Forgotten People: The Nameless, Ignored Victims of War

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm purse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. --Mark Twain

As I watch the nightly news, I am struck by the lack of moral inquiry and heartfelt concern over the consequences of America’s state of permanent war. Too often we are content to divide the world into good and evil, black and white. It is less taxing that way, for complexity and nuance require thought and judgment. Perhaps we have too much on our minds, a weak economy, the Republican primary circus, the next set of contestants on Dancing with the Stars, to expect us to think deeply and sincerely about the human consequences of America’s involvements in foreign wars, past and present.

For all of our news and noise, talking heads and 24/7 updates, we rarely examine the humanity of those we kill. We call them insurgents or terrorists, enemy combatants or collateral damage. To us, they are always the "Other," for which we display a frightening lack of concern. We keep precise track of U.S. forces killed and wounded in action, but spend very little time counting, much less contemplating, who and in what numbers we kill. Perhaps it must be this way, for if we really considered the actual consequences of our killing, we might become soft and compassionate, or worse, begin to question the necessity and legitimacy of war. For when “war is looked upon as wicked,” noted Oscar Wilde, “it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.”

How many innocent civilians did we kill during the War in Iraq? How many children have American bombs, guns, and drone missiles killed or maimed in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen? To merely ask such questions in the wrong company may render one rude and impertinent, even disloyal and unpatriotic, as if the sacrifices of American soldiers are devalued by a search for truth and transparency. As free and open a society as we pride ourselves of having, on some topics, genuine intellectual inquiry is subversive. At the very least, it makes those in privileged and powerful positions deeply uncomfortable.

We have become immune to killing, it seems, having delegated it to a professional military class, unmanned drones, and aerial bombing campaigns which allow us to inflict maximum damage at minimal loss, as if we are putting together a financial statement for a public corporation. The power of modern weaponry allows us to keep our hands clean as military technicians “target” our enemies with a high degree of precision. We consider ourselves ethical, because we intentionally try to minimize “collateral damage” and avoid, whenever possible, unnecessary deaths, errant bombs, and the killing of innocents. But we are told by those in power that war is a dirty business that is by nature imprecise. We must balance the dangers to our country and our troops against the risks of killing some people we have no quarrel with – innocent children, women, the elderly, and the fathers, brothers, and sons who have not taken up arms against us. We must accept that innocent people will get killed, or so we are told, in part because the enemy is adept at hiding and commingling among the civilians, who themselves are often unwitting accomplices. Collateral damage is thus unavoidable.

There are some things we rarely talk about as a nation. Our media outlets either do not care to discuss them, or are afraid to make waves. Corporate dollars are at stake, after all, and the media plays a large role in sustaining the military industrial complex and in exploiting the entertainment value of war. During the early days of the Iraq War, live television reports gave us a glimpse of the thrill of war and provided us with a sense of national purpose. But in these and other telecasts, we are protected from the bullets and shrapnel, the bombs and after-effects, the tank and artillery rounds. We are not shown the blood and ripped apart body fragments, exploding skulls, or the stench of death. As noted by journalist and former Harvard seminarian Chris Hedges in Death of the Liberal Class (Nation Books, 2010), “The wounded, the crippled, and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted offstage. They are war’s refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear.”

The myth makers in Hollywood and the media have become war’s accomplices, romanticizing the true effects of war. “If we really saw war,” writes Hedges, “what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be impossible to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan and listen to the wails of their parents, we would not be able to repeat clichés we use to justify war. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are given war’s perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war’s consequences.”

The disparity between what we are told about war and what truly occurs on the battlefields is vast. It seems to me that most Americans do not pay attention. Many of our veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, grateful to be home with friends and family, are quickly taken aback at the gulf that exists between their military and civilian lives. The rate of suicide for returning vets is at an all-time high, with an epidemic of diagnosed cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety. We train our soldiers to be efficient killers, to defend one nation by annihilating the "Other." But is it possible that, when we teach our soldiers to dehumanize the enemy, we corrupt their souls and destroy all that is beautiful and sacred about life? Is this not another tragic, yet ignored, consequence of war?

We care about our returning veterans, or at least I hope we do, but we have remained remarkably acquiescent and apathetic as a nation about the reasons, the causes, the consequences, and the effects of our military excursions. The churches are particularly disappointing. A Gallup poll in 2006 found that the more frequently an American attends church, the more likely he or she was to have supported the Iraq War. It reflects a remarkable failure of the institutional church to provide true moral guidance to its flock. As we enter the eleventh year of the War in Afghanistan, the institutional church remains strangely quiet. After all, Jesus was a pacifist and the core Christian principles of love and forgiveness are radically opposed to war and violence. Walk into most churches on Sunday morning, though, and you would hardly know it.

Meanwhile, the victims of our bombs and guns remain faceless and nameless. The destruction and violence committed in the name of American liberty remains unseen.

