Read
How the Press & the CIA Killed Gary Webb's Career
Today's
Stories
December
16, 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
Interest Rates, Credit Cards &
the Lethal Fine Print
December
15, 2004
Robert
Fisk
Who Killed Baha Mousa?
Jennifer
Van Bergen
The Monster Under the Bed
Heather
Gray
Will the Real Christians Please Stand?: a Personal Testimony
Dave
Lindorff
The DNC, Albright and the Iraq Elections
Luis
Hernandez Navarro
To Die a Little: Migration and Coffee
in Mexico and Central America
Joshua
Frank
The Ohio Recount: an Exercise in "Dumbocracy"
Greg
Moses
Eighty-Sixing Civil Rights in Ohio?
George
Caffentzis
The Petroleum Commons
December
14, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
DNC Meddling in the Ukraine Elections
Larry
Birns / Seth DeLong
Haiti is Unraveling and No One is Saying
Anything
Richard
Thieme
My Last Talk with Gary Webb: "I Knew It Was the Truth and
That's What Kept Me Going"
Patrick
Cockburn
A Year After Saddam's Capture, Iraq
is Getting Worse
Chris
Floyd
Client State: Moral Values and Voluntary Servitude in Bush's
America
Akiva
Eldar
A One-time Hanukkah Miracle
Burbach
/ Cantor
The Legacy of Pinochet: Kissinger
and the Teflon Tyrant
December
13, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Gary Webb: a Great Reporter, Trashed
by the CIA's Claque
David
Phinney
"Contract Meal Disaster" for Iraqi Prisoners: Rancid
Food Sparked Abu Ghraib Riots
Paul
Craig Roberts
A Dose of Non-Delusional Reality
for Douglas Feith
M.
Junaid Alam
The War is the War Crime
Robert
Jensen
The US Has Lost the Iraq War...and That's a Good Thing
Richard
Oxman
Kafkaesque Lessons for the Left
Greg
Moses
Send No Messengers of Defeat
Douglas
Lummis
The Pentagon's Neurosis: Fallujah
Gulag
December
11 / 12, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Running an Empire on the Cheap
Ron
Jacobs
The Drugs of War: Getting High in the Green Zone?
Saul
Landau
Listening and Talking to God About
Invading Other Countries
Gary
Leupp
Bush's Capital
Sharon
Smith
The Horrible Toll on US Troops
Dave
Lindorff
Deja Vu All Over Again: 5,000 Desertions and Counting
Uri
Avnery
The Boss Has Gone Crazy
Jude
Wanniski
The Neo-Con Smear on Kofi Annan: What Food-for-Oil Scandal?
Heather
Gray
How the South Became Republican: an Interview with John Egerton
Patrick
Cockburn / Ken Sengupta
Fallujah: the Homecoming and the Homeless
John
Pilger
Return to Kosovo: Calling the Humanitarian Bombers to Account
Joshua
Frank
All the Rage: Mr. Solomon, Say You're Sorry
Ben
Tripp
O Canada!: the Truth About the Election of 2004
John
Stanton
God Speaks!
Laura
Nathan
Porn Stars are People, Too: a Talk with Christi Lake
Poets'
Basement
Capaccio, Davies, Louise, Ford and Albert
Website
of the Day
Fallujah Photos: Killed in Their Beds
December
10, 2004
Ralph
Nader
President Bush, Stop Destroying the
Mosques of Iraq
Greg
Moses
Whitewashing Voter Fraud
Nicole
Colson
Rebellion in the Ranks: Grunts Are Resisting Stop-Loss Orders
Frederick
B. Hudson
"They Still Got Those Dogs": A New Book Probes Old
Civil Rights Lessons
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Insurgents Oppose the Occupation, Not the Elections
Kathy
Kelly
From Haiti to Iraq: Burying Water
December
9, 2004
Greg
Moses
Ask Not Who Bankrolled Fallujah
Joshua
Frank
Cobb and the Ohio Recount: Vote Fraud as Fundraiser!
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush: It's Time to
Disclose the Real Casualty Figures
Lee
Sustar
Bhopal: the Making of a Disaster
Tom
Barry
Restrictionist Resurgence
Mickey
Z.
