January 12, 2006
Censored story number one at the moment has to be the ongoing and
escalating air war in Iraq, which I alluded to yesterday. There have
been a few reports from Dahr Jamail, but comparatively little in the embedded media, except for the odd aside and now the occasional report that it may escalate further as troops are withdrawn from combat centres. Only Seymour Hersh has drawn attention to this aspect of the occupation in any mainstream media outlet.
 Now Michael Schwartz has written a brilliant piece
summarising the key information. The air war is, he says, a "formula
for slaughter", and accounts in large measure for the extraoardinarily
high level of civilian casualties. For instance, take one story from
Baiji, in which a pilotless drone 'detected' three men which the US
claims was planting a bomb by the roadside - the plane tracked the men
to what is neutrally described as a 'building', which they strafed with
100 cannon rounds before dropping a bomb which - predictably -
destroyed the building and damaged six others around it. The building
turned out to be a house. Three women and three boys aged younger than
ten were killed in their nightclothes and blankets. There was no report
of whether a bomb was in fact discovered by the roadside, but the
'coalition' press information centre said: "We continue to see
terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield
themselves."
 Aside
from the callousness of this statement, Schwartz notes that it "did
assert U.S. policy: If suspected guerrillas use any building as a
refuge, a full-scale attack on that structure is justified, even if the
insurgents attempt to use civilians to 'shield themselves.' These are,
in other words, essential U.S. rules of engagement. The attack should
be "precise" only in the sense that planes and/or helicopter gunships
should seek as best they can to avoid demolishing surrounding
structures. Put another way, it is more important to stop the
insurgents than protect the innocent." This is a standard, Schwartz
notes, that would be widely condemned if applied in the US, for
instance (unless it's Waco). But the air strikes are implemented in
part because of an explicit US military strategy of minimising the loss
of soldiers' lives. And maximising the cost to civilians who 'harbour
terrorists':
As one American officer explained to
New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins, the willingness to sacrifice
local civilians is part of a larger strategy in which U.S. military
power is used to "punish not only the guerrillas, but also make clear
to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating." A Marine calling-in to
a radio talk show recently stated the argument more precisely: "You
know why those people get killed? It's because they're letting
insurgents hide in their house."
This is, by the way, the
textbook definition of terrorism -- attacking a civilian population to
get it to withdraw support from the enemy. What this strategic
orientation, applied wherever American troops fight the Iraqi
resistance, represents is an embrace of terrorism as a principle tactic
for subduing Iraq's insurgency.
This ongoing strategy of terrorism accrues quite impressive death tolls with single strikes:
One
particularly vivid recent account by Washington Post reporter Ellen
Knickmeyer discussed the impact of air power during the American
offensive in Western Anbar province last November. Using testimony from
medical personnel and local civilians, Knickmeyer reported that 97
civilians were killed in one attack in Husaybah, 40 in another in
Qaimone, 18 children (and an unknown number of adults) in Ramadi, and
uncounted others in numerous other cities and towns.
And,
remember, "this mayhem was not a matter of dumb munitions, human error,
carelessness, or gratuitous brutality. It was policy." With 3,000
violent engagements each month, only a handful of which involve suicide
bombings, and with overwhelming force the policy, quite a few houses,
shops, mosques and schools become targets. And it's escalating:
Quoting
military sources, the Post reported that the number of U.S. air strikes
increased from an average of 25 per month during the Summer of 2005, to
62 in September, 122 in October, and 120 in November. The Sunday Times
of London reports that, in the near future, these are expected to
increase to at least 150 per month and that the numbers will continue
to climb past that threshold.
Consider then this gruesome
arithmetic: If the U.S. fulfills its expectation of surpassing 150 air
attacks per month, and if the average air strike produces the
(gruesomely) modest total of 10 fatalities, air power alone could kill
well over 20,000 Iraqi civilians in 2006. Add the ongoing (but reduced)
mortality due to other military causes on all sides, and the 1,000
civilian deaths per week rate recorded by the Hopkins study could be
dwarfed in the coming year.
So if, breaking out of the Gaussian strait-jacket, we can speak credibly of 500,000 deaths so far, what might the figure be if the occupation is allowed to continue until the end of 2006?
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