In the last few days, both the Israeli military and the US military have fired missiles into homes, in an effort to target what they said were terrorists, in the process killing many innocent civilians.
But what a contrast we see in both the reporting on these events, and in the response within the two countries!
In the Israeli case, the IDF fired a missile into a family home in Gaza, killing a mother and her four young children, who were eating breakfast at the time. The children were aged 6 years through 15 months. While the IDF and the Israeli government blamed the tragedy on Hamas, saying it operates in proximity of civilians and is thus responsible for their deaths, an Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, has caqlled for a criminal investigation into the killings, saying that Israel and the IDF have violated internation law by firing the missile in a densely populated area where civilian casualties would be likely. A spokesman for the group, Sarit Michaeli, says that Israeli claims that it is not responsible for such deaths are incorrect, and adds that under international law, “Even if you attack a legitimate military target, the anticipated damage has to be in proportion to the anticipated gain.”
How does such a moral calculus apply to American military policy? The most recent example of US military tactics in this regard came yesterday, when American forces, in clear violation of international law regarding national sovereignty, fired a missile into a house in Somalia (a nation that the US is not at war with), reportedly killing an alleged leader of the Al Qaeda organization in Somalia, Aden Hashi Ayro, but also another 30 people—all unidentified. Reports suggest that many of those killed and others who were wounded, were innocent civilians who happened to be sleeping in the house in question.
To date, no American human rights group has protested this action as a criminal violation or a violation of international law. No member of Congress has decried the attack.
The AP story reporting the incident didn’t even mention the possibility that the action could be a violation of law.
Nor is this an isolated incident. In Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Pakistan, in Somalia and elsewhere, the US regularly launches missiles, often from remote controlled drone aircraft, and drops large bombs on houses and even larger compounds, sometimes destroying whole villages at a time, in order to hit individual alleged terrorists. Often, it turns out on investigation that the target individuals weren’t even present at the scene of these bloody massacres of civilians.
So commonplace are these wanton acts of violence by US forces that the US-installed leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has publicly called for a halt to them, because of the number of innocent Afghan citizens being killed. Iraqis too, are enraged at the number of innocent victims of US bombings in places like Sadr City, where the killing of innocent children by US bombs has become a deadly routine.
No one—not one person—in the US military, the Pentagon or the Bush administration has been prosecuted for war crimes or criminal violations for these atrocities.
It becomes clearer and clearer with the passing of time that Bush’s and Cheney’s so-called War on Terror is actually a War of Terror, being waged against the people of such places as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia.
At least in Israel, some citizens are willing to call such behavior criminal, and to demand a halt to it. ____________ DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006). His writing is available at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
Where is the comparable call by a US human rights organization for a criminal investigation into the US bombing in Somalia yesterday that killed 30(!) people in order to hit one (!) guy? Where is the call for a criminal investigation into the policy of destroying homes, family compounds and whole villages in Afghanistan and western Pakistan in order to hit suspected individual alleged terrorists?
I'm not talking about protests. I'm talking about actual calls for criminal investigations.
Of course you are right that there are protests here, and that our corporate excuse for a media don't report on them, but it remains objectively true that in Israel, a country which, whatever one may think of the place, is actually under attack by missiles fired from Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, and which routinely gets hit by suicide bombers, there is a bigger and much more assertive peace movement than there is here in the US, where we don't get attacked regularly, if at all, at least since 9-11.
We should be ashamed...
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Dave Lindorff (295 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 141 comments)
on Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 1:54:44 PM
Americans are shopping just as George Bush asked them to. In Israel for all its failing’s scholarship is encouraged and valued it is difficult to cut through the lies if you don't read. There are a few Israelis; sadly too few who are prepared to criticize their own kin if the evidence is overwhelming.
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kwalsh (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 117 comments)
on Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 8:54:58 PM
Where are you getting the number of 30 killed along with Aden Hashi Ayro in Somalia? Reports I've read range from 7 to 12.
Any consideration given to the number killed, and the suffering caused, by Ayro through the years?
And what choice do the neighborhood-dwelling rocketeers give the Israeli military? Might it be a sound strategy to prompt the ending of support of them by the population with the knowledge that their personal safety is at risk?
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Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 432 comments)
on Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 5:04:01 PM
It's irrelevant how many people he and his organization can be said to have killed. First of all, it's not something you can prove, and secnd, killing 30 to get one is never acceptable.
On top of that, the US is not at war with Somalia, and the attack on that nation is in itself a war crime.
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Dave Lindorff (295 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 141 comments)
on Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 5:24:15 PM
Irrelevant? Wow. That's a pretty dismissive attitude. I wonder how the friends and relatives of the victims of 9/11, the USS Cole, the embassy bombings, etc etc would feel about that.
OK, I finally found a report that alludes to the possibility that some surrounding civilians were killed. Not a good thing, if true, but it looks like we also got the main man and about 10 of his men, this according to his own people. That IS a good thing.