Sander Hicks and the 9/11 Truth Movement
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush in the Bubble
Mark
Donham
Why are House Democrats Trying to
Deny Cynthia McKinney Seniority?
Gary
Corseri
On the Anniversary of John Lennon's Death, 2012
Paul
de Rooij
The Voices of Sharon's Little Helpers
December
8, 2004
Ralph
Nader
Will the Real Michael Moore Ever Re-Emerge?
Ann
Harrison
The Ohio Recount: Reluctant Officials
and Few Rules
Paul
Craig Roberts
War Crime
Dave
Lindorff
They've Got a Secret: Inside the $40 Billion Black Budget for
Spying
Patrick
Cockburn / Andrew Buncombe
CIA Warning on Iraq: Fallujah Did Not Break the Back of the Insurgency
Col.
Dan Smith
Rules of Engagement in Iraq
Emily
Alves / Michael Johnson
Paradise Lost: Corruption and Clientelism in Costa Rica
Richard
Oxman
The Dylan Bob Wouldn't Mention: Up With Dylan Thomas
Ron
Jacobs
In Fallujah, Freedom Isn't Free
December
7, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Running Battles in Baghdad
Behrooz
Ghamari
Lost Muslim Voices of Dissent
Dave
Lindorff
American Fantasies: Psst! Hey Buddy,
Did You Hear How Well the War's Going?
Joshua
Frank
Dean at the DNC?
Richard
Oxman
Down with Dylan: the Insufferable Interview
Ray
McGovern
All Mosquitoes, No Swamp
John
Chuckman
The Invasion of Hallifax: The Imperial Wizard Visits Canada
James
Petras
Latin America: the Empire Changes Gears
Website
of the Day
ToxMap: Who's Poisoning You
December
6, 2004
Paul
Craig Roberts
Paranoia and Pre-emption: Is the
Bush Administration Certifiable?
December
4 / 6, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Politicize the CIA? You've Got to
be Kidding
Joe
Bageant
Dining with the Rhinos
Alan
Maass
Reporting from the Ground in Iraq: an Interview with Patrick
Cockburn
Brian
Cloughley
Democracy, Bush-style, in the Gulf
Laura
Carlsen
Latin America Shifts Left
Lenni
Brenner
Jefferson, Madison, Bush and Religion
Anna
Ioakimedes
Brazil's Haitian Mission: Doing God's Work or Washington's?
Uri
Avnery
Widow of Opportunity?
Fred
Gardner
Supreme Court Hears Medical Pot Case
Dave
Zirin
Steroids to Heaven
Jackie
Corr
Mining Camp Blues: the Red State Variation
Don
Fitz
Will Greens Abandon IRV?
Lucy
Herschel
"Art can be a Weapon of the Oppressed": an Interview
with Artist Anthony Papa
Richard
Oxman
No Angels in America: Bashing the Gay Play
Ron
Jacobs
Holiday Greeting Card
Poets'
Basement
Collins, Albert, LaMorticella
December
3, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Lie Then Escalate
Ben
Tripp
Fun With Boycotts: How to Shop in a
Time of Crisis
Joe
Allen
Murder in El Salvador: the Assassination of Teamster Organizer
Gilberto Soto
Matthew
B. Riley
Human Rights Court Fails Lori Berenson
Meir
Shalev
In the End, It is the Violin that Wins
Bob
Wing
The White Elephant in the Room: Race and Election 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
When McCain Bit His Tongue
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
The EU, the US, Israel and Iran
December
2, 2004
Tito
Tricot
No Justice in Chile: I'm a Torture
Survivor in a Country Where Torturers Still Run Free
Behzad
Yaghmaian
The Murder of Theo Van Gogh and Muslim Migration
Dr.
