Then there are the other civilians. This bunch wouldn't get caught dead in a combat zone. They value their butts too much for that to happen. No. With exceptional bravery this crew stays far, far away from wherever the bullets fly and bombs blow. This civilian assembly is comprised of the High Minded who worry overtime about the effects of war on civilians.
Not to oversimplfy matters, the Save The Innocent Civilians Coalition is at root the anti-war component of the Society of the Perpetually Indignant and Concerned whose wrinkled foreheads and lips ever pursed in disapproval use the plight of civilians caught in the battle zone as the tool of choice to end all wars now. They make no distinction among wars. From their perspective there is no such thing as a justifiable war, not even one undertaken in national self-defense.
The purported "humanitarian crises" which are an automatic part of all wars, and an important aspect of guerrilla, insurgent and similar conflicts provide a mediagenic cover story for the genuine goal of ending war as a feature of human experience. Ironically, one of the major consequences of the STICC campaign is to prolong war so that more civilians suffer more death, fear and misery.
Going to the videotape we quickly discover that with the possible exception of the 150 years separating the end of the Thirty Years War and the start of the Wars of the French Revolution, civilians in the form of impediments, refugees and corpses in the wake of armies have always been a feature of conflict. Civilians have often been the direct targets of military operations.
Whether Sherman's campaign against civilian morale and political will embodied in both the March to the Sea and the subsequent March Up Country, or the Prussian counter-partisan efforts in the Franco-Prussian War a few years later, the intentional targeting of civilians has been a feature of modern war. The refugee generation effects of the German advance across the Low Countries and France in 1940 and the later British firebomb raids against German civilian residential districts brought the intentional targeting of civilians to a new high (low?) in military strategy.
During World War II the High Minded were conspicuously silent in denouncing the "humanitarian crises" which characterised the war. They were equally speechless in the years immediately following V-E Day. Literal hordes of Displaced Persons (DP's they were termed by lips curled in disdain) thronged through the wreckage of Europe. The diseased and famished in the millions crowded DP camps (many of which were former Nazi KZ Lagers) with nary a whisper of concern.
The lowering of the Iron Curtain announcing the onset of the Cold War changed that. Reasons of state, the need for political stability as seen from Washington brought the plight of the Displaced Persons to the center of the stage. Humanitarian relief efforts culminating in the more or less altruistic capstone of the Marshall Plan sought to bring order, health and eventually even prosperity to the displaced, the war ravaged, the hopeless of Europe.
In a delightful exercise in cynical and self-serving politics, the Soviet Union sponsored front groups which sought to offset not only the effects of the Marshall Plan but also the American nuclear superiority with a "peace offensive" which focused on the effects of war, particularly one in which the US would use its atomic weapons on the civilians of Europe and, by implication, the rest of the world. With remarkable rapidity the High Minded signed on to the Stockholm Peace Appeal and its successors.
The rights and immunities of civilians caught in war became a new and growing focus of those who opposed war, all war under all conditions, against any enemy, even a country given to aggression. Horror stories (some of which were true) abounded as wars proliferated on the margins of the Cold War.
Credence was immediately, seemingly automatically and without question, granted to the claims by North Korea and China that the US was engaging in biological weapons in the Korean War. The patent absurdity of the North Korean and Chinese accusations met no pushback from the High Minded.
New stories of atrocities committed by the Israeli forces during the War of Independence were circulated and believed without investigation. While some of the atrocity tales were absolutely true, no mention was made of the role played by the Arab states in the movement of Arabs from the new state of Israel. Apparently the High Minded of the STICC persuasion never met a negative view of the Americans, or the Israelis which was disbelieved.
Neither did they meet a narrative of atrocious behaviour by Soviet or Soviet leaning states which they found credible. The same might be said of accounts of cruelty or human rights abuses suffered by civilians at the hands of authoritarian regimes in the Arab or Asian or African states.
During the years of American involvement in the Wars in Vietnam the US was recurrently damned for "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" for its forces' employment of napalm or tear gas. Despite the exceptional care the US exhibited in its conduct of air operations against North Vietnam, the American fliers and those who commanded them were repeatedly accused of causing unnecessary civilian casualties and misery. The STICC camp frothed and spewed over each and every civilian casualty which might have occurred at the hands of American forces.
At the same time silence reigned over the recurrent violations of the laws and customs of land combat committed by the North Vietnamese forces or the Viet Cong guerrillas. Not a single word was made of the civilian slaughters which were repeatedly committed by the anti-Saigon forces.
The Mai Lai massacre was rightly and resoundingly condemned, not only by the High Minded it might be noted, but also by members of the American military. However, the literally dozens of Mai Lai level killings conducted by the Viet Cong or the Peoples Army of North Vietnam went by unnoticed and uncommented upon by the fine folks of STICC.
(Can we say, "Double standard?")
The double standard was at work during the long and bloody years of the Iraq-Iran War. Both the European and American members of STICC seemed to be out to a very long lunch during this exsanguinary and ultimately inconclusive effusion. Long range and highly inaccurate missiles fell on Iranian cities. The mullahs of Tehran rounded up brigades of child-soldiers and sent them into the electrified swamps as human minefield clearing units. The Iraqis used chemical munitions against unprepared Iranian troops--and their own dissident citizens.
The High Minded yawned and looked elsewhere. Only when an American warship caught in a fit of buck fever shot down a civilian Iranian airliner did the Protectors of Human Rights Everywhere sit up, take notice and shout, "War criminal!"