Also, it would appear that our actions in this regard are cheered by those formerly oppressed by Ayro:
"The Shabab won't just disappear," Mr. Uluso said. "But now that the hunt for Ayro is over, at least people will get their freedom back. So many people were hurt and oppressed in the effort to get him."
And were also sanctioned by the Somali government:
American officials have said Somalia's government has given them permission to attack terrorist suspects on Somali soil. American officials have accused Mr. Ayro of protecting wanted Qaeda members, including some of the men thought to have planned the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
I don't see any evidence of war crimes here. That would be Ayro's specialty, wouldn't it? We are at war with his organization, and I believe they were the ones to first declare it, both in word and deed.
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Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 432 comments)
on Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 7:24:32 PM
You don't kill large numbers of innocents to get at a few enemies.
I spent a year in Darmstadt, Germany, a city that was firebombed by the Brits to deliberately create a firestorm that totally destroyed the city and killed 200,000 people, nearly all civilians. The Brits justified this mass murder, which was repeated by Brits and Americans at Dresden, as "helping to end the war."
Sorry. It was mass murder and terror, pure and simple.
It was also a war crime.
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Dave Lindorff (295 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 141 comments)
on Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 9:29:03 PM
What you leave out, Dave, is the some quarter billion murdered by the likes of those in charge of Germany at the time. You don't seem to have the slightest appreciation for the fact that the U.S., and other free nations, are responsible for keeping that kind of vastly more significant human destruction in check.
I'd be curious to hear what your solutions might have been back in the day, to the problem of these mega-murderers insisting on expanding their geographic footprint and continuing their practice of exterminating burdensome or inferior fellow human beings.
And I'd be curious to know just why you apparently don't see the same murderous, control-obsessed patterns emerging in the case of Islamic extremism.
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Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 432 comments)
on Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 10:19:59 PM
it is not for the first time you come out from under the rock with all that idiocy about mass-murderers, free nations, etc. etc.
WWII was not won by the ' US and other free nations' It was won by Russian forces, gratuity also goes to Greece, Serbia and England. US jumped on a bandwagon but its contributions are meniscule warwise. the uS is the only country which actually benefited from the war economically. The victory over even Japan could not be achieved if the Russians had not taken over the Quantun Army in Manchuria ( about 1 mln well- armed soldiers). The firebombing of German cities as well as Hiroshima/Nagasaki were political actions and murders. This is for the record. BTW, Auchwitz was liberated by the Russian Army too. Your addition of Mao's atrocities to the atrocities of Germany is rather dubious: surely the only way to add should be the atrocities of ALL and than includes Japanese crimes, French atrocities in Algeirs, US atrocities in Phillipines, North Vietnam- about 1.5 million people killed due to the American invasion, Afghanistan and Iraq, Israeli atrocities, Russian atrocitities, Hungarian carnage in 1956 ( no, not the Russians, the Hungarians attacked the Jews primarily) etc.etc. Then we will find that the only ' megakilling' pertained to Islam would be the Armenian Genocide in 1915 but even that was done not by real Islamists but by a special group of 'Young Turks" govt, lately condemned.
Returning to Somalia. Mr. Williams, if the rocket falls on your head and you are killed ( God forbid it happens) you will be dead and no justification that the rocket meant to kill your neigbor would justify that murder. You and people like you ( I am not afraid to sound ad hominem here) not only foolishly believe in some right of the US to go kill other people whenever we please but also foolishly believe that it makes us safer. Nothing can be further from the truth. It puts us all and our children in mortal danger, it creates eternal hate towards us and you are a part of us. I would advise you to reevaluate your priorties, stop being arrogant and maybe reflect how would you react if someone sends a missile at your house.
With that adjourn
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Mark Sashine (42 articles, 19 quicklinks, 227 diaries, 3219 comments)
on Friday, May 2, 2008 at 8:04:23 AM
Wow, the pretzels we become to avoid giving the good 'ol USA any credit for anything. If you're here to tell us that all would have been right with the world had not the U.S. put its determination and blood on the line during that conflict, you're as deluded as when you buy into those silly and juvenile 9/11 conspiracy theories, which I don't think (hope) that even Lindorff is down with.
First of all, you're reading things into what I said. I was talking in general terms regarding totalitarianism and mega-murder ("the likes of") not meaning that ALL those quarter billion were carried out by Germany, certainly, and not meaning that Islam is included in those numbers, and not meaning to say that Russians didn't kill Germans. You're missing my larger point.
Yes, Russia played a role in WWII, but it seems they were mostly concerned with defending their own homeland. Their motives in the war had little to do with any concern for their own citizen's or other's freedom, because freedom was not in their vocabulary. Most folks are loath to extend credit to another deka-megamurder responsible for the deaths of so many millions of its own citizens, even if it was a useful spoil in terms of killing lots of Germans. It simply doesn't work to present Russia as a hero in WWII, when their philosophy was essentially the same as the other villains of that day, in terms of expansionism, and treatment of its own and other's citizens.
Had it not been for Russia and their bountiful supply of bodies to throw at the Germans, then I guess the U.S. would simply have had to drop a nuke on a couple German cities, as they wisely did with Japan, a (former) mega-murderer.
