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The quick and the
dead
By Andrew F Tully
WASHINGTON - Saturday's air strike in the
southeast Afghan town of Petaw led to mourning for nine
slain children. It also led to bitterness among local
Afghans, despite an apology from US military command.
Reports quote Khial Mohammed Hoseini, the deputy
governor of Ghazni province, as saying the anger was
appropriate, apology or not. Afghanistan's interior
minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, was more diplomatic in
speaking about the incident in Kabul on December 7. "The
government has asked for explanations and also has
launched an investigation into the incident," Jalali
said.
The US military in Afghanistan does not
make such mistakes often, but when it does, it faces
tough questions about its reliance on air power in
efforts to kill even a single individual, and the
quality of the intelligence it uses to locate such
people.
In fact, for the past decade, US
civilian and military leadership have been accused of
relying too heavily on air power as a way to avoid
American casualties for fear of saddening and angering
the US public.
Jack Spencer is a policy analyst
on defense and national security issues at the Heritage
Foundation, a conservative private research center in
Washington. Spencer says that Americans are averse to
casualties only if they do not understand why the US is
militarily involved in a particular conflict, or if the
conflict is not seen as being in America's interest.
Spencer tells RFE/RL that any US aversion to
casualties is rooted in the country's military
operations of the 1990s - primarily in Somalia and the
Balkans. He says that these operations did not advance
US interests or enhance security. "For that type of
thing, yes, the United States has a low tolerance for
casualties. However, when you're in an operation, as we
are in Afghanistan, as we are in Iraq, where there is a
compelling national security imperative that is
understood by the public, then the fact is there is no
casualty aversion. In fact, the United States public is
very supportive of doing what we need to do around the
world in order to advance not just American interests
but, I think, American ideals," Spencer said.
Further, Spencer says that it is wrong to
dismiss the value of broadly used air power in any
modern conflict. He says that a ground force hunting
down insurgents moves too slowly, and usually too
noisily, to enjoy the element of surprise, and air power
often can employ more powerful weapons than a small
group of soldiers. As for accuracy, Spencer contends
that air strikes are getting more precise every year,
and that military aircraft are appreciably more capable
of this precision than their predecessors of only a few
years ago.
Spencer says that a failure of
intelligence certainly could have led to the errant air
strike. For example, he says, the pilots may have
accurately struck the target that was dictated to them,
not realizing that it was the wrong target. But Spencer
quickly notes that intelligence often changes quickly
during war: "If they got the coordinates right and there
was a bunch of kids in there, then something was wrong.
Tactical intelligence is a very mercurial thing."
Finally, Spencer says, people should not put too
much weight on such incidents, as distressing as they
are. He says mistakes are bound to happen in times of
war, and that legitimate civilian casualties are
recognized as inevitable even by international laws and
other conventions governing warfare. "The most modern
interpretations of these things understand that there
will be civilian casualties [and] you do what you can to
minimize those civilian casualties. [But] there is no
country in the world [besides the United States] who
devotes so much time, so much energy, so many resources,
and puts their own troops in danger sometimes [to avoid
civilian casualties]," Spencer said.
Kenneth
Allard sees the use of both air strikes and intelligence
much differently. Allard is a retired US Army colonel
who served in Europe as an intelligence officer. He
tells RFE/RL that he agrees that a well-informed public
would not be averse to casualties among its forces if
the cause were just. But Allard says that Americans
would never accept casualties in a just war that was
being fought inappropriately. He says that includes
using aircraft to carry out missions that are better
handled by ground troops.
"It is actually a
violation of common sense and good battle tactics to try
and do things from the air that are better done on the
ground. As we saw in Kosovo, you unnecessarily expose
civilians to risk when you fail to put the instruments
of power in place to do that job," Allard said. Fear of
casualties aside, Allard says that the administration
appears to be too reliant with the technology of air
warfare, which he concedes may be impressive, but not
effective enough to win a war on its own.
"I
really don't think that the administration has fully
come to terms with the fact that the kind of war that
they have to fight you cannot fight exclusively through
the air. [Air power] can do a lot for you, but it
absolutely will not win for you. The ultimate form of
political power is the man on the ground with a gun,"
Allard said.
In fact, Allard says that high
technology also appears to have influenced the
administration in intelligence-gathering. He says the US
military is spending far too much energy on unmanned spy
planes and other electronic equipment and too little
energy - and time - on old-fashioned spies trained to
infiltrate the enemy.
"When you're talking about
human intelligence, you have to start digging the well
[long] before you become thirsty. And in human
intelligence, you've got to begin to train for that,
begin to position yourself for that, years before you
think you're actually going to need it. In that respect,
we've put far too much emphasis on technology. Whether
you're talking about a peacekeeping operation in Bosnia
or Kosovo, or if you're talking about in Iraq, it's been
a consistent weak point for us," Allard said.
Perhaps the newly announced ground operation -
Avalanche - to fight insurgents in Afghanistan will
lessen the likelihood of more civilian casualties. But
it will probably be a long time before Afghanis forgive
the Americans for what appears to be the unnecessary
deaths of nine of their children.
Copyright
(c) 2002, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of
Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington
DC 20036
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