K
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
Guest
Or is this how we piss off the entire Muslim world and generate more
terrorists every day?
U.S. Secret Air War Pulverizes Afghanistan and Iraq
By Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus
Posted on September 14, 2007, Printed on September 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/62511/
According to the residents of Datta Khel, a town in Pakistan's North
Waziristan, three missiles streaked out of Afghanistan's Pakitka
Province and slammed into a Madrassa, or Islamic school, this past
June. When the smoke cleared, the Asia Times reported, 30 people were
dead.
The killers were robots, General Atomics MQ-1 Predators. The AGM-114
Hellfire missiles they used in the attack were directed from a base
deep in the southern Nevada desert.
It was not the first time Predators had struck. The previous year a
CIA Predator took a shot at al-Qaeda's number two man, Ayman al-
Zawahiri, but missed. The missile, however, killed 18 people.
According to the Asia Times piece, at least one other suspected al-
Qaeda member was assassinated by a Predator in Pakistan's northern
frontier area, and in 2002 a Predator killed six "suspected al-Qaeda"
members in Yemen.
These assaults are part of what may be the best kept secret of the
Iraq-Afghanistan conflicts: an enormous intensification of US
bombardments in these and other countries in the region, the
increasing number of civilian casualties such a strategy entails, and
the growing role of pilot-less killers in the conflict.
According to Associated Press, there has been a five-fold increase in
the number of bombs dropped on Iraq during the first six months of
2007 over the same period in 2006. More than 30 tons of those have
been cluster weapons, which take an especially heavy toll on
civilians.
The U.S. Navy has added an aircraft carrier to its Persian Gulf force,
and the Air Force has moved F-16s into Balad air base north of
Baghdad.
Balad, which currently conducts 10,000 air operations a week, is
strengthening runways to handle the increase in air activity. Col.
David Reynolds told the AP, "We would like to get to be a field like
Langley, if you will." The Langley field in Virginia is one of the Air
Force's biggest and most sophisticated airfields.
The Air Force certainly appears to be settling in for a long war.
"Until we can determine that the Iraqis have got their air force to
significant capability," says Lt Gen. Gary North, the regional air
commander, "I think the coalition will be here to support that
effort."
The Iraqi air force is virtually non-existent. It has no combat
aircraft and only a handful of transports.
Improving the runways has allowed the Air Force to move B1-B bombers
from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to Balad, where the big aircraft
have been carrying out daily strikes. A B1-B can carry up to 24 tons
of bombs.
The step-up in air attacks is partly a reflection of how beaten up and
overextended U.S. ground troops are. While Army units put in 15-month
tours, Air Force deployments are only four months, with some only half
that. And Iraqi and Afghani insurgents have virtually no ability to
inflict casualties on aircraft flying at 20,000 feet and using laser
and satellite-guided weapons, in contrast to the serious damage they
are doing to US ground troops.
Besides increasing the number of F-16s, B1-Bs, and A-10 attack planes,
Predator flight hours over both countries have doubled from 2005. "The
Predator is coming into its own as a no-kidding weapon verses a
reconnaissance-only platform," brags Maj. Jon Dagley, commander of the
46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron.
The Air Force is also deploying a bigger, faster and more muscular
version of the Predator, the MQ-9 "Reaper" -- as in grim -- a robot
capable of carrying four Hellfire missiles, plus two 500 lb. bombs.
The Predators and the Reapers have several advantages, the most
obvious being they don't need pilots. "With more Reapers I could send
manned airplanes home," says North.
At $8.5 million an aircraft -- the smaller Predator comes in at $4.5
million apiece -- they are also considerably cheaper than the F-16
($19 million) the B1-B ($200+ million) and even the A-10 ($9.8
million).
The Air Force plans to deploy 170 Predators and 70 Reapers over the
next three years. "It is possible that in our lifetime we will be able
to run a war without ever leaving the US," Lt Col David Branham told
the New York Times.
The result of the stepped up air war, according to the London-based
organization Iraq Body Count, is an increase in civilian casualties. A
Lancet study of "excess deaths" caused by the Iraq war found that air
attacks were responsible for 13% of the deaths -- 76,000 as of June
2006 -- and that 50% of the deaths of children under 15 were caused by
air strikes.
The number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan from air strikes has
created a rift between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the
United States.
