Collateral Damage

In 1975, during the Vietnam War, military and political publicists invoked the term “collateral damage” in order to assuage the media’s negative criticism of the rising “civilian casualties” (as they were usually described). And so, the reality of the unusually high civilian death count was officially euphemized. The accidental killing of civilians was defined openly as a part of war in the surreal Pentagonese lexicon. The idea that it was “unavoidable” had become redundant. It was accepted as inevitable.

According to item A7.5.2. of the USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide (February 1998), collateral damage is a clear measure of war. The guide states, “A number of other programs are available or can be modified to compute large scale collateral damage. These programs can be modified to provide numerous computations.”

Since 911 and the subsequent war on terrorism, statistics relating to collateral damage do not get reported by the mainstream media with as much fervor as those relating to military casualties. In Iraq, for example, not much has been written or said about the almost 90,000 civilians who have been reported killed since 2003. Twenty percent of those who died were women and children. It is estimated that US-led forces were responsible for over 30 percent of the civilian victims.

In Somalia, the collateral damage account since 1991 floats around 400,000, depending on who you talk to. However, the current reports on the most recent civilian death tolls are vague, incomplete, or do not, in fact, confirm any numbers. There is much confusion surrounding the events of 2007, during which there were various US attacks on Somalian targets suspected of housing al-Qaeda suspects. Several villages were bombed. The media asked about the innocent civilians in those villages. No one has provided any firm answers.

If there are answers to questions concerning the deaths of innocents in Africa and the Middle East, don’t bother asking the military. According to General Tommy Franks, “We don’t do body counts.”

This veil of ambiguity suggests something. Perhaps circumstances are such in a world made paranoid by terrorism, that the accidental killing of civilians is not just unavoidable, it is also necessary. It is even calculated.

Has morality become paralyzed because the fight for survival is one involving invisible enemies? Will the day come when the the accidental killing of civilians by US forces, in places like – America – is an unavoidable part of the war on terrorism?

Sources: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat3.htm; http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/usaf/afpam14-210/part2 0.htm#page182
http://hillblogger.blogspot.com/2007/01/any-collat eral-damage-in-somalia.htmlhttp://www.cnn.com/2007/W ORLD/africa/01/08/somalia.strike/
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
http://www.hsrgroup.org/index.php?option=con