There’s something so very clean about the term collateral damage. It’s easy to digest, not unlike ‘surgical strike’ or ‘smart bomb’. After all, surgeries require skill, and smart is certainly not stupid.

Of course, none of that matters to the families that lose children in ‘surgical strikes’ in which ‘smart bombs’ are employed. Their deaths are ‘collateral damage’, which is to be regretted, but what is there to say? It’s a shame that young Hussain was tending goats so close to where our surgically targeted smart bomb struck?

No one really gives a shit. I’ll say it of no one else will.

Hussain lived on the other side of the world in some backwards village that has seen murderers from all parts of the world come and go. Some of them are locals, some are foreigners. In the end, Hussain was just a kid watching some goats that ended up in several hundred pieces because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, born in the wrong country at the wrong time, the member of the wrong culture and religion at the wrong time.

We stand in line to get coffee in the morning and the Hussain’s of the world don’t make a dent. We have lunch, dinner, watch television, go to the movies, go on vacation, and none of it really matters. There are thousands of Hussain’s, and thousands more that will vanish for some reason or another in various parts of the world, but that shouldn’t be cause for alarm. Oh, our admirably plush guilt will rear its head and cry aloud how terrible it all is, but tomorrow some other kid tending goats will get torn to shreds by a Predator, another girl will be raped and killed in Darfur, and another mother will die in Somalia leaving behind three children.

What do you think all of that produces? What do you think that sorrow, futility, and anger engineer?

The answer is a single, ugly word – hate. And if hate is all that you have left to sustain you then it will become your pillar.

Hussain’s two brothers weren’t with him when he was killed. But you can bet that while one of them might heed his mother’s desperate pleas not to do anything rash, the other might not. And so ‘collateral damage’ will have produced yet another ‘enemy’ with which to deal. And, as is always the unfortunate case in this world, while targeting Hussain’s brother and his fellow militants, perhaps another young boy tending goats will get blown to bits.

There are two sides to every story – the one you want to believe and the one you don’t.

‘Collateral damage’ – a term popularized by the US military during the Vietnam War. In short it is the unintentional damage caused during an intentional military operation.

Today in Afghanistan ‘collateral damage’ took the lives of 22 civilians, among them women and children. The civilians were complying with evacuation orders given them by US troops when the trucks transporting them were destroyed by air strikes.

As is always the case, the US military conceded that the operation did occur, but that there had been no report of civilian casualties. Officials claim that the vehicles struck were transporting militants.

In a few weeks, maybe a month, coalition forces in Afghanistan will most likely issue the weakest of statements admitting that innocent people were killed, as is commonly the case. By then, who will care? They’re just 22 more people in a far distant land that most of us rarely consider on a daily basis. Frankly, when most think about Afghanistan all that comes to mind is al-Qaeda, 9/11, and an overwhelming sense for revenge.

I suppose if vengeance produces collateral damage then what does it really matter? The United States, and others, have been in Afghanistan for 7 years and the enemy that they face has only grown in strength, the man that they’ve been trying to kill or capture has eluded them for almost a decade, and in the process a lot of innocent people have been killed – more so than on 9/11.

Some in trucks, some not.