"DO NOT USE wire stories which lead with civilian casualties from the U.S. war on Afghanistan.
December 18, 2001 3:01 PM   Subscribe

Seem like a good idea not to dwell too much on "What causes the documented high level of civilian casualties -- 3,767 [thru December 6, 2001] civilian deaths in eight and a half weeks -- in the U.S. air war upon Afghanistan? The explanation is the apparent willingness of U.S. military strategists to fire missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan."
posted by lagado at 3:05 PM on December 18, 2001

I think one needs to consider that this has happened for the longest time. I don't recall a lot of stories about civilian casualties from the Gulf War, and I'm sure the same happened with every war the U.S. has been in. Hell, it probably happened with WWI and WWII; the only difference between that era and today is what is considered "news", and how it's reported. In the early 20th century, war news was "Here's where we are now, here's where they are. Here's some world leaders and generals talking about what they want to do." Look at any old newsreel. Now, with dozens of media outlets reporting "news", we are privy to more information, and it's reflexive behaviour to twist news to fit its audience. It was done during WWI and II, but very few knew about it.
posted by spyke at 3:11 PM on December 18, 2001

how many died during years of civil war in Afghanistan?
posted by machaus at 3:17 PM on December 18, 2001

Sounds like little Ray is just another balls-challenged journalist, toadying to the rich and powerful. No doubt they pay him well.

But then again, the Sacramento Bee's publisher just got heckled out of an auditorium because she dared to speak out for such scary things as journalistic integrity and civil rights. So maybe it's just Americans in general who have no testicles.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 3:25 PM on December 18, 2001

lagado: four months after September 11th and we still can't count the number of dead Americans with anything more than one digit of precision. But in the middle of war-torn Afghanistan with people dying constantly from the Taliban and the NA, the cold, lack of food, land mines, etc we can count the number dead by our own hands to four?


Yeh, sure...
posted by delmoi at 3:28 PM on December 18, 2001

if this was WWII and the story was about Allied bombing in Germany, would you still beleive that news coverage should focus on civilian casualties?
posted by nobody_knose at 3:30 PM on December 18, 2001

the article on cursor.org has been mentioned and the number disputed a couple of days ago on rc3. and while the number may be wildly off, i do find it reasonable to think the civilian casualties number in the hundreds if not over a thousand: a significant number nonetheless.
posted by moz at 3:32 PM on December 18, 2001

nobody_knose:

we're not at war with afghanistan as we were with Germany. your analogy doesn't work.
posted by moz at 3:34 PM on December 18, 2001

I'm from that particular part of Florida, and you must understand that it's a big-time military (conservative) area. Their practices are designed to sell papers to the conservative right and tend to gloss over reality. I wrote many complaint letters about this rightward skew to my local paper paper, which they promptly ignored.

If this is a bit discombobulated, I'm really tired .
posted by tcobretti at 3:35 PM on December 18, 2001

News coverage tends to reflect editorial assumptions about their audience/consumers. Coverage during the Vietnam war similarly downplayed civilian casualties until it became very, very apparent that people were getting sick of the war and that there wasa market for unsympathetic coverage.

I think the same will happen as this "War on People Who Hate Freedom" continues; as Americans tire of the toll on our society wrought by increased militarization, their support for the effort will waver and news coverage will start to reflect that.
posted by Ty Webb at 3:38 PM on December 18, 2001

moz how is the war with afghanistan "not....as we were with Germany"? don't they both have planes and guns and kill people? I fail to see how it "doesn't work" for you. How is one war different from another? I took the time to do a little homework. Merriam Webster states war is: "a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations". Furthermore why would you care if incidental civilians are, or are not, getting killed if it is for your future security sake? And why would you be surprised at this sort of slant in the media? Why would you be surprised at any slant in the media? Basically it seems a matter of picking which slant you prefer to the alternatives and going with it.
posted by greyscale at 4:54 PM on December 18, 2001

if this was WWII and the story was about Allied bombing in Germany, would you still beleive that news coverage should focus on civilian casualties?

I really don't think the question is whether news coverage in general should focus on civilian casualties. It's whether a reporter should be allowed to write some stories, or even one single story, that focuses on civilian casualties, and whether a newspaper ought to obscure that aspect of reality from its readers, even if the paper knows it's true and believes that people would read the article.