Susan Block
Lana and Me: Meetings with Remarkable Apes
Frank
/ Chowkwanyun
Liberalism and Its Bounds
Lee
Sustar
Standoff in Ukraine: the Bad v. the Corrupt
Patrick
Cockburn
Another Grim Record in Iraq
Mark
Engler
Seattle at Five
Michael
Donnelly
Something Stinks in South Bend: the Firing of Tyrone Willingham
Nate
Collins
The Bay Area Mall on an Ohlone Burial Grounds
Saul
Landau
The Assassination of Danilo Anderson
December
1, 2004
Phillip
Cryan
Associated with Whom? Rightist Bias
in Wire Coverage of Colombia
Dave
Zirin
What's the Matter with "Leon"?:
Budweiser's Racist Commercial
Ghali
Hassan
Iraq's Health Care Under the Occupation:
200 Children Die Every Day
Donna
J. Volatile
Beware Western Nations Threatening "Democracy"
Patrick
Cockburn
How Saddam Tried to Arm the Insurgency
Nick
Meo
Chemical War Over Afghanistan
Mike
Ferner
The Battle of Toledo
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Shame and Determination on Global AIDS Day: 40 Million and Rising
Kathy
Kelly
Looking the Other Way: the Real Crimes
of the UN in Iraq
November
30, 2004
Jennifer
Van Bergen
The Veil of Secrecy
Toni
Nelson Herrera
Meeting Kurtz: When Art is a Crime
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Bush Delusions: Successful at Incompetence
Patrick
Cockburn
The Insurgency Strikes Back: There Are No Safe Havens in Iraq
Chuck
Munson
WTO Protests Five Years Later: Seattle Weekly Trashes Anti-Globalization
Movement
Adam
Williams
Citizenship Sold: Back to Business in Indiana
Gregory
Elich
A Dangerous Turn in the US Plans for
North Korea
Website
of the Day
Read Lynne Cheney's Lesbian Novel Online!
November
29, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Blowback in Ukraine: The Hand of
the CIA?
Omar
Barghouti
"The Pianist" of Palestine:
Roadblock Concerto at Gunpoint
Mike
Whitney
The US Media and Fallujah: How to
Market a Siege
Uri
Avnery
The Abu Mazen Style: "Give Me
Some Credit!"
Matt
Vidal
Globalization and Economic Inequality: a Look at the Numbers
Patrick
Cockburn
An Interview with Iraq's Foreign
Minister
Alan
Farago
Sex Change and Salvation: God, Girly Men and Endocrine Disrupters
Justin
Huggler
Bhopal 20 Years Later
Antony
Loewenstein
How Australia Reported Arafat's Death and Legacy
Gary
Leupp
Ukraine: Poll Results Aren't the Real
Issue
Website
of the Day
Mosul: Images from a Kill Zone
November
27 / 28, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with
Sycorax in Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?
Fred
Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court
Kathy
Kelly
What We Can Control
Diane
Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"
Gary
Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea
Lenni
Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York
Times
Ron
Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of
the AMS Clerics
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd
Toni
Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson
Saul
Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are
No Cure for Homophobia
Justin
Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities
Amos
Harel
The Case of Captain R.
Walter
A. Davis
Tabloid Justice
Stephen
Hendricks
God's Kind of Men
Poets'
Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford
November
26, 2004
Peter
Feng
Gavin Newsom: Man or Machine?
Greg
Moses
It's the White Vote, Stupid
Liaquat
Ali Khan
The Devil's Work: Bush's Minority Appointments
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should Be Banned from Canada: a Memo to the Ministry
of Immigration
Dave
Lindorff
Nation of Sheep, Turkey of an Election: Urkrainians Show the
Way
Gary
Corseri
When Black Friday Comes...
Paul
Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Conservatives?