"A senior British commander," according to the New York Times, has
pressed U.S. Special Forces (SF) to leave southern Afghanistan because
their use of air power was alienating the local people. SFs work in
small teams and are dependent on air power for support.
SFs called in an air strike last November near Kandahar that killed 31
nomads. This past April, a similar air strike in Western Afghanistan
killed 57 villagers, half of them women and children. Coalition forces
are now killing more Afghan civilians than the Taliban are. The
escalating death toll has thrown the government of Hamid Karzai into a
crisis and the NATO governments into turmoil. "We need to understand
that preventing civilian casualties is crucially important in
sustaining the support of the population," British Defense Minister
Des Browne told the Financial Times.
It has also opened up the allies to the charge of war crimes. In a
recent air attack in southern Afghanistan that killed 25 civilians,
NATO spokesman Lt. Col Mike Smith said the Taliban were responsible
because they were hiding among the civilian population.
But Article 48 of the Geneva Conventions clearly states: "The Parties
to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian
population and combatants." Article 50 dictates that "The presence
within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within
the definition of civilian does not deprive the population of its
civilian character."
The stepped-up air war in both countries has less to do with a
strategic military decision than the reality that the occupations are
coming apart at the seams.
For all intents and purposes, the U.S. Army in Iraq is broken, the
victim of multiple tours, inadequate forces, and the kind of war Iraq
has become: a conflict of shadows, low-tech but highly effective
roadside bombs, and a population which is either hostile to the
occupation or at least sympathetic to the resistance.
It is much the same in Afghanistan. Lord Inge, the former British
chief of staff, recently said, "The situation in Afghanistan is much
worse than many people recognize...it is much more serious that people
want to recognize." A well-placed military source told the Observer,
"If you talk privately to the generals, they are very worried." Faced
with defeat or bloody stalemate on the ground, the allies have turned
to air power, much as the U.S. did in Vietnam. But, as in Vietnam, the
terrible toll bombing inflicts on civilians all but guarantees long-
term failure.
"Far from bringing about the intended softening up of the opposition,"
Phillip Gordon, a Brookings Institute Fellow, told the Asia Times,
"bombing tends to rally people behind their leaders and cause them to
dig in against outsiders who, whatever the justification, are
destroying their homeland."
Conn Hallinan is a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist.
terrorists every day?
U.S. Secret Air War Pulverizes Afghanistan and Iraq
By Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus
Posted on September 14, 2007, Printed on September 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/62511/
According to the residents of Datta Khel, a town in Pakistan's North
Waziristan, three missiles streaked out of Afghanistan's Pakitka
Province and slammed into a Madrassa, or Islamic school, this past
June. When the smoke cleared, the Asia Times reported, 30 people were
dead.
The killers were robots, General Atomics MQ-1 Predators. The AGM-114
Hellfire missiles they used in the attack were directed from a base
deep in the southern Nevada desert.
It was not the first time Predators had struck. The previous year a
CIA Predator took a shot at al-Qaeda's number two man, Ayman al-
Zawahiri, but missed. The missile, however, killed 18 people.
According to the Asia Times piece, at least one other suspected al-
Qaeda member was assassinated by a Predator in Pakistan's northern
frontier area, and in 2002 a Predator killed six "suspected al-Qaeda"
members in Yemen.
These assaults are part of what may be the best kept secret of the
Iraq-Afghanistan conflicts: an enormous intensification of US
bombardments in these and other countries in the region, the
increasing number of civilian casualties such a strategy entails, and
the growing role of pilot-less killers in the conflict.
According to Associated Press, there has been a five-fold increase in
the number of bombs dropped on Iraq during the first six months of
2007 over the same period in 2006. More than 30 tons of those have
been cluster weapons, which take an especially heavy toll on
civilians.
The U.S. Navy has added an aircraft carrier to its Persian Gulf force,
and the Air Force has moved F-16s into Balad air base north of
Baghdad.
Balad, which currently conducts 10,000 air operations a week, is
strengthening runways to handle the increase in air activity. Col.
David Reynolds told the AP, "We would like to get to be a field like
Langley, if you will." The Langley field in Virginia is one of the Air
Force's biggest and most sophisticated airfields.
The Air Force certainly appears to be settling in for a long war.
"Until we can determine that the Iraqis have got their air force to
significant capability," says Lt Gen. Gary North, the regional air
commander, "I think the coalition will be here to support that
effort."