But the real point is this: People like Lindorff and yourself apparently, go to great lengths to amplify the relatively small amount of damage and death carried out by America, all the while ignoring that its purpose is based on furthering the cause of human, and yes, economic, freedom in the world, and blunting the efforts of those opposed to such freedoms. And at the same time, you ignore the massive human toll that has come forth from houses of totalitarianism, (the German-Russian conflict being a prime example) and the fact that the U.S. has been the only entity that has significantly contained, and in many cases thankfully destroyed these kinds of killing machines.
As for Somalia, it's never our intent to deliberately harm innocent civilians. In fact, our concern for that is why Clinton missed a couple shots at Bin Laden.
But Bin Laden & Co. have no similar concern. They are at whom you should be directing your ire. It's their priorities that should concern you.
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Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 432 comments)
on Friday, May 2, 2008 at 5:39:04 PM
Other than on your own ignorance & dishonesty, on what do
you base your ludicrous assertion that America's "...purpose is based on furthering the cause of human....freedom in the world, and blunting the efforts of those opposed to such freedoms"? Was America's imposition of rightwing dictatorships throughout Central & South America, Iran, the Phillipines, the Carribean etc based on furthering human freedoms? The millions of innocent peasants America murdered in SE Asia & Indonesia? The million or so in Iraq? How about America's genocide of its indigenous peoples, its history of chattel slavery & racism, its seizing half of Mexico by armed force? How about the 'love of freedom' demonstrated by the McCarthy witchhunts & the 1920-era Red Scare?
You write that "Yes, Russia played a role in WWII, but it seems they were mostly concerned with defending their own homeland. Their motives in the war had little to do with any concern for their own citizen's or other's freedom, because freedom was not in their vocabulary."
There are at least 3 knee-slappers in this bit of rightwing America-über-alles slime. First, I'm certain without even asking that you clap your little hands in gleeful support for Bush's "War on Terror." Isn't that fake "war" supposedly based on "defending (Bush's) own homeland"? Would you say that that war is cheapened by Bush's professed motivation for it? If a bogus war like the WoT isn't cheapened by being (falsely) predicated on alleged self-defense, why should a real war that was a matter of genuine self-defense be demeaned by deprecating language?
Second, the historical fact is that for the most part, it was basically Russia that defeated Germany in WWII. They did most of the fighting & most of the dying. If you knew anything about the real history, you would have the decency to acknowledge this. Therefore the diminishing of the Russian contribution to victory in your condescending phrase "Yes, Russia played a role in WWII.." announces to all knowledgeable readers that you are the kind of liar who doesn't merely lie, but who has no respect for the truth whatsoever. You lie with the premeditation & deliberate malice of an ideologue.
Finally, on what do you base your claim that "freedom was not in their vocabulary?" Do you speak Russian? Do you seriously assert there is no word for "freedom" in Russian?
Speaking in your blowhard style, you proclaim that America's "purpose is based on furthering the cause of human....freedom," while Russia's "motives" in WWII had little to do with freedom "because" freedom was "not in their vocabulary." // I think it's the "because" here that is most vile, because with that word you presume to be some sort of authority on national motivations. It might be the case that in your own hallucinations, you're a qualified judge of which nation's actions "further" freedom; and which nations' actions don't. But I doubt many people would take your word for it, on such matters.
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Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1014 comments)
on Friday, May 2, 2008 at 8:20:16 PM
Look, my intent was not to quantify body-wise and country-wise the casualty count in WWII. If you want to view a mega-murderous communist expansionist dictatorship as some kind of hero we should somehow be in respectful awe of, be my guest. American nuclear innovation presumably would have made up for what the Russians conveniently contributed. Thanks, Russia! But .... what have you done for me lately, except march on Europe and Afghanistan, threaten the world with your nukes, and meddle in Cuba and Latin America.
My intent was to properly characterize the relatively minuscule amount of human suffering either unintentionally or regretfully caused by the U.S. as a byproduct of attempting to thwart ideologies/regimes that intentionally and institutionally cause massive human suffering and quash to a pulp individual human freedomm.
Yes, believe it or not, newsflash, the U.S. is good! What a concept. The President of France even says so. It was founded upon principles of individual freedom and individual power, and has continued to live by those principles at home and has even worked to defend those concepts and extend their benefits to the rest of the world. We've witnessed the alternatives, the quarter-billion death toll, a number which of course neglects the monumental suffering of the survivors.
And yes, it's with the greater goal of freedom that alternatives to Communism, described by that right-winger John F. Kennedy as the "repression of freedom", have been supported in Latin America. Not always ideal alternatives, but sometimes the best that can be achieved.
I'm quite sure there is a word for freedom in Russian, probably a concept that the ordinary Russian citizen holds out hope for in his private quarters and thoughts. And the leadership knows of freedom as well, of the threat it poses to their personal power, and they want nothing to do with it.
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Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 432 comments)
on Saturday, May 3, 2008 at 1:30:24 PM