Website
of the Day
Iraq Pipeline Watch
November
25, 2004
Willliam
Loren Katz
Giving Thanks to Whom?: "Thanks
to God We Sent 600 Heathen Souls to Hell Today"
Mitchel
Cohen
Why I Hate Thanksgiving
Mike
Ferner
An Uncommon Mom
November
24, 2004
Gila
Svirsky
License to Kill: the Example of Violence
is Set by the State
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The
Other Mess in Congress
Christopher
Brauchli
The Company He Keeps: the Syndicate of Tom Delay
Dave
Lindorff
Double Standards on Exit Polls: Hypocrisy Sans Irony
Ron
Jacobs
The Occupation of Iraq is the Root of t he Problem
Ken
Sengupta
Witnesses: War Crimes in Fallujah
Diana
Barahona
The Final Holocaust or Why I Voted for Ralph Nader
John
L. Hess
Safire the Shameless
Jason
Leopold
Did Harvard Hire (Another) War Criminal?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Mark of McCain: the Senator Most Likely to Start a Nuclear
War
Map
of the Day
Now and Then: 2004 v. 1860
November
23, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
Bush and Uribe at the Beach
November
22, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Fight Night in the NBA: Selective Outrage
in Detroit
Paul
Craig Roberts
On to Iran: We Won't Get Fooled Again?
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should be Banned from Canada
Kathie
Helmkamp
Our Son: a Marine Who Won't Kill
Ken
Sengupta
The Triangle of Death: "This is Now the Most Dangerous Place
in Iraq"
Mike
Whitney
Greenspan's Hammer
Roger
Burbach
Why They Hate Bush in Chile
Website
of the Day
Fed Up with Government Lies and Corporate Spin?
November
20 / 21, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The Poisoned Chalice
Todd
May
Religion, the Election and the Politics of Fear
Abbas
Ahmed Ibrahim
The Horrors of Fallujah: a First-Hand Account
Kevin
Zeese
Mishandling Nader
Landau
/ Hassen
After Arafat
Tom
Barry
The Vulcans Consolidate Power: The Rise of Stephen Hadley
Fred
Gardner
Pot Shots: Ask Dr. Todd
Justin
E.H. Smith
Triumph of the Will: the Sequel
Carl
Estabrook
Where We Are Now
Gary
Leupp
Imperial History-Making vs. Reality-Based Thought: a Dialogue
Dave
Lindorff
Apocalypse Soon
Jenna
Michelle Liut
Plans Colombia and Patriota: Wanton Wastes of Money, Manpower
and Lives
Mickey
Z.
The Granma Moses of Radical Writing: an Interview with William
Blum
Greg
Moses
The Same Old Struggle Against Imperial America
Sharon
Smith
Abortion Rights and the Election: What Now?
Ron
Jacobs
Sandwiches and Car Bombs
Ben
Tripp
Raising d'Etre: Finding Money in Hollywood These Days
Richard
Oxman
Basketbrawl Two Pointer: Iraq Rules!
Gilad
Atzmon
Politics and Jazz
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Albert, Ford, & Anon.
Website
of the Day
Voice of the Forest
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
December 16, 2004
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Terrorist
How
We Became Barbarians
By
MICHAEL NEUMANN
People can get astonishingly sensitive
when they discuss moral issues.
Someone who can scarf popcorn
all through *both* Kill Bills will go hoarse about the killing
of innocents in Israel or Iraq or anywhere suitably distant.
Someone who'd cheer a B-52 strike on Baghdad will murmur feelingly
about the perfect little hands of a second trimester fetus. And
everyone hates terrorism with a passion because it victimizes
innocent people: that's so outrageous!
Really the claptrap about terrorism
has gone far enough. Brutes should at least recognize their own
brutality. None of us, left, right, or center, are all that bothered
about the deliberate killing of innocents. Virtually none of
us think it's that big a deal to tear the flesh off a child.
I'm not being cynical. There
are some things that most people genuinely, sincerely abhor,
important things like genocide and torture. There has been real
progress on these fronts. That's just why we should notice that,
on the matter of ripping the flesh off children, we have regressed.
We weren't always so vicious; at least we tried not to be. Perhaps
we will try again--but not until we realize how low we have sunk.
A little history might help.
The slaughter of innocent civilians
has deep roots in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The Bible is
clear about this. In 1 Samuel 15:3, God says to Saul: "Now
go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have,
and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling,
ox and sheep, camel and ass." (Saul gets into hot water
with God for sparing the king and some livestock.) David, beloved
of God, was no sissy about conquest: "And he brought forth
the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under
harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through
the brick-kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children
of Ammon." (2 Samuel 12:31)
But sometime during the wars
of religion in Europe (from 1618 to a bit after 1648), people
started to think this was not so great. In 1625, Hugo Grotius'
The Law of War and Peace began to set different standards: Grotius
 ingeniously argued that the Hebrews'
practices, being a response to the direct command of God in a
particular case, could not be held as a model for human decisions
in wartime. Instead he suggested that "Though there may
be circumstances, in which absolute justice will not condemn
the sacrifice of lives in war, yet humanity will require that
the greatest precaution should be used against involving the
innocent in danger, except in cases of extreme urgency and utility."
