Page 3 of
5 DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA Death from
above By Tom Engelhardt
in a tractor-trailer" were
reportedly hit from the air - with only two
survivors, an old man and his severely wounded
son. NATO (American) spokesmen beg to disagree:
"The allies returned fire and called in air
support, aimed at 'clearly identified firing
positions'."
July 2: An intense
mortar barrage aimed at a US base near the largely
Shi'ite city of Diwaniya leads to air strikes by
two F-16s
that
reportedly kill 10 civilians along with Shi'ite
militiamen. Among them, it is said, are six
children under the age of 12. ("Coalition forces
are reviewing the incident to ensure that
appropriate and proportionate force was used in
responding to the intense attack," a US statement
said, without referring to any Iraqi casualties.)
New reports of deaths from air strikes in
Afghanistan continue to arrive - 108 noncombatants
"including women and children" killed in Farah
province on July 6 and 33 killed in Kunar
province, "11 of them on Thursday [July 5] during
a bombardment, and 25 more on Friday as they
attended a funeral for the deceased". US denials
are issued and Taliban propaganda blamed. ("A US
official said Taliban fighters are forcing
villagers to say civilians died in fighting -
whether or not it is true.")
Air war:
Afghanistan Even from such a partial list
- undoubtedly lacking information from Iraq, where
the air war has been notoriously overlooked by
American reporters - a pattern can be seen. But
beyond the loss of innocent lives (always, when
finally admitted, officially "regretted" by the US
military), why should any of this matter?
Let's start this way: barring an
unexpected change of policy, some version of this
list of "errant" incidents, multiplied many times
over, is likely to represent the future for both
Afghanistan and Iraq. The obvious math of the
military manpower situation in both countries
tells us this is so - as does history.
In
Afghanistan this year, Taliban suicide attacks
alone have increased by 230%, while Iraq-style
roadside bombs (improvised explosive devices, or
IEDs) are also a growing threat. In eastern
Afghanistan, where the US leads NATO operations,
"militant attacks" rose 250% compared with May
2006, according to the US military. NATO and US
troop levels, now somewhere in the range of
46,000-50,000 - about 20,000 of whom are from
European countries and Canada - remain woefully
inadequate for securing the country (if such a
thing were even possible) and NATO casualties are
on the rise.
Afghanistan, after all, is
far larger than Iraq and is being garrisoned by a
combined force less than a third the size of the
occupying force in that country, which itself is
universally considered inadequate to the task.
It's a fair bet that the various European powers
(and the Canadians) are wondering how they ended
up in this distant war in a land that has
historically been a graveyard for conquerors and
occupiers. In Canada and various European
countries, as casualties rise and success of any
sort seems beyond reach, the Afghan deployments
are becoming increasingly unpopular.
Don't
expect reinforcements from NATO countries any time
soon; while the US Army and Marine Corps, already
stretched beyond capacity by the recent "surge" in
Iraq, are probably incapable of reinforcing their
Afghan contingent in any significant way. By
elimination, this leaves one weapon in the US/NATO
arsenal, air power, which is, in fact, ever more
in use in response to a surge in Taliban ambushes
and limited takeovers of villages (and even entire
districts) in the Afghan south.
As the
Europeans are well aware, air power - given the
civilian casualties that invariably follow in its
wake - is intensely counterproductive in a
guerrilla war. "Every civilian dead means five new
Taliban," was the way a British officer just
returned from Helmand province put it recently.
However, an air-power strategy fits US
predilections to a tee. As a Reuters piece aptly
headlined the matter, the Americans in Afghanistan
are "hooked on air power". Americans have long
been so. After all, with the singular exception of
various Central American proxy wars during the
years of Ronald Reagan's presidency, air war has
in essence been the American way of war since
World War II. The Bush administration fought its
Afghan war of 2001 largely from the air in support
of the well-paid-off ground forces of the Northern
Alliance, aided by Special Forces troops and lots
of Central Intelligence Agency money in suitcases.
(In Iraq, of course, the invasion of March 2003
started with a massive air attack meant to
"decapitate" Saddam Hussein's regime - it did no
such thing - while having the side benefit of
shocking-and-awing hostile states in the region.)
Even after US ground forces moved in,
Afghanistan has never ceased to be a US Air Force
(USAF) war. B-1 bombers have been called in
relatively regularly there (unlike in Iraq) and
air strikes in the Afghan countryside have become
a commonplace. By last November, David Cloud of
the New York Times - who flew on a B-1 mission
over the country (and noted that a similar flight
the week he went up had "dropped its entire
payload of eight 2,000-pound bombs and six
500-pound bombs after ground units called for
help") - reported that the use of air power had
risen sharply there. More than 2,000 air strikes
had been called in during the previous six months,
with a concomitant rise in civilian casualties. In
addition, the USAF's full contingent of B-1s had
been "shifted over the summer from the British air
base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to a
Middle Eastern airfield closer to Afghanistan",
cutting mission flight time by a critical two
hours.
Though no post-November figures are
available, the recent spate of reported
"incidents" confirms that missions have risen
again this year, along with noncombatant deaths.
According to Laura King of the Los Angeles Times,
in a piece typically headlined "Errant Afghan
civilian deaths surge", "More than 500 Afghan
civilians have been reported killed this year, and
the rate has dramatically increased in the last
month."
Local dissatisfaction and
bitterness are also noticeably on the rise. The
Karzai government remains weak, ineffective, and
corrupt, while Taliban strength grows in southern
Afghanistan and across the border in the Pakistani
tribal areas. There, for instance, Jane Perlez and
Ismail Khan of the New York Times reported that,
according to a secret document from the Pakistani
Interior Ministry, "the Taliban have recently
begun bombing oil tank trucks that pass through
the Khyber area near the border on their way to
Afghanistan for United States and NATO forces. A
convoy of 12 of the trucks was hit with grenades
and gutted on Thursday night in the third such
incident in a month."
To all of this, air
power is the "NATO" answer for the present and the
future, the only answer in sight, however
counterproductive it may prove to be.
According to a report in the British
press, American General Dan McNeill, commander of
NATO forces in Afghanistan, has already been
dubbed "Bomber McNeill" (and it's not meant to be
a compliment). Despite periodic "reviews of
procedures", nor is his strategy - call in the
planes - likely to change any time soon. The US
military (and NATO officials) have in essence
confirmed this. Despite a growing chorus of
criticism in Afghanistan (and among NATO allies),
Army Brigadier-General Joseph Votel has praised
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