Damage control. At first there’s confusion and often outright denial. Then the inevitable ‘investigative speculation’ begins in order to thin out the story domestically. The plan is for the story to eventually fade from the headlines, having been confused to perfection.
So how many is ‘some’? When the source is The Pentagon, home to the masterminds that thought it imprudent to even bother trying to create a system with which to count Iraqi dead, ‘some’ could be 3 or 5 or 7. Does it matter? As long as the word ‘some’ is in there it could mean ‘most of’.
That’s damage control.
Those that will attempt to defend the recent incident in Farah Province will point to the unfortunate reality of collateral damage within the confused framework of asymmetry. They will argue that the deaths of almost 100 civilians occurred because militants operating the in area, who had clashed with nearby Afghan authorities after allegedly beheading three civilians, were using the local populace as cover. A request for assistance by Afghan authorities therefore justified the use of airstrikes in response rather than the introduction of ground troops to minimize collateral damage. They may even go so far as to reiterate General David McKiernan’s assertion that the incident may have been wholly manufactured by the Taliban.
Winning hearts and minds – how many times have I heard or read that phrase since, as a boy of thirteen, this overwhelming passion for history gripped me? For a minute, let’s operate under the assumption that it’s actually a feasible military philosophy despite the fact that it has never succeeded in producing anything more than a sound byte for the purpose of placating the domestic conscience of those thousands of miles removed. Were the United States and other members of the NATO coalition seriously concerned about winning hearts and minds then they would not order up airstrikes as if pizzas if civilian lives were at stake. Because no matter the supposed sophistication of modern weapons, the killing of almost 100 civilians in a single airstrike speaks to their devastating affect. It also reveals something else – that those that support the war effort in Afghanistan are for the use of such deadly force if an immediate response is required to strike ‘targets of opportunity’. But that then begs the question – at what price? Is almost 100 civilian lives worth 25 militants?
If Western forces aren’t prepared to directly engage the enemy in such situations, and therefore demonstrate our supposed dedication to the policy of winning hearts and minds by physically being present, then the results of such strikes are going to produce the exact same results as they have in the past. The US bombing of Cambodia, for example, directly led to the empowerment of the Khmer Rouge. The bombing of North Vietnam only strengthened civilian resolve, and the initial aerial bombardment of Iraq galvanized support within various communities for the insurgency.
In short, you can’t win hearts and minds through bomb bay doors.
The bottom line is very simple. Body bags filled with increasing numbers of coalition dead will only produce one result – the dissolution of the coalition. Were a dozen Canadian soldiers returning home in coffins every week the support for the war in this country would evaporate. In fact, were such a steady stream of corpses being loaded into the bellies of US transport aircraft the same domestic outrage would take hold in the United States. That is a fact that cannot be disputed. If Iraq produced one significant policy lesson it was that 4,000 deaths equals political suicide. And as Daniel Ellsberg once opined, that’s what foreign wars of this nature are all about – domestic politics. And so airstrikes and the use of unmanned drones remains the status quo because the alternative, represented in human lives, is too risky.
One thing that should not be overlooked about this event is that it has been reported that some of the militants involved in the incident that preceded the bombardment were Chechen. If true, the presence of foreign fighters from so far afield speaks to the growing diversity of the Taliban, which, like the insurgency in Iraq, has become an umbrella term representing a dozen or more different militant factions. Given the history of the region, the presence of foreign fighters does not bode well for those currently occupying the country, as the Russians well know – as does the Central Intelligence Agency who helped support the Afghan Mujahideen in the 80’s and witnessed first hand the success produced by their introduction and resolve.
In the end, this incident resulted in the deaths of a significant number of Afghan civilians, including some two dozen women and children. It subsequently caused a frenzy in the Afghan parliament, as well as producing palpable anger amongst locals.
Stupidity 1. Hearts and minds 0.