(III.11.8)
The phrasing is echoed in the
pieties of today's general staffs. The practitioners of 'collateral
damage' love to tell you that they take "the greatest precaution
...against involving the innocent in danger".
But when? in "cases of extreme urgency and utility"?
or in cases not at all urgent, and of dubious utility? Grotius
was most concerned, of course, about the lives of non-combatants,
especially the aged, women, and children. What are our conventions
and practices about taking innocent life?
From Grotius' time until sometime
after the First World War, there was a gradual, unsteady progress
away from killing innocent civilians. Armies fought on battlefields;
battlefields were more or less unpopulated. Navies fought on
the ocean. Soldiers foraging for food and fuel might kill civilians,
but this wasn't considered acceptable.
Even great colonial atrocities
like King Leopold's rape of the Congo--not exactly warfare--were
usually concealed. The general idea, the official story, was
that civilians deserved humane treatment. If the notion that
their destruction should be an essential and typical part of
warfare was not explicitly rejected, it was also never entertained.
Wars were to be fought by and
against soldiers.
The official story started
to change with the introduction--even with the contemplation--of
air power. H.G. Well's The War in the Air (1908) predicted that
Zeppelins would be used to bomb civilian populations and break
their morale. The Germans tried this in World War I, when the
tactic was so novel that the Imperial War Museum now comments
that the raids "put civilians in the front line for the
first time". (http://london.iwm.org.uk/)
These raids signaled a decay
in the attempt to humanize warfare, but they did not quite succeed
in changing ideas about destroying civilians. The world was shocked
when, in 1937, Nazi aircraft dropped 100,000 pounds of bombs
on the Spanish town of Guernica, killing 1,500 people, about
a third of the population. This tender-heartedness did not survive
the Second World War.
Britain and the US decided
that maybe bombing civilian populations into despondency wasn't
such a bad idea. They bombed with enthusiasm. Whether or not
the casualty counts in Hamburg and Dresden have been exaggerated,
no one denies that innocent civilians were in fact targeted.
This objective is implicit in the World War II distinction between
'strategic bombings', which aimed to destroy defense industries
and other military-related objectives, and 'saturation bombings',
intended to level whole cities. This was a decisive and fateful
step away from Grotius' not wholly unsuccessful attempts to humanize
war.
The brutalization of attitudes
towards attacks on civilians was and is quite universal. We may
deplore some such attacks, but not all of them. We disagree,
not about whether they are ever legitimate, but rather about
whether they should be blatant. Some think it's ok to kill civilians
as long as they're not really your target. Others think that
they can be all or part of your target. It's the difference between
dropping bombs you know will kill civilians and dropping bombs
to kill civilians.
It's not a very important disagreement
and it's not very important to those involved. The victims' suffering
is just as great in either case, and the perpetrators seem able
to live with their deeds. Even those who moralize about saturation
bombings don't seem too upset. Left-wing and liberal political
writers sometimes speak of the stench of burning flesh in Dresden;
they themselves give off more than a whiff of bad faith.
The bombing of Dresden has
been in the public eye at least since Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse
Five was published in 1969. This was twenty-four years after
the event, a time-span not considered too long for punishing
child molesters. If attack was so criminal, where were the loud
calls for the prosecution of those responsible? Why didn't we
hear demands for a truth commission or day of atonement to commemorate
the event? Why has this crime evolved into nothing more than
a shocker for occasional use in polemics about something else?
Only Nazi sympathizers have crusaded to bring the perpetrators
to justice; others have kept their scruples to a murmur or a
snide remark.
