ZNet Commentary 9. november
Genocide As Collateral Damage, But With Sincere Regrets
By Edward Herman
The Bush Afghan war calls up memories of the Vietnam war in both actions
and rhetoric: the massive use of superior arms heavily impacting civilians,
deliberate food deprivation, wholesale terror allegedly combatting
"terrorism," but always "sincere regrets" for any "collateral damage."
In the earlier war, although the propaganda claim was that we were saving
South Vietnam from aggression, the U.S. leadership and military knew very
well that the U.S. puppet regime in the south had negligible internal
support, and in consequence the most ferocious forms of U.S. violence were
directed at the people in the south.
Virtually all the napalm and chemicals used during the war struck the
south, which was also regularly attacked by B-52 bombers, and much of its
territory was made into "free fire zones." As good propaganda servants of
the state, however, the mainstream media never noticed the
contradiction--virtually unlimited violence against the people allegedly
being saved from aggression. In the classic military explanation of the
treatment of Ben Tre: "We had to destroy the town in order to save it."
In South Vietnam, the United States carried out a large-scale program of
attempted food deprivation to starve out the indigenous National Liberation
Front (NLF) soldiers.
Under this program, charmingly labelled Operation Ranch Hand, millions of
gallons of Agent Orange and other dangerous chemicals were sprayed
repeatedly on peasant rice crops, in a policy that U.S. Admiral William
Leahy had opposed during World War II on the ground that it would "violate
every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all known laws of war." (We
were already on the road to "humanitarian bombing" and the new "ethical
foreign policy" when this policy was installed in the Kennedy years).
This chemical warfare killed many thousands of peasants and their family
members, and left a memorial in an estimated 500,000 Vietnamese children
with serious birth deformities (Peter Waldman, "Body Count," Wall Street
Journal, Dec. 12, 1997).
At the time, critics of this illegal and vicious policy stressed the fact
that soldiers would have priority access to the diminished food supply. The
distinguished Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer was only one among many who
pointed out that this policy "first and overwhelmingly affected small
children" ("Crop Destruction in Vietnam," Science, April 15, 1966).
But this had no effect on policy: food deprivation pushed ahead with little
opposition from the liberal media or the international community. So did
intensive high level bombing and the use of napalm and fragmentation bombs.
While it was regularly claimed by the U.S. military that they regretted and
were trying to avoid civilian casualties, there were also occasinal
admissions that the people supported the NLF and that making this support
"costly" and driving them into the cities was deliberate policy. The
several million dead and severely wounded and traumatized Vietnamese
civilians were still "collateral damage," as the policy did not aim to kill
them but merely to induce this stubborn populace to accept a minority
government acceptable to U.S. officials.
In Iraq, under the UN sanctions regime, also, the 500,000 plus Iraqi
children and overall million plus dead civilians, whose death was "worth
it" for Madeleine Albright, and hence for the mainstream media, are, once
again "collateral damage."
The stated aim has been to get rid of Saddam Hussein, not to kill children,
so the deaths of large numbers of children are regretfully but
understandably and acceptably costs of a policy with a clearly benevolent
end. As in the old saw attributed to the Reds, the means are justified by
the ends, even if these entail mass deaths of innocent victims.
In the imperial system there is another rationale employed to justify mass
deaths resulting from policy, even when these approach genocidal levels.
That is, as the leaders of the victims always have the option of surrender,
THEY are responsible for any deaths that follow their refusal, not the
party actually doing the killing directly.
The Vietnamese were regularly offered the option of abandoning the struggle
to overthrow the minority government imposed on the south by the United
States; so that if they refused, what option had the United States but to
kill, to protect South Vietnam against "internal aggression" (the phrase
was then U.S. Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson's Orwellian masterpiece)?
How else resolve the choice between U.S."credibility" and the killing of
millions of innocent civilians?
Similarly, Saddam Hussein could give up power voluntarily, and although the
UN has never mandated his removal as the objective of the "sanctions of
mass destruction" imposed on Iraq by that organization, if the United
States adds in this objective at its own discretion who can object, except
the impotent victims and weaklings of the left?
In Kosovo we saw the familiar process employed once again: Yugoslavia at
Rambouillet was invited to surrender, not only by agreeing to a NATO
takeover of Kosovo, but under Appendix B to allow the NATO occupation of
all of Yugoslavia.
