War has many bad consequences. One of the worst is the stigmatizing of
dissent. Yet sometimes dissent is the only thing that stands between us and
catastrophe.
According to the U.S. government, the mission of the current war was to root
out the terror network of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and their Taliban
support in Afghanistan. So what did the government do? It conducted massive
bombing of population centers, resulting in a catastrophic refugee problem
among the more than seven million people, according to relief organizations,
who were already at risk of starvation. In fact, one of the first things the
U.S. government did was prevail on Pakistan to stop trucking food into
Afghanistan. The token food drops don't nearly make up for what U.S. policy
has wreaked.
Does that make sense? To stop terrorism, American officials have terrorized
millions of innocent people and their children with cluster bombs and
starvation. Even with the war winding down, American forces are still
killing innocents; that this has resulted from bad intelligence or stupid
"smart" bombs is morally immaterial. There were apparently no Afghans among
the terrorists on September 11. But after this military action, would anyone
be surprised to find Afghans among the perpetrators of a future terrorist
strike against the United States?
It will be said that what the U.S. government is doing cannot be compared
with what happened on September 11, when American civilians were
deliberately targeted. But even if the U.S. government is not intentionally
bombing civilians, the policymakers are doing things they know will
certainly result in large numbers of civilian deaths. One cannot launch
total war and then claim one had no intention of killing innocent civilians.
Unfortunately, there is a distinct lack of interest in such "collateral
damage." The U.S. government waves the reports away as propaganda--until
the evidence is so strong that the military is forced to "investigate." The
American news media generally have their hands too full of pom-pons and
megaphones to report on the substantial innocent casualties. Besides, such
reporting would be bad for home-front morale. One can only hope that someday
soon the media moguls will look back on their war coverage with great shame.
But, defenders of U.S. policy will say, there are terrorists dispersed among
that population and we must do something. But hold on. That does not justify
how the war is being prosecuted. There is a long-standing distinction
between self-defense and retaliation. If a gunman hides behind an innocent
hostage while trying to shoot you and your only chance at survival is to
shoot the gunman knowing you probably will also hit the hostage, that is one
thing. But what if the bad guy is driving away with a hostage in his car?
Are you justified in firing a missile at the car, knowing that you are bound
to kill the hostage too? No. You are not. In the first case, your life is on
the line. In the second, the moment of self-defense has passed. You are not
in immediate danger.
Our bombing in Afghanistan is not for the purpose of ending an imminent
threat. It is retaliation. At best, it is intended to remove what could be a
threat at some unspecified future time. Thus, acts that will almost
certainly result in the deaths of innocents cannot be justified.
An operation consistent with morality would resemble the one by which the
Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960. They didn’t bomb
Buenos Aires. They used covert police-style tactics. Why was that
alternative not tried? Better yet, why weren't private organizations that
specialize in such things offered a chance to capture bin Laden and disrupt
his organization?
The attacks on September 11 rank among the most ghastly crimes of all time.
But that doesn't give the U.S. government license to take any actions it
pleases in the name of justice. Two wrongs don't make a right.
