Death from above
The recent extrapolation of figures from the Lancet Report, in conjunction with further research in Iraq, conducted by ORB, a British polling agency, now puts the figure of Iraqi deaths due to the war since March 2003 at 1.2 million. This, in a country of 27 million, and alongside wounds that are often devastating (and unreported), as well as 4 million now displaced, gives us a true picture of what this invasion and occupation have wrought on the lives of Iraqis, both adults and children.
Hyper-reporting of Iraqi-on-Iraqi fighting and of suicide bombings has been uncritical and implies that the majority of these deaths are due to the innate deviancy of “these Arabs” (a suggestion in this undifferentiated, ill-explained, and often plain false reporting). We are seldom reminded of how many operations in which Iraqi kill and displace other Iraqis are conducted by US allies, the Badr Army in particular.
But the bigger story is the one that gets no coverage at all here, it seems, at least from the patri-cap media.
Bombing. That old standby of “great powers” when they cannot make any headway against recalcitrant natives. It is in progress now, and has been all along, in both Iraq and Afghanstan. The newest twist is the employment of pilotless drones, also counted by the Pentagon and its spokepersons at CNN as “precision” weapons.
We buy this lethal gadgetry for the Pentagon, and of course the Chinese and Japanese float loans to us to buy more. It’s expensive, so it makes some jobs. Since we don’t export much these days, the only things being hled inside the borders — so to speak — are these “dual-use” technologies (dual meaning civilian and military). So the one sector that is forced to stay inside the US with its “jobs” is provided a surrogate export market called the Department of Defense.
One must wonder, what exactly are we “defending” in Waziristan?
1.2 million dead. Think this kind of cynical math is new?
Here is a flash from the Clinton era:
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.
–60 Minutes (5/12/96)
Send this to your Democratic (or Republican) elected official, and ask why they are not cutting the money for the war. Tell them that this is the price of your vote.
from Death at a Distance: The U.S. Air War
Conn Hallinan | August 30, 2007
According to the residents of Datta Khel, a town in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, three missiles streaked out of Afghanistan’s Pakitka Province and slammed into a Madrassa, or Islamic school, this past June. When the smoke cleared, the Asia Times reported, 30 people were dead.
The killers were robots, General Atomics MQ-1 Predators. The AGM-114 Hellfire missiles they used in the attack were directed from a base deep in the southern Nevada desert.
It was not the first time Predators had struck. The previous year a CIA Predator took a shot at al-Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, but missed. The missile, however, killed 18 people. According to the Asia Times piece, at least one other suspected al-Qaeda member was assassinated by a Predator in Pakistan’s northern frontier area, and in 2002 a Predator killed six “suspected al-Qaeda” members in Yemen.
These assaults are part of what may be the best kept secret of the Iraq-Afghanistan conflicts: an enormous intensification of US bombardments in these and other countries in the region, the increasing number of civilian casualties such a strategy entails, and the growing role of pilot-less killers in the conflict.
According to Associated Press, there has been a five-fold increase in the number of bombs dropped on Iraq during the first six months of 2007 over the same period in 2006. More than 30 tons of those have been cluster weapons, which take an especially heavy toll on civilians.
The U.S. Navy has added an aircraft carrier to its Persian Gulf force, and the Air Force has moved F-16s into Balad air base north of Baghdad.
Balad, which currently conducts 10,000 air operations a week, is strengthening runways to handle the increase in air activity.
Timothy R. Anderson:
Deaths of Iraqis under-reported. Yet, please, dear reader, imagine the outrage emerging from ” average Americans ” if gasoline goes up to
$ 7. 40 a gallon. I realize that what I’m typing is an
over-simple-li-fi-cation of a complex, socio-geopolitical thingy ,
…….. still, let’s just take a deep breath, shall we , and consider
what it is that ” average Americans ” truly hold dear.
Availability of cheap gasoline. No waiting.
Tim
18 September 2007, 2:13 pmpeggy:
There are many Americans, and people from other countries as well, who shout their heads off about the monstrosities committed in Iraq by the US government, but it doesn’t do a damn bit of good, which is why we’e allowed to shout our heads off.
18 September 2007, 8:17 pmJust my opinion.
Jack Thompson:
Another flash from the Clinton era, from Robert Young Pelton’s The Worlds Most Dangerous Places, “NATO, which had embarked upon an often-myopic air campaign with the curious proviso that the lives of their volunteer service personnel were worth more than those of the civilians they’d gone to war to protect. The inevitable result of this policy came at Djakovica on April 14, 1999, where, to the ill-concealed delight of Serb authorities, who took busloads of foreign journalists to the gruesome impact site, NATO F-16s demonstrated that, from a distance, convoys of hostile military vehicles and tractors full of refugees can look remarkably similar.”
I remember that 60 Minutes interview with Albright where she said “we think the price is worth it” which was also featured in a documentary called Genocide by Sanctions and when it was reviewed by the New York Times the reviewer said that Albright’s words were taken out of context…as if they weren’t just talking about dead children. More spin to get Americans to believe that we really care about Iraqi lives, and that the million plus killed from the U.S. led sanctions were not the fault of the U.S.
And I don’t recall the film Black Hawk Down depicting the helicopter air strike that fired 16 I think, TOW missiles into a building thought to be occupied by Aidid, a strike that wounded and killed scores of civilians, an event that undoubtedly strengthened the resolve of the Somalis to repel TFR. I think Americans would have viewed that film differently if they could empathize with people of Somalia, seen that if another countries military was killing their people from the air, they would be pretty eager to get some pay back when they had faces to connect with their loss and trauma. But instead, Americans got to watch racist propaganda, Somalis being depicted as black people being mowed down because they are too stupid to realize that the good Americans are here to help them.
When I hear about Predator droves missing their targets and killing civilians, I can’t help but think of every time I read about Israeli attack helicopter pilots shooting anti tank missiles at suspected terrorists while they walk through crowded markets. Of course, dozens of people are killed and maimed. But this is not called murder. And I can’t help but wonder how this is different than Nazis lining up civilians and machine gunning them as a reprisal for the loss of one of their soldiers. And when an American soldier calls in an air strike on a building and the bombs impact kills civilians, this is just called collateral damage, nothing more. They are brown and not like us, so fuck them. And because their lives mean so little to the war planners, it is out of their frame of reference that their deaths only further motivate Iraqis to resist the occupation.
Stan, you called Vietnam a race war. I think Iraq must be one as well.
19 September 2007, 3:53 pmclaudia krenz:
Does anyone have a citation for the new ORB study? I think it’s *really* important to document such studies. Thanks.
Moderator: It’s in the link.
19 September 2007, 8:04 pmSam:
Excellent interview with Paul Craig Roberts on 911, Iraq, the economy:
http://electricpolitics.com/
24 September 2007, 11:00 pmMichael Anderson:
Full spectrum disorder?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/16/drones-unmanned-aircraft?CMP=EMCGT_170111&
Attack of the drones
17 January 2011, 7:14 amUnmanned aircraft are now a vital tool in war zones, but our skies could soon be buzzing with spy planes that feed information back to the police – and even the paparazzi