AL
HABTOOR INFORMATION AND RESEARCH
DEPARTMENT 
Almost
everyone on the planet has condemned the
terrible acts of violence that rocked
America on September 11th 2001.
America was shocked by these acts,
particularly as most Americans believed
that such violence only happened in far
away places and not on American soil to
American citizens. Quickly their shock and
disbelief turned to outrage and anger that
sought revenge on those who had brought
this specter of terrorism to America’s
shores.
Soon,
Osama bin Ladin and his Al Quaida
organisation were established as the
perpetrators of this tragedy and to bring
them to Justice the American government
directed all its resources, both economic
and military against them.
When
the Taliban, the governing regime in
Afghanistan, decided not to hand over
Osama and the leaders of his Al Quaida
network, who had been living in
Afghanistan for a number of years and had
established bases there, America mobilised
its armed forces and enlisted the support
of a broad coalition of countries to
topple the Taliban government, dismantle
the Al Quaida network, and bring its
leaders, including Osama bin Ladin, to
trial in an American court.
The
American President, George W. Bush and his
entire Administration, including his
Generals and Admirals, were soon talking
about a war against ‘global terrorism’
that would be fought around the world over
an infinite number of years against all
forms of terrorism.
Out
of all the rhetoric about defending
freedom, keeping America’s citizens from
harm, eradicating the cancer of terrorism
and the maintenance of global order
through a sort of “Pax Americana”
crept those familiar words ‘collateral
damage’, often used when America
conducts military operations against
others. ‘Collateral damage’ is the
jargon that the military and government
bureaus employ to describe the
“unintended” consequences of war; the
death of innocent civilians from military
ammunitions that miss their intended
target or get caught in crossfire, or are
simply killed by mistake.
"Collateral damage" is a
phase familiar to us all. We heard it many
times, during the Gulf war, the bombing
campaign in Yugoslavia and during the
overthrown of the Taliban and the
destruction of the Al Quaida network in
Afghanistan. More bizarrely Timothy
McVaigh used it to describe the 168
children and adults he murdered in the
Oklahoma City bombing.
Now
here is the thing that should worry us
deeply, so far the ‘collateral
damage’, or if you prefer, ‘the body
count’ of civilians in Afghanistan has
been 3700 according to Marc Harold, an
economics professor at the University of
New Hampshire. He has arrived at this
figure by an analysis of news reports from
around the world during the American
campaign. This means that the American
military, with the support of the American
people, has properly killed more innocent
people in Afghanistan than were killed on
September 11th. In fact,
that’s all the American military really
achieved. Most of the ground fighting was
carried out by Afghanis, opposed to the
Taliban. With the exception of American
air support all the military casualties
inflicted on Taliban forces and Al Quaida
fighters was inflicted by local troops,
loyal to the groups that have long opposed
the Taliban and their allies.
As in
so many of military operations around the
world that American conducts in support of
its version of ‘democracy and
freedom’, it has been the butcher’s
bill of civilian deaths that has nearly
always been the most notable statistic of
these American’s military adventures.
The words ‘collateral damage’
is most often used when American uses it
air force to bombard countries that it has
decided are not democratic enough or have
gotten in the way of American foreign
policy.
Afghanistan is just one more name
of a long list of countries that have
suffered ‘collateral damage’ since the
end of the Second World War. The American
military it would seem to have a ‘fatal
attraction’ for launching bombs or
missiles from afar onto cities and people
around the world.
Since 1945, America have caused
‘collateral damage’ in China, Korea,
Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, Peru, Laos,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Lebanon,
Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran and
Panama. More recently it has added Iraq,
Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan, Yugoslavia, and
Afghanistan and is planning to revisit
Iraq in 2002.
The
reality is that many thousands if not
hundreds of thousands of innocent
civilians have loss their lives because of
this careless use of American air power.
The figures for the injured and maimed are
even higher; all these civilian casualties
you must remember, America claims have
been for the cause of democracy and
freedom throughout the world.
By
these acts of wanton destruction, all
American Presidents and their
Administrations since 1945 can under the
contemporary international law be
considered as war criminals. Because under
international laws the wanton bombing of
towns, cities and villages is a war crime
and can be called state terrorism.
What
has been long forgotten by the American
government, never highlighted by American
Media and certainly not mentioned to the
American people, is that American over the
last six decades have killed more innocent
people than all the anti-state terrorists
that have ever lived. It is little wonder
that the American military need to
disguise the truth and deflect American
public opinion by describing these deaths
with the anodyne phrase ‘collateral
damage’.
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