The plain truth is that there
is, in our culture, no serious opposition to deliberate, direct
mass killings of civilians. The enemy, of course, must not attack
innocents. Our side must not do so if the attacks are ineffective
or superfluous. But no one says: even if these attacks saved
thousands of our soldiers' lives, we must renounce them. And
silence speaks volumes here: what we ignore, we permit.
Suppose, though, that some
of us do genuinely abhor even our own side's direct attacks on
civilians. What then of indirect attacks, like the strategic
bombings commonplace in World War II? Some have, with pointless
indignation, questioned their effectiveness--as if anyone would
deny that ineffective attacks are morally undesirable. These
condemnations are just a way of avoiding the real issue: what
about effective ones? The morality of *effective* strategic bombing
in a justified war has never been questioned except by tiny minorities
of hard-core pacifists. It apparently hasn't occurred to anyone
else that there might be something wrong with such tactics. The
strategic air strikes of World War II taught us to defend them
with a then-unnamed excuse, 'collateral damage'.
Before the excuse had a name,
it had universal acceptance. This cannot be understressed. Virtually
everyone, right and left, East and West, North and South, Christian
and Muslim, male and female, young and old, accepts that civilians,
including innocent children, should be blown apart or horribly
mutilated for the rest of their awful lives in the name of military
convenience. To put it another way, virtually everyone approves
of some wars. Virtually no one calls for an end to the use of
air power in warfare--what? no strikes against munitions factories,
shipyards, transportation links, war-related government buildings?
As long as we approve of the war itself, such tactics raise hardly
a ripple of doubt, let alone protest. Yet we all know with moral
certainty, all of us, that innocent civilians, including children,
will be killed in strategic air strikes. So we all accept that
this should happen.
Do we think it should happen
only in cases of what Grotius called "extreme urgency and
utility"? No, not at all. Using air power against strategic
targets is just something you do in warfare. It's standard procedure.
So the general strategy which is known to mutilate civilians
isn't even up for discussion. As for the specific decisions,
no one suggests you need a really compelling reason to mount
such attacks No one suggests that the decision to attack such
targets is normally a choice between victory and defeat. It's
not as if someone says: we'll lose unless we bomb this munitions
complex. At both levels of decision-making, there is no anguished
deliberation, and no good reason is required. A very mediocre
reason will do fine. That's all we require for the killing of
innocent civilians. When the US or Israel offers the excuse of
collateral damage, it's not just their excuse. Whoever we are,
it's our excuse too, and it's a bad one.
The sleight of hand in the
collateral damage excuse comes from obliterating the distinction
between the expected and the unexpected.
Unexpected collateral damage
is a true accident. It is also the exception, not the rule, as
an example will make clear. Suppose some naval battle in which
a destroyer is sunk in shallow water. After the fighting is over,
divers inspect the vessel and are horrified to discover it carried
several dozen civilians--children, perhaps--who were being transported
to safe exile in a nonbelligerent country. This is *unexpected*
collateral damage: no one imagined, and no one should have imagined,
this terrible but also terribly unusual circumstance.
But when the Americans or Israelis
speak of collateral damage, they are not speaking of the unexpected
kind. On the contrary they know with certainty--the commanders,
the soldiers, the decision-makers--that civilians are in the
firing line, and will be killed. To suppose, for example, that
the attack on Iraq would not produce the death of innocent civilians
would have been frivolous. This is *expected* collateral damage,
innocent deaths that no reasonable person could fail to expect.
The distinction matters because
the expected sort of collateral damage is, in ordinary contexts,
criminal. Suppose, for example, Joanne decides she wants to kill
Jack by running him over in her Nissan Pathfinder. She knows
he goes to a movie at the Paramount every Friday night. She plans
to drive into that movie line at high speed. She will hit him
and, as she knows full well, some of the people standing behind
and in front of him. She also knows full well that, when she
hits them, they will be killed. She executes her plan. Well,
guess what? She is guilty of homicide, not only of Jack, but
of anyone else she kills. (Indeed, even if she were exonerated
of homicide against Jack--perhaps he had abused her--she would
not be exonerated of homicide against the other moviegoers.)
It's literally collateral damage, but it's not accidental. Both
morally and legally, it counts as deliberate, and that's enough:
desire to kill is not a necessary condition of murder.
We all, all of us, approve
of such murders, whether of adults or children. We approve some
wars, past, present or future. We approve of the 'strategic'
use of air power (and artillery) in a justified war to attain
military objectives. When we do so, we also approve of dropping
bombs when it is known they will kill innocent civilians.
This is expected collateral
damage, which is murder. We approve of that. And since the killing
of innocent civilians is a war crime, we have no principled objection
to war crimes, either. We love to formulate the laws of war,
but our morality--not just our view of what is expedient--condones
their violation.
What then? First, though terrorism
may, for all I know, be outrageous and immoral, our objection
to it is also outrageous: where do child-murderers like us get
the nerve? We cannot help feeling that, damn it all, our intentions
matter, and we don't intend to kill children the way a terrorist
does. It's true that we intend to kill children in a somewhat
different way, but it makes no moral difference. Our intentions
are not innocent enough, and they do not matter enough, to make
us any better than terrorists.
The tendency today, as the
laws on murder demonstrate, is not to count good intentions as
excuses, because the child ends up just as dead or  mutilated regardless
of what we intend. But it is not as if traditional morality would
be significantly more indulgent in these cases. Christianity,
which is where the older emphasis on intentions comes from, sometimes
espouses doctrines like the 'double effect': if a doctor operates
on a woman and knowingly causes the death of her unborn child,
it is not sinful because the death of the child was intended
only as an undesired consequence of the operation, not as its
purpose. But we, or the Americans, or the Israelis, are not like
the doctor. Neither high-level strategic decisions nor on-the-ground
tactical decisions involving 'expected collateral damage' can
appeal to some double effect argument.
High-level decisions to use
strategic bombing are not made to attain some imminent, urgent
goal, like saving a mother's life. One could almost say they
are never made at all; the bombing is more like a reflex. The
real decision is to go to war, usually in the name of some grand,
vague, general objective, like fighting for freedom or democracy,
or against fascism or oppression. When we decide to bomb factories,
airports and rail junctions, we almost always do so to win, not
because we think it's the only possible way to stop some Rwanda-like
massacre.
We see ourselves as fighting
for some good cause, but that, according to neo-Christian moralities
of intention, is nothing but an arrogantly vague excuse. Most
people who commit most atrocities think they're fighting for
some good cause. This no more exonerates them than it does the
child molester who just wants love, or the murderer who wants
to right the wrongs done to his family.
Particular tactical decisions
to use air power may show *some* sort of concern for saving human
lives, but not the sort required by the 'double effect' excuse.
Unlike the decision *not* to use air power, the attackers' decision
to use it stems from concern, not for the lives of others, but
for the lives of the attackers themselves. The doctor is concerned
for another's life, not his own.
But suppose the attackers do want to save lives other than their
own. Still their situation is not like the doctor's. They have
a lot more room to maneuver.
If the doctor spares the child,
he assures the death of the mother, and vice versa. He's not,
in any practical sense, calculating risks. He is faced with a
simple, stark decision, a choice between certainties. He is doing
the only thing he can to avert the immediate and certain death
of the woman lying before him.
The decision to use air strikes,
on the other hand, is usually a choice involving many alternatives.
Some mean a slower advance, some are less certain, some more
expensive, some riskier--but they're there, and they introduce
uncertainties. We don't genuinely resolve these uncertainties.
We don't normally consider, much less weigh, all the viable alternatives.
We therefore cannot be sure that air strikes are the best way
to minimize the slaughter of innocents, or our losses. What's
more, our confidence that air strikes will reduce the risk to
our own troops is invariably much greater than our confidence
that air strikes will reduce the risk to innocent civilians.
Our military men use air power largely because they fear that
otherwise they'll take considerably more casualties, and because
they'd rather not test unproven alternatives.