The US inspired coalition which waged the 1991 war to eject the Iraqis from Kuwait was relatively immune to the usual accusations of "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity." There were several reasons for this (temporary) immunity. The first and most basic was that the war was fought in deserted country. The pesky civilians were conspicuous by their absence. Also important was the obnoxious nature of the Iraqi regime. Saddam was such a totally unpleasant person that it was hard to work up sympathy for the Iraqi civilians. Finally, the war was over with quickly.
(Another, perhaps far from unimportant contributory factor was the recently concluded collapse of the Soviet Union and the confusion this engendered in the minds of many High Minded people.)
In the wars of recent years from the First Intifada through to the current affrays in Afghanistan and Pakistan, civilians, civilian corpses and the clamor of "humanitarian crisis," "crimes against humanity" and shrill denunciations of the US or Israel have become the common themes. The TV images of Israeli soldiers shooting at insult, rock and Molotov cocktail throwing Arab teenagers sensitized the eyes and minds of the world's public--particularly the opinion molding elite--to the fundamental asymmetry of the Mideast conflict.
From that beginning the double standard demanded by the High Minded of STICC has grown to monster proportions. The adversaries of the West, particularly those who oppose the US and Israel have become increasingly sophisticated in the use of civilians, their misery, fear and death, as weapons of war. Taliban, al-Qaeda and the rest of the Islamist jihadist horde have discovered and are effectively exploiting the key vulnerability of Western military doctrine--the use of firepower and technology to limit friendly casualties to a politically acceptable level.
In pursuing the exploitation of this vulnerability, the assorted adversaries which includes the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the pioneer of many of the use-civilians-as-weapons tactics, have been powerfully assisted by the High Minded, by the members of STICC. To put the matter simply but not oversimplified, without the force multiplier provided by the anti-war advocates working under the cover of concern for civilians and avoidance of humanitarian crises, the efforts to exploit the critical vulnerability of the Americans (and others) would have gone in vain.
It is of more than passing interest that the High Minded never, but never, demand the trigger pullers and suicide bombers and fighters who hide behind women and children to conform their tactics to the customs and laws of land warfare. There are never any calls that the fighters of LTTE or Taliban or al-Qaeda or Hamas or Hezbollah show even the most rudimentary respect for the presumed immunity of civilians from military operations.
Hamas, which acts under the color of being the de facto government in the Gaza Strip, is never denounced by the High Minded for having taken no effort to separate their fighters from the civilian population. Not even the United Nations has noticed that Hamas both allowed and encouraged the "defense forces" of the Gaza Strip to place their bunkers, fighting positions, munitions dumps, rocket launching facilities in the midst of densely populated residential areas.
Of course, Hamas wanted their trigger pullers intermingled with civilians. Naturally Hamas wanted their rocket launching teams to set off their deadly missiles from the courtyards of mosques, schools or housing complexes.
To do any thing else would be to expose their brave and fearless fighters for Palestine to the overwhelming capacities of the Israeli Defense Forces. By sticking offensive capacities in civilian centers Hamas sought to both neutralise Israeli capabilities and place a (false) onus on the IDF for any and all civilian deaths and injuries.
The High Minded played along with Hamas. This is not to the credit of the anti-war and humanitarian crisis dreading crowd. Regardless of the lofty minded nature of the goals when they climbed into bed with a criminal terrorist group, the High Minded, the STICC members, besmirched themselves and their cause.
By being in large measure responsible for the Israeli government calling off Operation Cast Lead before the military capacities of Hamas had been degraded fatally, the High Minded have assured that more civilians will die, more will live in fear, more will be miserable. They have assured the war will last all the longer. Great job, people!
Taliban and its kindred groups are doing the same in Afghanistan and Pakistan. While decrying the US air strikes in Afghanistan, no one either in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the world has demanded that Taliban stop using civilian residential compounds as bases of fire. Nor has there been any demand that Taliban call for a truce when the American or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops return their fire.
By the customs of land warfare, Taliban should call for a brief truce during which the civilian occupants of the compound can be evacuated to a place of safety. If Taliban had any ethic transcending survival and victory or even the slightest shred of genuine concern for the well-being of their fellow countrymen, they would remove the civilians before the shooting started.
It is Taliban, not the United States and its allies, which violates the doctrine of proportionality in the hills, deserts and villages of Afghanistan. It is Taliban, not the US and its allies, which seeks civilian deaths as a necessary adjunct to combat.
It is Taliban which, like LTTE and Hamas, seeks to blunt the military advantage enjoyed by its enemy though using civilian as shields. Taliban, again like LTTE and Hamas or Hezbollah, seeks victory through the exploitation of civilian corpses and the sympathy of the High Minded, the efforts of the anti-war people hiding behind the tenets of STICC.
Contrary to the innuendo of the High Minded or apologists for the Islamist jihdist groups, American military doctrine and the operations or tactical expressions of doctrine well recognise the immunity of civilians as well as the doctrine of proportionality. It is Taliban, al-Qaeda, LTTE, Hamas and the rest of that monstrous regiment that do not.
The United States must push back against the innuendo and accusations of the adversaries as well as the High Minded tergiversators of STICC in both public and private diplomacy. We must forswear apologies and explanations. Rather the necessary message the US (and others) must deliver repeatedly is this: We take all possible precautions to avoid civilian casualties, misery and fear, but we will neither place our troops at inordinate risk nor unnecessarily prolong the war in order to give our enemies an advantage.
We Americans will not play the game according to the other side's rules. We will not allow their lack of ethics, their intentional use of civilians as weapons of war give them any advantage.
To do so is to surrender to evil.
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