Friday, Jul 4, 2008
With every heartbreaking picture of innocent victims, more of the world turns against the U.S. bombing. But the American military has taken more care to minimize civilian casualties than any other armed force in the world.
Oct 31, 2001 | The AP photos that appeared in the New York Times on Monday were heartbreaking: Afghan men, including a father, weeping over the lifeless bodies of four small children, killed by errant American bombs. Coming on top of last week's reports that American planes had accidentally bombed a Red Cross facility in Kabul for the second time in as many weeks, the images forced the world to confront one of the most painful issues connected with any war -- and an extraordinarily sensitive one in this war -- civilian casualties.
To date, human rights groups have confirmed that American bombs dropped on Afghanistan have resulted in at least 48 civilian deaths. America's enemy, the Taliban, has claimed hundreds if not thousands have been killed -- figures the United States asserts are vastly exaggerated for propaganda purposes. But for much of the Islamic world, already deeply suspicious of America's motives and rectitude, any civilian casualties are evidence that the U.S. campaign is not against terrorism but against Islam itself. Key Islamic supporters of the campaign, like Pakistan, are nervous about how news of civilian casualties will resonate with their citizens and are calling for the air war to be quick and decisive.
Nor is it just the Islamic world that is sensitive to civilian casualties. European nations, both allies and neutrals, are also paying close attention to the issue. A Swedish policeman guarding a mosque in Stockholm told Salon last week, "I think the Swedish people are very worried about civilian casualties. They know this is a very difficult war, but many do not support it and they do not want to see innocent people killed." The European press, including the widely-watched BBC World News television program, has given prominent coverage to civilian casualties.
In fact, thanks to American policy, planning and execution, the number of civilian casualties so far has been exceptionally low, experts say. In a larger sense, the U.S. has come closer than any other nation to warring within the confines of the Geneva Conventions. But these experts also say that the United States has done a poor job of communicating to the world just how much importance it places on avoiding civilian deaths; has failed to explain in detail exactly what went wrong when mistakes have occurred; and has aroused unrealistic expectations by touting its super-precise weapons.
In a war as controversial, narrowly defined, morally complex and precariously supported as this one, and in a high-tech media age when shattering images of innocent children killed can instantly be beamed around the world, undercutting uplifting official pronouncements, any civilian casualties would have a potent effect on world opinion. But the United States has not helped its cause by the way it has told its story.
Continuing in the tradition of the Gulf War, the most press-managed conflict in history, government officials have attempted to control information through spin control, with tightlipped briefings, vague official statements and praise for "highly accurate" and "precision-guided" weapons that still occasionally miss. Instead of preparing the public for the inevitability of civilian casualties by explaining how American soldiers are trained to avoid them and describing what went wrong when they occur, the Bush administration and the Pentagon have instead created expectations that can't be met. Disappointment, if not anger, is the inevitable result.
The United States entered this war with narrow goals: find Osama bin Laden and destroy the al-Qaida network. A corollary goal was destroying or removing the Taliban. The war, officials repeated, was not against the Afghan people, or Afghanistan itself. But as the war has intensified, the distinction between attacking the Taliban and attacking Afghanistan has inevitably blurred -- with civilian casualties marking the boundary. John Voll, an Islamic history and international affairs professor at Georgetown University, says, "Civilian casualties are the red flag saying the U.S. is no longer just dropping bombs on removed terrorist camps, but also in urban areas. They broaden the scope of the war as the world sees it."
Government officials have at times been astonishingly insensitive. One unnamed administration official told the New York Times, "The lesson we're learning is that you can bomb the wrong place in Afghanistan and not take much heat for it, but don't mess up at the post office."
Neither the Bush administration nor the military has realized that military policy must be fused to an equally energetic effort on the public relations front. They have acknowledged that civilian casualties are an unfortunate consequence of war, but have yet to go much further.
"This is a worldwide war for public sentiment, and particularly sentiment in Islamic countries," says Richard Kohn, a military history professor at the University of North Carolina. "It's a propaganda battle. Every civilian casualty will be used by the other side to try to make the U.S. look brutal or savage and to try to smear the U.S. for making a war against Islam. These claims need to be answered. And yet, I see no evidence that the U.S. even knows it's in a propaganda war. They have no idea how important this is."
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