And nobody_knose, this Jew would prefer that his local paper didn't hide information from him. I'll decide on my own how sorry I am for the dead civilians in enemy territory.
posted by bingo at 5:04 PM on December 18, 2001

I heard a civilian casualties figure on NPR tonight around 70, which seems quite different from the number quoted here.

No more credible, perhaps, but quite different.

War = casualties. Let's hope people around the world are more careful in selecting the governments to represent them on the world stage from now on. In many important respects, the government IS the nation, and as it goes, so go the citizens.
posted by rushmc at 5:23 PM on December 18, 2001

The Panama City paper has always been the paper of record in my household.
Quick: how many civies died in (a) Dresden, (2) Heroshima?

We are at war with the terrorists and the government supporting them (Taliban), and that group has had control over at least 80% of the country of Afghanistan. Germany was a nation at war. We were out to get the ruling party that was our enemy. That was the nazi party.
posted by Postroad at 5:24 PM on December 18, 2001

Let's hope people around the world are more careful in selecting the governments to represent them on the world stage from now on

On the one hand, I agree with you, but on the other hand this is a very unfair way to look at it. In some countries, the choice is accept the regime or accept death. This makes it seem pretty silly to lecture people about taking more care to select their government.
posted by cell divide at 5:38 PM on December 18, 2001

greyscale:

moz how is the war with afghanistan "not....as we were with Germany"?

well, there's the whole declaration of war business which we haven't gone through in this instance as we had for WW2 (eventually).

are the civilians we are incidentally killing in support of the taliban, the northern alliance, or are they neutral? i'm willing to wager that killing them won't put the united states in a positive light regardless of their feelings.

Furthermore why would you care if incidental civilians are, or are not, getting killed if it is for your future security sake?

i'd prefer people not kill innocents in the name of anything.

And why would you be surprised at this sort of slant in the media? Why would you be surprised at any slant in the media?

i never said i was.
posted by moz at 5:47 PM on December 18, 2001

. In many important respects, the government IS the nation, and as it goes, so go the citizens.

Actually, I think that in America, the whole idea is that it's supposed to be the other way around.
posted by bingo at 6:04 PM on December 18, 2001

On the one hand, I agree with you, but on the other hand this is a very unfair way to look at it. In some countries, the choice is accept the regime or accept death. This makes it seem pretty silly to lecture people about taking more care to select their government.

Patrick Henry and I would disagree with you.
posted by rushmc at 6:12 PM on December 18, 2001

Actually, I think that in America, the whole idea is that it's supposed to be the other way around.

Idealism vs. pragmatic reality. I agree with you that it is supposed to be the other way around. The point is, it isn't, most of the time. Even here, much less in Afghanistan.
posted by rushmc at 6:13 PM on December 18, 2001

How many died in the Gulf war? How many died in WWI or WWII? How many died before we started doing the killing? Did people know about civilian casualties in previous wars? Did I miss any?

Now for my question: in what way are those questions or the answers to those questions relevant? Just because something happened before does not mean it should happen again. Conversely, just because a specific and relevant piece of information has, in previous conflicts, gone under reported is not reason that it should continue to do so. The past explains and provides context, it does not justify.
posted by Nothing at 8:46 PM on December 18, 2001

I'm not sure why we're discussing an October news item today (see the date on the memo), but there hasn't been enough good coverage in the U.S. of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan. It's something we should demand of the media -- how can we make an honest defense of this war without facing the full scope of what's taking place there?
posted by rcade at 10:00 PM on December 18, 2001

rushmc said: I heard a civilian casualties figure on NPR tonight around 70, which seems quite different from the number quoted here.

The figure from today's NPR piece was the estimated civilian death toll from 2 weeks of bombing Tora Bora, not the grand total after 10+ weeks of bombing Afghanistan.
posted by dack at 10:11 PM on December 18, 2001

I'm unimpressed with comments about the "low value place on civilian Afghan lives" by people who obviously place a low value on civilian Afghan freedom.

But talk about your revealingly biased propaganda. Let's take apart just the first paragraph, shall we?

