Burning Raqqa: The U.S. War Against Civilians in Syria. By Laura Gottesdiener
You would barely know
it, living in this country, but the essence of modern warfare is what our
military tends to call “collateral damage”: the killing or wounding of
civilians, not combatants. The Global War on Terror -- more than 15 years later
a no-name set of conflicts still spreading across the Greater Middle
East, parts of Africa, and now the Philippines - has been typical of
this. Civilians have died in startling numbers, both directly and thanks
to the hardships these conflicts have brought on. Vast populations have
been uprooted from their homes -- at one point more than a million people from the Iraqi city of
Mosul alone -- and often sent fleeing across borders. In other words, from
Afghanistan to Libya, the war on terror has (not to mince words) been murder on
civilian populations.
In mainstream news
coverage, real attention is paid from time to time (and quite rightly) to the
continuing brutality of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the civilian
deaths caused by their insurgency. And that’s even more
the case with the civilian carnage caused by the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria. When it comes to the U.S. role in civilian deaths, however, it’s
been another matter. Clearly, it’s a subject the Pentagon would prefer
that we not think about and yet the human toll is all too real.
As I wrote back
in 2015,“In 2004 and 2006, the Lancet published studies based on scientific surveys of ‘excess Iraqi
deaths’ since the American invasion of 2003 and, in the first case, came up
with an estimated 98,000 of them and in the second with 655,000 (a much-criticized figure); such studies by medical and other researchers have
never stopped. More recent counts of such deaths have ranged from 500,000 in 2013 to one million or 5% of the Iraqi population [in
2015].” The latest range of figures offered by the
independent website Iraq Body Count for “documented civilian
deaths from violence” since the 2003 U.S. invasion of that country is
177,941-199,231 (a conservative figure, given that word “documented,” and yet
far higher than the one for combatants). And keep in mind that that’s
just Iraq.
From the
beginning, TomDispatch has made an effort to focus its
attention regularly on the “collateral damage” from our conflicts. It’s
been our conviction that we Americans should feel some responsibility for such
carnage in a war that so infamously began with the “collateral” deaths of
almost 3,000 innocent American civilians and shows no signs of endingin our lifetime. This website may,
for instance, be the only news source that bothered to keep track of the number of wedding parties
obliterated by U.S. air power since 100 or more revelers were wiped out in a village in Eastern Afghanistan by B-52
and B-1B bombers as 2001 ended. The total: at least eight weddings in
three countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen), including brides, grooms, and
even musicians hired to play at the ceremony.
In the same
spirit, TomDispatch regular Laura Gottesdiener,
who covered the destruction of a hospital in Afghanistan
by U.S. air power for this site back in 2015, turns to the American war against
ISIS in Syria and the civilian mayhem taking place on the road to the “capital”
of the Islamic State, Raqqa..
read more..