At no level, then, is the use
of strategic or tactical air attacks simply a desperate measure
to spare civilian lives. By no stretch of the imagination can
our situation be confused with the doctor's, nor can it square
our actions with the Christian morality of intentions. Our military
calculations center on victory, not compassion, and to pretend
otherwise is disingenuous. Our intentions may not be as obviously
savage as a terrorist's, but what they lack in savagery they
make up in dishonesty or self-deception. Perhaps terrorism offends
us so because it refuses to stumble through the labyrinth of
excuses we have tried so hard to maintain.
What, then, is left to us,
if we have become so cruel? We cannot say that two wrongs don't
make a right, or that our hypocrisy doesn't justify others' savagery,
because it is the very rules of morality that we have come to
view differently. We really do believe that murdering innocents
is, in the relevant cases, no sort of wrong at all. We cannot
reproach others for terrorism, not because this would be hypocritical,
but because it would be inconsistent. Our own standards allow
what we might like to forbid.
But things are not so bad.
They're fine, in fact. We should never have been pious about
terrorism in the first place. We never really found it so atrocious
after all. Nor was it terror that crossed some moral line; that
was crossed when we became addicted to the convenience of air
power. This will not change until some less cruel yet more efficient
technology emerges. Until then we have no choice but to work
within the abysmally low standards we have adopted.
Terror, by our own standards,
isn't always wrong. Neither is the murder of innocent civilians,
including children. Excoriating these practices is nothing more
or less than a cynical or pointlessly moralistic diversion from
any serious attempt to prevent them.
Such an attempt can't attack
the practices themselves for the excellent reason that we have
no moral basis for attacking them. To the extent that they can
be prevented, it is only through appeals to self-interest, not
to compassion or a level of decency we quite obviously lack.
Indeed our somewhat more effective
attacks on torture and genocide probably owe much of their success
to the fact that such atrocities, unlike killing children, rarely
do much to serve the interests of their practitioners. Self-interest
is, after all, one value we all sincerely espouse. What makes
atrocities criminal, even for barbarians like ourselves, is when
they go beyond what self-interest commands.
This is why Israeli and American
atrocities are so much worse than Iraqi or Palestinian atrocities.
The Iraqis fight viciously because they have to convince very
thick-headed invaders that no, they really shouldn't be there.
Against tanks and planes dropping huge bombs on urban targets,
the resistance can be effective only if it thwarts every effort
of the invaders to win support by rebuilding the country. Every
collaborator and every do-gooder is therefore a target. Innocent
people are the Iraqis' 'collateral damage'. The Palestinians
too must fight viciously because they are being deprived of the
very ground on which they stand by ever-encroaching settlements,
and because they have so little to fight with. It may be that
the Iraqi and Palestinian cruelties are not, in the end, the
most efficient form of resistance. It may be that they are, for
this if for no other reason, unjustified. But we do not demand
of ourselves that our atrocities are really and certainly the
only possible way to advance our vital interests; we cannot demand
it of others.
On the other hand, Israeli
and American atrocities are not merely scandalous but contemptible,
because they serve either no purpose at all, or a purpose fit
only for idiots. Israel has no need for the occupied territories
except to humour spoilt-brat American 'settlers' who demand fortified
playpens in which to spin out fantasies built on pseudo-Biblical
nonsense. America has, as it well knows, no need to be in Iraq,
nor does it have any need--quite the contrary--to support Israel.
Not even self-interest justifies these crimes: they do the perpetrators
far more harm than good. That is something which, even in the
barbarous moral world we have created, we don't need to accept.
Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent
University in Ontario, Canada. Professor Neumann's views are
not to be taken as those of his university. His book What's
Left: Radical Politics and the Radical Psyche has just
been republished by Broadview Press. He contributed the essay,
"What is Anti-Semitism", to CounterPunch's book, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: mneumann@trentu.ca.
Weekend Edition
Features for November
27 / 28, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with
Sycorax in Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?
Fred
Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court
Kathy
Kelly
What We Can Control
Diane
Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"
Gary
Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea
Lenni
Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York
Times
Ron
Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of
the AMS Clerics
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd
Toni
Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson
Saul
Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are
No Cure for Homophobia
Justin
Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities
Amos
Harel
The Case of Captain R.
Walter
A. Davis
Tabloid Justice
Stephen
Hendricks
God's Kind of Men
Poets'
Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford
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