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They Behead; We Do It With Smart Bombs
By Michael Takiff
Los Angeles Times
Sunday 04 July 2004
Referring to the beheading of Nicholas Berg, one U.S. senator said, "I
think it highlights the differences between the way we do business and, so
frequently, our adversaries do business." Islamic terrorists have since
beheaded another American and a South Korean.
Moral self-congratulation is an addiction in our nation. That we believe
in "the American way," whatever that phrase may mean at any given time,
signals our narcissistic satisfaction over the way we "do business." These
depraved murders offer another occasion to pat ourselves on the back,
another distraction from the true business of the Iraq war and all war:
killing.
But then, it's an article of faith in our public discourse that we wage
war differently from our enemies. At present, we luxuriate in our moral
superiority over thugs who behead the innocent, but all along we have
deemed ourselves civilized warriors in Iraq. We have based that opinion on
our methods, which permit us to deny the death we have wrought, and our
motives, which let us justify it.
At the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, we marveled at our miraculous
weapons, "smart bombs" that pinpointed what the president called "targets
of military significance" - not only military facilities but government
buildings, power stations, communications towers. During the war's "major
combat phase," March 19 through May 1, 2003, we fired several thousand of
these guided weapons into crowded Iraqi cities. Had we stopped to think
about it, we might have acknowledged that our brave new technology had not
in fact made civilian casualties a thing of the past.
But as we thrilled to the fireworks over Baghdad, it was easy to forget
that smart bombs were not smart enough to kill the defense minister and
spare the defense ministry's janitor - or the schoolchildren across the
street.
Lest we imagine that we overthrew Saddam Hussein with smart weapons alone,
we must note that as our ground troops advanced, they defended themselves
with weapons just as dumb as those their grandfathers fired in France.
Artillery and tank shells are aimed, not guided; in dense urban areas,
they land who knows where. Machine-gun bullets can penetrate thick walls,
behind which may be enemy soldiers or cowering families.
And since the major combat period, Iraqi civilians have continued to die -
not only those caught in the cross-fire between our forces and insurgents
but also those felled by disease due to the damage we have done to Iraq's
water supply. Terrorist bombs have killed many others. Our hands are
unclean in those deaths too, which were enabled by the chaos we unleashed
then failed to control.
Our government doesn't track civilian deaths, but according to the
independent organization Iraq Body Count, as many as 11,000 Iraqi
civilians have died since we first struck Baghdad in March 2003. When we
mourn the 3,000 innocent Americans murdered on 9/11, do any of us also
recognize that over three times that number of innocent Iraqis have died
because we have made war on their country?
Still, as World War II teaches us, a just cause can make killing not
merely moral but morally imperative. But Iraq is no World War II. Though
Hussein may have been a Hitler to his own people, his army was no
Wehrmacht. Try as they might, President Bush and his advisors have not
proved that the former Iraqi regime posed a danger to anyone outside its
own borders.
And our government's larger aim - remaking the wretched Middle East, thus
strangling terrorism by depriving it of its cradle - was from the
beginning a scheme well suited to the chessboards of Washington think
tanks but utterly disconnected from the real world in which soldiers fight
and people die.
The president continues to paint his Iraq adventure in the moral palette
of the Good War, and, despite the hollowness of the comparison, we have
been susceptible to its appeal. We are right to honor the brave Americans
who helped win World War II, but our celebration of the war against
fascism has trapped us in a moral time warp.
We forget what we learned in our war against communism in Vietnam: that
death dealt by an aircraft displaying the flag of Jefferson is just as
final as that caused by a gunshot fired under the banner of Lenin; that
noble aims do not redeem killing in a war ignorantly conceived and
incompetently executed; that having been right in one war does not make us
right in all wars.
We want to believe that it is the American way never to make war except on
the side of the angels. But we trouble the angels with the killing and
dying we have practiced in Iraq. Righteous intentions do not guarantee
righteousness; justifications for war based in deceit and delusion are no
justification at all.
And so, if we are people of conscience, we must admit that the killing of
an unknown Iraqi child by the push of a button miles away is no less
immoral than the televised slaughter of an American adult by a butcher's
knife.
Our troops have performed admirably in Iraq, with honor and courage. We
who have sent them there, however, should feel not satisfaction but shame.
We dare not brandish the evil of those who killed Nicholas Berg, Paul
Johnson and Kim Sun-il as cover against our own guilt.
Rather, we should beg forgiveness from our troops, the citizens of Iraq
and decent people everywhere. The pious among us, beginning with our
born-again president, should also repent before God.
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Michael Takiff is the author of "Brave Men, Gentle Heroes: American
Fathers and Sons in World War II and Vietnam" (William Morrow, 2003) .
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