon thinks so too and is

engaged in extensive planning [56] for such future wars -- involving weapons

that leave its soldiers "at a distance" in the burgeoning urban slums [57]

of our planet.

So perhaps a modicum of honesty is in order. Iraq and Afghanistan are

already charnel houses, zones of butchery for the innocent. In both lands,

it's possible to make a simple prediction: As bad as things already are, if

present trends continue, if the "Korea model" becomes the model, it's going

to get worse. We have yet to see anything like the full release of American

air power in Afghanistan, no less in Iraq, but don't count it out.

We in the U.S. recognize butchery when we see it -- the atrocity of the car

bomb, the chlorine-gas truck bomb, the beheading. These acts are obviously

barbaric in nature. But our favored way of war -- war from a distance --

has, for us, been pre-cleansed of barbarism. Or rather its essential

barbarism has been turned into a set of "errant incidents," of "accidents,"

of "mistakes" repeatedly made over more than six decades. Air power is, in

the military itself, little short of a religion of force, impermeable to

reason, to history, to examples of what it does (and what it is incapable of

doing). It is in our interest not to see air war as a -- possibly the --

modern form of barbarism.

Ours is, of course, a callous and dishonest way of thinking about war from

the air (undoubtedly because it is the form of barbarism, unlike the car

bomb or the beheading, that benefits us). It is time to be more honest. It

is time for reporters to take the words "incident," "mistake," "accident,"

"inadvertent," "errant," and "collateral damage" out of their reportorial

vocabularies when it comes to air power. At the level of policy, civilian

deaths from the air should be seen as "advertent." They are not mistakes or

they wouldn't happen so repeatedly. They are the very givens of this kind of

warfare.

This is, or should be, obvious. If we want to "withdraw" from Iraq (or

Afghanistan) via the Gates Plan, we should at least be clear about what that

is likely to mean -- the slaughter of large numbers of civilians "including

women and children." And it will not be due to a series of mistakes or

incidents; it will not be errant or inadvertent. It will be policy itself.

It will be the Washington -- and in the end the American -- consensus.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular

antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire

Project [58] and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished:

Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters [59] (Nation

Books).

[Note to Tomdispatch readers: Air power has been perhaps the worst reported

aspect of the Bush administration's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This

website has, however, covered it as regularly, even doggedly, as possible.

I've written about it since at least 2004 [60]. Independent reporter Dahr

Jamail [61], sociologist Michael Schwartz [62], and Tomdispatch Associate

Editor Nick Turse [63] have all offered contributions on the subject. In

addition, Seymour Hersh wrote a piece in the New Yorker [64], "Up in the

Air," in 2005 that remains predictive on air power in Iraq and a must-read.

Just recently, Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com [65] dealt incisively with a

single incident of civilian deaths from the air in Iraq and how our press

covered it; while Ira Chernus at the Commondreams website [66], took up

civilian deaths in Afghanistan with his usual acumen. I recommend both

pieces. Someday, it will occur to mainstream reporters to do the same and

then we'll know we've entered a different moment, a different world.]

Copyright 2007 Tom Engelhardt

_______

About author Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com

[67] ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of

the American Empire Project [68] and, most recently, the author of Mission

Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and

Dissenters [69] (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch

interviews.

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson