Precision killing in Iraq

[tocqueville]

By Michael Schwartz

A little more than a year ago, a group of Johns Hopkins University researchers reported that about 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a result of the Iraq war during its first 14 months, with about 60,000 of the deaths directly attributable to military violence by the US and its allies.

The study, published in The Lancet, the highly respected British medical journal, applied the same rigorous, scientifically validated methods that the Hopkins researchers had used in estimating that 1.7 million people had died in Congo in 2000. Though the Congo study had won the praise of the Bush and Blair administrations and had become the foundation for UN Security

Council and State Department actions, this study was quickly declared invalid by the US government and supporters of the war.

This dismissal was hardly surprising, but after a brief flurry of protest, even the anti-war movement (with a number of notable exceptions) has largely ignored the ongoing carnage that the study identified.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA13Ak01.html

[Selatius]

1. Another excerpt from the article:

Notice that Johnson (while not admitting that civilians had actually died) did assert US policy: if suspected guerrillas use any building as a refuge, a full-scale attack on that structure is justified, even if the insurgents attempt to use civilians to "shield themselves". These are, in other words, essential US rules of engagement. The attack should be "precise" only in the sense that planes and/or helicopter gunships should seek as best they can to avoid demolishing surrounding structures. Put another way, it is more important to stop the insurgents than protect the innocent.

And notice that the military, single-mindedly determined to kill or capture the insurgents, cannot stop to allow for the evacuation of civilians either. Any delay might let the insurgents escape, either disguised as civilians or through windows, back doors, cellars or any of the other obvious escape routes urban guerrillas might take. Any attack must be quickly organized and - if possible - unexpected.

The real rules of engagement in Iraq

We can gain some perspective on this military strategy by imagining similar rules of engagement for a police force in some large US city. Imagine, for example, a team of criminals in that city fleeing into a nearby apartment building after gunning down a police officer. It would be unthinkable for the police simply to call in airships to demolish the structure, killing any people - helpless hostages, neighbors or even friends of the perpetrators - who were with or near them.

In fact, the rules of engagement for the police, even in such a situation of extreme provocation, call for them to "hold their fire" - if necessary allowing the perpetrators to escape - if there is a risk of injuring civilians. And this is a reasonable rule ... because we value the lives of innocent US citizens over our determination to capture a criminal, even a cop-killer.

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It's okay to kill women and children if they're not American, I guess.

[EST]

2. Actually, they don't care if it's Americans

as long as those Americans are too poor to fight back, sue, or that they can spin into something their criminal supporters will buy and excuse them for.

[TheGunslinger]

3. Just like Al Jazeera was the darling before the WoT.