The Iraqi air force is virtually non-existent. It has no combat
aircraft and only a handful of transports.
Improving the runways has allowed the Air Force to move B1-B bombers
from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to Balad, where the big aircraft
have been carrying out daily strikes. A B1-B can carry up to 24 tons
of bombs.
The step-up in air attacks is partly a reflection of how beaten up and
overextended U.S. ground troops are. While Army units put in 15-month
tours, Air Force deployments are only four months, with some only half
that. And Iraqi and Afghani insurgents have virtually no ability to
inflict casualties on aircraft flying at 20,000 feet and using laser
and satellite-guided weapons, in contrast to the serious damage they
are doing to US ground troops.
Besides increasing the number of F-16s, B1-Bs, and A-10 attack planes,
Predator flight hours over both countries have doubled from 2005. "The
Predator is coming into its own as a no-kidding weapon verses a
reconnaissance-only platform," brags Maj. Jon Dagley, commander of the
46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron.
The Air Force is also deploying a bigger, faster and more muscular
version of the Predator, the MQ-9 "Reaper" -- as in grim -- a robot
capable of carrying four Hellfire missiles, plus two 500 lb. bombs.
The Predators and the Reapers have several advantages, the most
obvious being they don't need pilots. "With more Reapers I could send
manned airplanes home," says North.
At $8.5 million an aircraft -- the smaller Predator comes in at $4.5
million apiece -- they are also considerably cheaper than the F-16
($19 million) the B1-B ($200+ million) and even the A-10 ($9.8
million).
The Air Force plans to deploy 170 Predators and 70 Reapers over the
next three years. "It is possible that in our lifetime we will be able
to run a war without ever leaving the US," Lt Col David Branham told
the New York Times.
The result of the stepped up air war, according to the London-based
organization Iraq Body Count, is an increase in civilian casualties. A
Lancet study of "excess deaths" caused by the Iraq war found that air
attacks were responsible for 13% of the deaths -- 76,000 as of June
2006 -- and that 50% of the deaths of children under 15 were caused by
air strikes.
The number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan from air strikes has
created a rift between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the
United States.
"A senior British commander," according to the New York Times, has
pressed U.S. Special Forces (SF) to leave southern Afghanistan because
their use of air power was alienating the local people. SFs work in
small teams and are dependent on air power for support.
SFs called in an air strike last November near Kandahar that killed 31
nomads. This past April, a similar air strike in Western Afghanistan
killed 57 villagers, half of them women and children. Coalition forces
are now killing more Afghan civilians than the Taliban are. The
escalating death toll has thrown the government of Hamid Karzai into a
crisis and the NATO governments into turmoil. "We need to understand
that preventing civilian casualties is crucially important in
sustaining the support of the population," British Defense Minister
Des Browne told the Financial Times.
It has also opened up the allies to the charge of war crimes. In a
recent air attack in southern Afghanistan that killed 25 civilians,
NATO spokesman Lt. Col Mike Smith said the Taliban were responsible
because they were hiding among the civilian population.
But Article 48 of the Geneva Conventions clearly states: "The Parties
to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian
population and combatants." Article 50 dictates that "The presence
within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within
the definition of civilian does not deprive the population of its
civilian character."
The stepped-up air war in both countries has less to do with a
strategic military decision than the reality that the occupations are
coming apart at the seams.
For all intents and purposes, the U.S. Army in Iraq is broken, the
victim of multiple tours, inadequate forces, and the kind of war Iraq
has become: a conflict of shadows, low-tech but highly effective
roadside bombs, and a population which is either hostile to the
occupation or at least sympathetic to the resistance.
It is much the same in Afghanistan. Lord Inge, the former British
chief of staff, recently said, "The situation in Afghanistan is much
worse than many people recognize...it is much more serious that people
want to recognize." A well-placed military source told the Observer,
"If you talk privately to the generals, they are very worried." Faced
with defeat or bloody stalemate on the ground, the allies have turned
to air power, much as the U.S. did in Vietnam. But, as in Vietnam, the
terrible toll bombing inflicts on civilians all but guarantees long-
term failure.
"Far from bringing about the intended softening up of the opposition,"
Phillip Gordon, a Brookings Institute Fellow, told the Asia Times,
"bombing tends to rally people behind their leaders and cause them to
dig in against outsiders who, whatever the justification, are
destroying their homeland."
Conn Hallinan is a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist.
