Lies make the war go around and go on and on and on
- From: "Joe S." <no_one@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 06:26:12 -0500
Lies Make the War Go Round
by Daniel M. Smith
Question: When is truth relative?
Answer: In war - especially counterinsurgency - always.
With photographers in tow, armed helicopters overhead, and a heavily armed
escort, generals and politicians can stroll down selected streets without
helmets or flak vests, declaring that security has improved.
To one battalion of the 1st Infantry Division assigned to Baghdad's Sadiyah
neighborhood, this is a lie. "The higher-ups.only go to the safe places,
places with a little bit of gunfire" (Washington Post, October 27). The
administration hypes these snapshots of "progress" by trumpeting the post-"
troop surge" fall-off in Iraqi and coalition fatalities - which is real -
but conveniently omitting the cost: some 40,000 (not 29,000) additional
troops.
The very dangerous Baghdad that these 1st Division "grunts" see is a world -
and 20 deaths - apart. When they arrived fourteen months ago, Sadiyah
bustled with business and traffic. Today, after continuous assaults on Sunni
residents by Shi'a militias and intimidation by a Shi'a police brigade,
street life is largely limited to starving dogs and American patrols -
reminiscent of Kipling's refrain: "only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in
the noon-day sun."
The irony is that the Bush administration, like the British in World War I,
did not have to get mixed up in the maze of contradictions and civil unrest
that are rife in Iraq and the entire Gulf region. Introducing foreign
occupation forces into the mix simply compounds the opacity of motives and
alliances that, in turn, can tip the balance of power in contested areas in
unpredictable ways.
Conversely, the existence of a UN mandate authorizing foreign troops as a
"stabilizing force" reduces some ambiguity as this implies a degree of
self-governance through which the Iraqi people's voices can be heard. And
what the UN is hearing from more and more Iraqis and from Afghans through
their parliaments and presidents is frustration bordering on outright hatred
of western ground and - increasingly - air forces. The reality seen by those
people on the ground is the disproportionate if not unaccountable and
unregulated use of air power.
On October 28 - and not for the first time -Afghan President Hamid Kharzai
publicly protested to the UN and U.S. the increasing use of coalition attack
planes. Unverified targeting has killed more than 300 Afghan non-combatants
so far this year - about the same number of non-combatants killed by the
Taliban - that is making 2007 the bloodiest year of this war.
In Iraq the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the coalition
presence must be renewed in December. The last time it was renewed, Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki requested an early vote by the Council to pre-empt
plans by Iraqi parliamentarians to attach conditionsl. This time parliament
is working on mandatory conditionality: e.g., geographic limits such as no
air operations in urban areas and restrictions on types of activity such as
training and border security. (Separately, the UN plans to look into recent
incidents in which U.S. aircraft struck supposed al-Qaeda and Taliban
"hideouts" but subsequent ground reports raised questions about the accuracy
of the military's press release describing the incident.)
Governments, especially governments at war, are adept at holding hearings
and developing policies that get to "the truth" - or their version of the
truth. Individuals, however, especially those in a battle zone, don't need
"truth." For them, truth has nothing to do with policy and politics and
everything to do with simply staying alive.
That is also the "truth" that confronts soldiers - a most apt thought for
Veterans Day. No one wants to be the last one killed or injured in their
unit, most particularly when, as now, it is clear that a war was started and
is being continued on the basis of mistakes, errors, and lies by
politicians, many of whom have no experience of war. And that is how Iraq
(and Afghanistan) likely will end: with the lie that U.S. objectives have
been reached.
It is a lie that Americans might embrace. The U.S. battalion in Sadiyah,
with 20 dead and a month to go, undoubtedly would. One soldier put it
succinctly: "I don't think this place is worth another soldier's life."
Colonel Daniel M. Smith (Ret.), a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran is
the Senior Fellow for Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National
Legislation, a Quaker-based public interest lobby founded in 1943.
www.fcnl.org
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/07/5084/
.
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