This was explicitly designed to "raise the bar" to assure Yugoslav
rejection, because "the Serbs needed a little bombing," in the words of a
State Department official. (Saddam also needed a little bombing after he
invaded Kuwait in August 1990, so he was not allowed to extricate himself
there by negotiations.)
The Kosovo solution by NATO bombing and occupation has been applauded by
Western liberals on the ground that the Kosovo Albanians were
repatriated--ignoring that they only needed repatriation as a consequence
of the NATO war itself--and that the demon responsible for all the Balkan
difficulties, Slobodan Milosevic, has been brought to trial--which rests on
a comprehensive misreading of recent Balkan history, with an especially
noteworthy neglect of the crucial role of the NATO powers in destabilizing
Yugoslavia in a manner that assured ethnic cleansing, and protecting the
ethnic cleansing, and continuing to protect it today in occupied Kosovo,
when done by the right people.
Which brings us to the U.S. war against Afghanistan, where we have a rerun
of the now standard rationales for mass killings as collateral damage.
Once again the enemy has been invited to surrender, in a manner that
assured rejection--demanding that the Taliban deliver up Bin Laden, but
refusing to provide evidence of his involvement in the September 11
terrorist attacks. In the imperial tradition, the refusal to do as
instructed means that any future deaths from bombs is the fault of the
Taliban leadership.
A unique feature of the war against Afghanistan is that as it began this
devastated and poor country was facing the prospect of mass starvation,
following incessant wars and three years of drought. World humanitarian
institutions such as Oxfam, the WHO, UNICEF, Conscience International and
others were already focused on Afghanistan as a desperate case, with 7-8
million people facing starvation.
The U.S. decision to bomb Afghanistan was therefore, in itself, a major act
of terrorism, as it caused the immediate flight of thousands from Afghan
cities, disrupted food supply by humanitarian groups, and immediately
worsened the crisis.
The Bush administration also forced Pakistan to close its borders, directly
impeding food supply operations. The bombing itself caused further flight
and cutbacks in food distribution, along with the familiar "errant bombs"
and "tragic errors" striking civilians directly.
Most notable was the repeated bombing of well-marked Red Cross food supply
facilities in Kabul, and the admission that this was intentional as the
Taliban allegedly controlled the site. Red Cross officials denied Taliban
occupation or interference, but whoever is correct on this point, we see
the continuity with the spirit of Operation Ranch Hand in the intent to
deprive the Taliban of food, despite the fact that a food deprivation
policy will always impact first and foremost children and other
noncombatants.
The multiple attacks on the Red Cross sites also suggests that Bush
administration officials may not view the effects of the escalating mass
starvation as bad--it will put pressure on the Taliban food supply, even as
it kills large numbers of noncombatants. The similarity to the Vietnam War
policy of depriving the NLF of food, whatever the human cost, is clear.
The U.S. mainstream media are not bothered by this at all, any more than
they have been bothered by the 5,000 Iraqi children terminated each month
as collateral damage. Remember how intensely interested the mainstream
media were in the plight of the Kosovo Albanians expelled and fleeing
during the bombing war, and how indignant they were?
Now, with the already starving Afghan civilians put to flight by U.S.
bombing and threats, the media focus on the bombing tactics, their
effectiveness and prospects, and the condition of the fleeing and starving
Afghans is barely noticed; indignation is entirely absent. What a
difference the locus of responsibility for the plight of refugees makes for
the direction of media attention and moral fervor!
Just as the media essentially suppress the evidence that the U.S. war's
impact on the Afghan starvation crisis is to exacerbate it, making it a
policy of mass killing, so they are oblivious to the hypocrisy of the food
drop program and its PR character. I still have photos of GIs in Vietnam
handing lollipops to Vietnamese children orphaned in the U.S. destruction
of Vietnam in order to save it. The media back then showed such photos as
evidence of our kindness, without blanching.
Now, we have air drops of food packages that are a miniscule offset to the
war-induced fall in humanitarian aid, and with sublime irony, of the same
yellow color as the cluster bombs, also dropped in great number, and deadly
to anyone touching them.
In short, the media are, once again, serving as key instruments in making
national policy palatable and apologizing for and normalizing their
government's mass killings of innocent civilians. We offered the enemy the
surrender option, our patience is once again exhausted, and once again "the
United States sincerely regrets this inadvertent strike on..." (fill in the
blanks), which was clearly unintentional, and collateral damage.
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