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March 16, 2006
Eluding US Airstrikes and Committing Atrocities
Over the weekend, I caught a piece in the New York Times on how Saddam Hussein evaded capture as the US advanced on Baghdad.
"United States Joint Forces Command prepared a day-by-day reconstruction of Mr. Hussein's movements, which shows that his escape was desperate and improvised. The study also indicates that American intelligence knew little about his whereabouts during the early part of the war and that Mr. Hussein was nowhere near the site of two failed bombing raids intended to kill him."Limited US intelligence, nothing new there, but the admission makes me wonder about all those bombs that rained down on Baghdad, the ones that the US press described as 'precision' air strikes on military targets. Like those yesterday, where thirteen civilians, mainly women and children, are killed in a strike on one or two suspected insurgents.
Back in the hunt for Saddam, the report claims that there were two concerted strikes. The first bombing raid in which the US admits that it tried to kill Saddam was on the Dora Farms complex on March 19, 2003. According to the Times report, "F-117 Stealth fighters dropped bunker-busting bombs on the site, while warships fired nearly 40 cruise missiles." The report goes on to mention how the strike appears to have rattled Saddam. No mention of the mayhem and destruction left behind.
Over the next several weeks, the US continued to bomb "military command sites in the capital, but Mr. Hussein stayed in civilian neighborhoods." A sanitary account provided by the Times, and again, no mention of which sites were bombed or the destruction caused.
As I read this account, I immediately thought of the bombing of the market in the Al Shula district on March 27. US cruise missiles were suspected in the blasts that hit the market, while the US claimed that errant Iraqi anti-aircraft fire was responsible for the deaths of over 55 people. In a civilian neighborhood. Robert Fisk reported from the site, and even showed evidence of the remains of a US cruise missile.
The second planned attack mentioned in the piece is the bombing near a restaurant in Baghdad's Mansour district on April 7. The article notes that eighteen innocent civilians were killed in the bombing, according to Human Rights Watch, and quickly moves to another topic. The western press was largely silent on the strike at the time, focusing our attention on the efforts to get Saddam, and not on the destruction caused by our bombing raids.
It may be possible to match the daily accounts of the efforts to bomb Hussein with the bombings in the Al Shula district, and other bombings throughout Baghdad. As I write this, I have no way of knowing whether the bombing of the Al-Shula district was one of the 'military command sites' mentioned in the article. It most certainly was a civilian neighborhood of the type Saddam was hiding in. How about the bombing of the Radwaniyeh suburb of Baghdad, or the countless others that occurred in neighborhoods in and around Baghdad? Were they connected to the attempt to kill Saddam?
What strikes me is how sterile, how abstract, the Times piece is. ' We tried to get Saddam, and Saddam eluded capture.' Apart from the moral and legal prohibitions on targeting heads of state for killing, the Dora Farms bombing reportedly killed one civilian and injured fourteen others. The Mansour district bombing, in which we acknowledge bombing in a residential district, not a military facility, kills at least eighteen. The press did not focus on the dead at that time, nor do they now. No one even mentions war crimes.
And yesterday, the US claims that it was attempting to apprehend a "foreign fighter facilitator" for al-Qaeda in Iraq when they came under fire and "coalition forces returned fire utilizing both air and ground assets." Ground and air assets. It sounds so quaint. Imagine the terror those children felt, having a home in which they sought refuge being torn apart by gunfire and bombs.
We make it easy to ignore the consequences of our actions. We send bombs into civilian areas, into residential areas, in an effort to kill one man. Our actions violate international law and result in the deaths of innocent civilians. Do these lives not matter? On what basis can our actions be defended? The ends justifies the means? Can we really claim that the ends justifies the means when the 'end' we seek to justify is a violation of law and the killing of another?
The Iraq war is largely responsible for bringing flag waving, yellow ribbons, and signs of "God Bless America" to countless yards and bumpers across America. When I think of what we have done, I do not think God will be blessing our actions. Instead, I think we should be asking for His forgiveness.
Posted by r.johnson at March 16, 2006 9:07 AM