Take for example our growing use of drone missiles in places like Pakistan and Yemen, countries with which we are not officially at war. Shrouded in secrecy and lacking accountability, decisions of who to target are made by CIA officials in Langley, Virginia, often with direct input from the Pakistani military, a price we pay for Pakistan’s consent to allow us to kill within its borders. Despite Executive Orders barring the CIA from engaging in assassinations dating back to the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, and despite several key principles of international law, there has been almost no debate in this country over the use of drones in non-combat regions. The use of drone technology, of course, is very tempting, for it eliminates immediate risk to American forces while enhancing the precision to which they strike their intended targets. But does not their use in certain circumstances raise many troubling ethical concerns? When real life killing becomes strikingly similar to a video game -- the controls operated remotely in places like Nevada and California -- and when killing is perceived as “costless,” war becomes seductive. Should it not be at least a matter of moral deliberation and debate in a democracy?

In 2009, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker interviewed a former CIA officer who had witnessed live drone strikes while serving in Afghanistan. He described what it was like to watch from a small monitor in the field: “You could see these little figures scurrying, and the explosion going off, and when the smoke cleared there was just rubble and charred stuff.” It had become such a common sight to see human beings running for cover that a slang term was developed for the ant-like humans on the video screen: “squirters.”

If we killed only the bad guys, and we could be certain they were the right bad guys, and even more certain that the effects would not, in the long-run, be counter-productive, perhaps there would less need for moral angst over our actions abroad. But according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the United Kingdom, our first 309 drone strikes (257 of which have occurred under President Obama) have killed 175 children and up to 780 civilians. For family members of the innocent victims, it is small consolation that America means well. After all, we only wish to kill terrorists, those who would harm us. “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless,” asked Gandhi, “whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?” What we fail to consider is that, for every drone missile we fire into a distant landscape in Pakistan, every bomb we drop on a mountain village in Afghanistan, we create another “ground zero” for the people who live there.

According to the Iraq Body Count (IBC), which provides the most verifiable (and conservative) documentary record of civilian deaths resulting from the War in Iraq, over 114,000 innocent civilians died in Iraq during the eight years we engaged in that war. This figure is only of innocent civilians, and does not include the deaths of insurgents, armed combatants, the former forces of Saddam Hussein, or any other non-civilian Iraqi. U.S. led coalition forces were directly responsible for 14,704 of these civilian deaths, according to the IBC, nearly 30% of which were children. The actual figures are almost certainly higher, as additional deaths not counted in the IBC have been established in data released to WikiLeaks. We know as well that thousands of Afghan children have died during the war in Afghanistan, more than half of their deaths caused by U.S. and NATO forces. But whatever the total numbers, “before you support war,” says Chris Hedges, “especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, look into the hollow eyes of the men, women, and children who know it.”

Are we killing terrorists or creating them? I am not sure anyone really knows the answer to that question. But the moral and human consequences of our actions as a nation are too important to stand idly by without asking questions and demanding answers. For in the words of John F. Kennedy, “War will exist, until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”

Growing Doubts On Afghanistan

During a national nightly news broadcast in February 1968, Walter Cronkite questioned the legitimacy of America’s continued involvement in the Vietnam War. It was a defining moment. Following the broadcast, President Johnson famously told an aide, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” He was right. American support for the war substantially declined and, soon thereafter, Johnson announced that he was not running for re-election.

On September 1, 2009, conservative columnist George Will published an op-ed piece in The Washington Post entitled, “Time to Get Out of Afghanistan.” Although Will may not rank with Cronkite as “most trusted man in America,” his dissension from the ranks of pro-war sentiment is nevertheless significant and potentially influential. Will is a model of civil discourse, a thoughtful, intelligent, and well-respected commentator who appeals to reason at a time when the news media is filled with shouting pundits and a lack of critical thinking.

Will correctly notes that the United States has been entangled in Afghanistan for eight years – longer than its combined involvements in the two world wars of the Twentieth Century. He contends that our stated policy of “clear, hold, and build” – that is, clear various regions of Taliban control, hold U.S./Afghan control of those areas, and build effective local, district and provincial governments – is doomed to failure; “nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try.” According to the Brookings Institution, only Somalia ranks lower than Afghanistan as a weaker nation state. Will contends that Afghanistan has never had an effective, central government and, citing recent commentary in The Economist, states that the regime of President Hamid Karzai is “so ‘inept, corrupt and predatory’ that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, ‘who were less venal and less brutal than Mr. Karzai’s lot.’” We presently have 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan (bringing the coalition total to 110,000), and President Obama is considering adding thousands more; yet most experts believe that the counterinsurgency effort needed to protect the population would require “hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.”

Although most Republicans, including the editorialists of Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, continue to support increased military jingoism, Will is not alone on the right in espousing a more cautious approach. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, for one, also advocates withdrawal of U.S. troops: “Bogging down large armies in historically complex, dangerous areas ends in disaster.” Hagel contends that the United States must recognize that every great threat to our country also threatens our global partners, including former adversaries China, Russia, India, and Turkey. “We need a clearly defined strategy that accounts for the interconnectedness and the shared interests of all nations.” Hagel suggests that we should not “view U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan through a lens that sees only ‘winning’ or ‘losing.’ . . . There are too many cultural, ethnic and religious dynamics at play in these regions for any one nation to control.”

