Middle East
A lesson in 'disappearing the dead'
By David Isenberg
When planning war, military officials have various targets: enemy combatants, their support forces, the surrounding civilian population, and their national infrastructure. But there are other targets as well, although these are not always discussed publicly. Among the most important of these is public opinion, both the world at large, and the highest priority - that of their own public. This holds true especially in a democracy, when one is fighting a war of choice - as in invading another country - instead of fighting a war of national survival.
In such wars, issues like human rights and civilian casualties loom larger. Since such casualties are inevitable, special pains must be taken to explain them away. But how to do so?
In a word, spin. Such is the conclusion of a just-released monograph, "Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Idea of a New Warfare" by Carl Conetta of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA).
But the PDA documents how the Bush administration has taken spin to a new level. It notes that increased international and domestic attention to the collateral effects of military operations has been a persistent concern of the US defense community since the Vietnam War. And thus has it taken significant steps to minimize that concern. The "US Defense Department, State Department and White House conducted large-scale perception management" or "strategic influence" campaigns in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, as well as in support of the broader "war on terrorism" according to the PDA study.
One of the Iraqi war incidents analyzed by the PDA was two market bombings in Baghdad that together claimed more than 70 lives early in the war. US and British authorities quickly suggested that these might have been the result of Iraqi air defense missiles falling back to the ground.
Particularly questionable were coalition complaints about Iraq placing air defense systems within 300 feet of residences. In fact there is no international law or rule of warfare that prevents that. Reached by phone, the study author, Carl Conetta said "their rhetoric implies that unless you place your systems at a distance from a target we chose to hit, that won't hit anyone, it's illegal. It's a typically Orwellian approach."
These facts, despite precision attack capabilities and specific targeting procedures, help explain why US military operations have claimed the lives of 50,000 people worldwide (combatants and non-combatants) during the age of precision warfare (beginning with Desert Storm in 1991, while during the preceding 14 years overt US operations claimed the lives of approximately 2,000 people).
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FB27Ak02.htmlDavid Isenberg is an independent, Washington-D.C. based analyst and writer on military, foreign policy, national and international security issues. He is an expert in U.S. defense policy , WMD proliferation, terrorism, homeland security, peace operations, the intelligence community, international arms trade, small arms proliferation, private military companies, biological weapons, and general arms control issues.
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