Collateral Damage

I'm amazed that someone actually had to say this. An article by Andrew Bacevich:

Who bears responsibility for these Iraqi deaths? The young soldiers pulling the triggers? The commanders who establish rules of engagement that privilege "force protection" over any obligation to protect innocent life? The intellectually bankrupt policymakers who sent U.S. forces into Iraq in the first place and now see no choice but to press on? The culture that, to put it mildly, has sought neither to understand nor to empathize with people in the Arab or Islamic worlds?

There are no easy answers, but one at least ought to acknowledge that in launching a war advertised as a high-minded expression of U.S. idealism, we have waded into a swamp of moral ambiguity. To assert that "stuff happens," as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is wont to do whenever events go awry, simply does not suffice.

Moral questions aside, the toll of Iraqi noncombatant casualties has widespread political implications. Misdirected violence alienates those we are claiming to protect. It plays into the hands of the insurgents, advancing their cause and undercutting our own. It fatally undermines the campaign to win hearts and minds, suggesting to Iraqis and Americans alike that Iraqi civilians -- and perhaps Arabs and Muslims more generally -- are expendable. Certainly, Nahiba Husayif Jassim's death helped clarify her brother's perspective on the war. "God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here," he declared after the incident. "They have no regard for our lives."

He was being unfair, of course. It's not that we have no regard for Iraqi lives; it's just that we have much less regard for them. The current reparations policy -- the payment offered in those instances in which U.S. forces do own up to killing an Iraq civilian -- makes the point. The insurance payout to the beneficiaries of an American soldier who dies in the line of duty is $400,000, while in the eyes of the U.S. government, a dead Iraqi civilian is reportedly worth up to $2,500 in condolence payments -- about the price of a decent plasma-screen TV.

I see a conncetion between our treatment of the deaths of Iraqis and the public statements of those anti-gay bigots who claim not to "condone violence" when a gay man is beaten to death. There's no moral ambiguity there. If we hold life sacred, then life is sacred. If we create a situation in which some lives are not sacred, we are morally corrupt. That holds as true for the Pentagon as it does for James Dobson. It's called "taking responsibility for your actions."

The problem, of course, is much larger than that. I find it strange that I, who firmly hold to a species of moral relativism (which may be a misnomer -- I simply believe that context is an important factor in moral decisions) have no problem taking responsibility for my words and actions, and have no problem recognizing that the life of an Iraqui is equivalent to the life of an American. (Granted, I'm also a man who has severe moral crises over killing bugs -- I'll do anything to avoid it, unless I'm going to eat the bug, which I never do, so it becomes a problem. I generally just escort them to a more appropriate location.)

Update: Andrew Bacevich is by most criteria a conservative and has spoken out quite seriously and cogently against the Iraq war. For a bit more on him, see this posit by Steve Clemmons. I think Bacevich's comments are only more powerful in light of the fact that his son was recently killed while serving in Iraq.