Like many Democrats, I have until recently believed that Afghanistan was the “good war” in our fight against global terrorism. Afghanistan is where the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, were planned and executed. The Taliban forces who supported Osama Bin-laden and provided a safe haven for al-Qaeda were legitimate targets of U.S. military might. I continue to believe that we were right to invade Afghanistan in October 2001, and that we were wrong to invade Iraq, a war which was entered under false pretenses and which diverted our military and security resources in a country that had not attacked us and that posed no direct threat to us. I agreed with President Obama when he asserted during the campaign that U.S. resources should be increased in Afghanistan and decreased in Iraq.

So it is with some reluctance that I express doubts about the President’s strategy and acknowledge the legitimacy of questions raised by George Will, Chuck Hagel, and an increasing number of more liberal commentators. As Bob Herbert wrote in Saturday’s New York Times, “We’re fighting on behalf of an incompetent and hopelessly corrupt government in Afghanistan. If our ultimate goal, as the administration tells us, is a government that can effectively run the country, protect its own population and defeat the Taliban, our troops will be fighting and dying in Afghanistan for many, many years to come.”

Although Vietnam analogies can be tiresome, and while liberals too easily equate all American military incursions with Vietnam, some comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam are indeed apt.

• Like President Johnson during the Vietnam War, President Obama appears eager to demonstrate his toughness by vowing to do what it takes to “win” in Afghanistan – even though what is meant by winning is far from clear. When Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, was asked last month to define “success” in Afghanistan, he replied, “We’ll know it when we see it.”

• As was the case with South Vietnam, Afghanistan is a deeply divided, semi-failed state with an incompetent, corrupt government that is considered illegitimate by a large portion of its population.

• As with Vietnam, in Afghanistan the United States is embroiled in a nation for which we have very little understanding of its culture, history, and language.

• Similar to Vietnam, Afghanistan has an inhospitable geography, with mountainous terrain, snowy winters, and numerous caves and escape routes that provide off-limit sanctuaries across 9,000 miles of borders. It is ideal for indigenous resistance to foreign invaders, providing the Taliban in certain areas with a distinct advantage.

• As with Vietnam’s resistance of French colonialism prior to the arrival of U.S. forces, Afghanistan successfully resisted military incursions by the British and the former Soviet Union.

• As with LBJ and Vietnam in the 1960’s, the conflict in Afghanistan threatens to derail President Obama’s efforts to reshape America at home. A military escalation in Afghanistan can only serve to divert much needed resources away from the President’s attempts to reform a troubled health care industry, revive a broken economy, prevent global warming, and restore America’s standing in the world.

None of this should be taken as criticism of the brave and courageous U.S. military forces that are stationed in Afghanistan. The ability and skill of our armed forces is unmatched. But many years after U.S. forces had completely withdrawn from Vietnam, Col. Harry Summers, a military historian, said to a counterpart in the North Vietnamese Army, “You never defeated us in the field.” The NVA officer replied, “That may be true. It is also irrelevant.” The Viet Cong knew that one day U.S. forces would leave and, until that day arrived, they would outlast us. At the peak of the Vietnamese conflict, LBJ confided in Senator Richard Russell that he knew we could not win the war in Vietnam, but he felt compelled to stay the course so as to avoid being the first American president to lose a war. Johnson’s pride and political calculations cost the lives of tens of thousands of some of America’s finest young men. These should be warnings to President Obama. While the number of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan will likely never approach Vietnam War levels, President Obama is risking a commitment to a war that has no end in sight and no apparent upside.

While the goal of General Stanley McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan, is to establish a reasonably noncorrupt Afghan state that will partner with America in keeping Afghanistan free of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, it is clear that he is talking about nation building in one of the poorest, most tribalized, countries in the world. As Thomas Friedman contends in today’s New York Times:

It would be one thing if the people we were fighting with and for represented everything the Taliban did not: decency, respect for women’s rights and education, respect for the rule of law and democratic values and rejection of drug-dealing. But they do not. Too many in this Kabul government are just a different kind of bad. This has become a war between light black — Karzai & Co. — and dark black — Taliban Inc. And light black is simply not good enough to ask Americans to pay for with blood or treasure.

Obama has framed Afghanistan as a war of necessity and not of choice. No one disputes that there are people and organizations committed to harming America and that strong measures are needed to protect us from these threats. But how and when we use force is a decision that must not be made in the mere hope that, maybe, it will succeed.

If we still have not learned that it is virtually impossible to defeat an enemy we do not understand in a terrain we cannot control, then President Obama is destined to repeat the failed lessons of history. There is much more to this debate, and the issues are complex and not easily boxed into the Vietnam analogy. But I cannot help but believe that a coordinated policy of containment and deterrence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, coupled with strategic development, military training, and economic aid to the Afghan government, will be more successful in keeping us safe and in preventing a resurgence of Taliban influence in the Pashtun regions of Pakistan, than will a military strategy of "winning" at all costs. As Senator Hagel said, “Relying on the use of force as a centerpiece of our global strategy, as we have in recent years, is economically, strategically and politically unsustainable and will result in unnecessary tragedy – especially for the men and women, and their families, who serve our country.”