Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.com/lindorff10262007.html

Home of the Brave?
By DAVE LINDORFF

Several years ago, I warned that as the Bush/Cheney administration sought to reduce politically problematic casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would resort to increased use of air attacks to combat the growing insurgency in Iraq and the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

I also predicted that the result of this switch in tactics would lead to higher civilian casualties in those two countries.

We're now seeing those results.

In the latest reports from Iraq, we had 15 women and children slain, mostly in their homes by rockets and bullets fired from helicopter and fixed-wing gunships which were allegedly in pursuit of some supposed "al Qaeda" fighters, and as many as 17 civilians killed in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood when US forces called in air strikes after seeing a group of men they deemed to be hostile. Again those airstrikes ended up killing more civilians than alleged enemy fighters.

The casual use of the term "air strikes" belies the horror of what is happening. It's one thing to call in airstrikes during a battle out in the desert or the mountains, where the enemy is isolated and readily identified. It's another to call in the bombers and gunships in the heart of a densly-populated city. Such tactics are guaranteed to kill innocent people in large numbers.

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, where there is even less media coverage than in Iraq, the casual slaughter of innocents by American forces has become routine--so much so that even British officials are complaining. The US command simply "regrets" the "loss of innocent life," making it sound like the after-effects of a natural disaster, when it fact the killings are the predictable result of the cold calculus of mass murder by a technologically advanced military inflicted on an impoverished Third World country. It is unacceptable to argue, as the Pentagon does all the time, that the enemy "uses civilians as shields." Maybe they do, but that's the reality, and the military has to accept it, not ignore it. If a gunman is holding a baby, you can't just shoot the baby and blame the gunman.

In both countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, the slaughter of civilians by US forces has been so outrageous that even their puppet leaders have been compelled to speak up, demanding that the US stop being so aggressive and indiscriminate.

[malaise]

1. That's the plan

brown people don't count. They're all terra-ists :sarcasm:

[Ilsa]

2. Here's another way to reduce casualties (for everyone):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2143380&mesg_id=2143380