Even
those of us opposed to the planned US/UK invasion of Iraq fall into the trap of
focusing on the suffering that will be caused to ``innocent civilians.'' Of
course civilians bear the brunt of suffering in war and it is right to draw
attention to this fact. However, when war is pursued for unjust and immoral
ends (oppression, invasion, occupation, subjugation, imperialism, retaliation
or simply ``establishing credibility’’ as any Mafioso knows must be done) everything
attacked by the aggressor is an illegitimate target, including the ``military''
ones. The invasion and occupation of Iraq is being planned in order to extend
the US elite’s control of the world's energy resources, an imperialist agenda.
As such, the victims who happen to be soldiers will be no less ``innocent''
than the children who will be buried in the rubble of a thousand bomb craters.
It is only when assessing the morality of the actions of those being
attacked that the distinction between civilian and military targets is
important and it is not therefore relevant to discussion of the invasion of
Iraq. It might be claimed that for the aggressor to attack unarmed civilians is
even more wrong than attacking armed combatants, and in some cases that might
be relevant. But the power of the US War Machine is so overwhelming in
comparison to the last vestiges of the Iraqi army that such distinctions can
hardly be made here (or in Afghanistan or anywhere else the US is likely to
attack in the future). When you drop
daisy cutters from thousands of feet or fire Cruise missiles from hundreds of
miles away it doesn't matter whether the people underneath are holding rifles
or not - they die just as quickly. By using the terminology, referring to some
of the people we are planning to attack as ``innocent civilians'' or
``civilians'', we give the distinction credibility. When we argue against the
war by saying, ``But innocent civilians will be killed,’’ we have already
conceded ground. The truth is that there are no legitimate targets in an
illegitimate war.
Although the
distinction between military and civilian targets in Iraq is spurious in
principle, it is nevertheless instructive to consider what the US/UK governments
consider to be military targets. These are the targets that the US/UK admit to
attacking, or which are destroyed systematically, taking evidence from Iraq in
1991, Kosovo/Serbia and Afghanistan. Targets include power generating
facilities, communications facilities, roads, bridges, fuel stores, airports,
broadcasting facilities (radio, television), government buildings of any kind,
United Nations offices, Red Cross warehouses and the residences of members of
the government and ``spiritual leaders’’ (e.g. Mullar Omar). All of this means
that the distinction between military and civilian does not exist in practice
either. If these are military targets then so would be the Houses of
Parliament, Labour Party headquarters, civil servants, the Archbishop of
Canterbury and Lambeth Palace, the BBC etc. There are some targets that
are destroyed so routinely now that we don't even bat an eyelid or question
whether they are legitimate but which cause more suffering and death than the
rest put together. These are the power plants. When there's no electricity,
water pumps and treatment facilities fail. When there's no clean water, babies
and children die, slowly and painfully, by the thousands, as the people of Iraq
already know all too well.
Finally, bearing in mind again that the distinction between military and civilian targets is not relevant in discussing victims of US/UK aggression, we can still ask whether there is any evidence to support the claim that the US/UK do their utmost to avoid civilian casualties. Of course the US/UK spokespersons (from US military personnel to Tony Blair) say they do, repeatedly, but that is hardly evidence. There are, in fact, no facts that support the claim. On the contrary, there is a wealth of evidence that shows the opposite. For example, before the bombing of Afghanistan started in 2001, all foreign aid agencies in Afghanistan warned that seven million Afghanis were completely dependent on external food aid, due to crop failure and war. Most of the aid coming into the country was coming from Pakistan. On 16th Sept. 2001 the New York Times reported that, "Washington has also demanded [from Pakistan] a cutoff of fuel supplies [...] and the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population." The Pakistan government complied. On 27th Sept., the same NYT correspondent reported that officials in Pakistan "said today that they would not relent in their decision to seal off the country's 1,400- mile border with Afghanistan, a move requested by the Bush administration because, the officials said, they wanted to be sure that none of Mr. bin Laden's men were hiding among the huge tide of refugees". So Washington demanded that Pakistan consign massive numbers of Afghans, millions of men, women and children, already on the brink of starvation, to a possible cruel death by famine. Similar disregard for the lives of the most vulnerable is shown by the massive use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium that leave the bombed population with a continuing legacy of death, mutilation and disease. Similar disregard for the lives of the most vulnerable is shown by the policy of the economic blockade of Iraq which has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.
``To
initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it
is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Nuremberg
Judgment, 30th September 1946