What causes the documented high level of civilian casualties

It may be a documented level of civilian casualties, but what makes it "high"?

The explanation is the apparent willingness of U.S. military strategists to fire missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan.

The missiles are being fired at identified, legitimate targets. Some of the targets are in heavily populated areas.

A legacy of the ... civil war ... is military garrisons and facilities ... located in urban areas... Successor Afghan governments inherited these emplacements. To suggest that the Taliban used 'human shields' is more revealing of the historical amnesia and racism of those making such claims, than of Taliban deeds.

The Taliban never had a choice to move their military emplacements? The Taliban ran Afghanistan for five years. The Soviet-backed government was there for twelve. If the Soviets can build them in 12 years, surely the Taliban can move them in five? So, the Taliban chose to continue using high-value military emplacements that were located dangerously close to civilian populations. Subsequently, when the US military campaign began, the Taliban had many opportunities to act in ways that would protect their people from injury. They could evacuate neighborhoods around military installations. They could remove mobile military targets from populated areas. They could, of course, have surrendered and avoided all bloodshed. The statement quoted above is a rationalization wherein the Taliban are not treated as responsible, adult human beings, but as mere reactive automatons subject to the actions of the West. Which is more racist? To say that Afghan religious extremists are capable of making moral choices, or to say that the Taliban were inhuman subjects of actions made by people in the West?

I think the racism is on the other foot here. It's this leftist writer who doesn't see the Afghans as human.

Current Afghan civilian lives must and will be sacrificed in order to [possibly] protect future American lives.

The moral reductionism of a sentence like this is astonishing to the casual viewer. First there is the way the sentence is constructed to appear as an imperative; it is not, however, attributed to any speaker, real or imaginary. It is simply an imperative, masquerading as the motivation which the writer imagines passes for justification in the minds of military planners. Second is the simplistic assumption that this war is only about "possibly protecting future American lives". Actually, I take that back: the writer is being unusually generous. Most of the anti-war crowd simply uses words like "retaliation" or the more inflammatory "revenge" to describe the civilian deaths. Herold at least recognizes that the future actions of the al Qaeda terror network might, themselves, result in deaths. Perhaps those deaths will even be civilian. But note that he does not attach the word "civilian" to the phrase "American lives", as he did for "Afghan lives". This war has been fought with multiple aims, only one of which has been the protecting of "American lives". Certainly America has not been the only victim of al Qaeda-related terror. The secondary aims of the war were shared, in fact, by the recognized government of Afghanistan; other Afghan citizens believed the war was necessary. Reducing it to only a single American aim is specious; reducing it to only American aims is also specious. This is not an honest argument.

Other U.S. bombing targets hit are impossible to 'explain' in terms other than the U.S. seeking to inflict maximum pain upon Afghan society and perceived 'enemies':

Note the scare quotes around the words explain and enemies, not to mention the word perceived. If an enemy who bombs New York City is not an enemy, I suggest the author is twisting the English language out of all recognition. Recognizable military targets including communications facilities and petroleum transportation are labeled "impossible to explain". Certainly the "seeking to inflict maximum pain" phrase is inflammatory and biased. If the US wished to inflict maximum pain, there's certainly a great deal more in our arsenal we could use; and in other articles I'm sure the author would be happy to list these weapons.

Here, he wishes to characterize the deaths which resulted from an exceptionally careful targeting process using exceptionally accurate weapons as "maximum pain", when it should be clear that they are not. We could have firebombed all of Kabul, if that were our intention. It was not. We did not. We bombed specific targets, and people were killed in the process.

I don't think I need to continue; the general dishonesty of this study, the inflammatory language, the illogic, and the reductionist debating tactics should speak for themselves. If the writer wished to simply dispassionately document civilian deaths he could have done so, and left the judgement to others. Instead, there seem to be no civilian deaths which he will accept as justifiable, even when the word "civilian" is being stretched to its limit. (Note the times he slips and has to use the word "people" instead. Are all those "people" civilians? He doesn't say. Why?)

Of course the selective use of victim quotes is itself another deliberate distortion. These individuals are being made to speak for all Afghans. The selectivity of the quotes does not allow you to see whether they are simultaneously able to grasp the horror of their own situation and the overall reasons this has happened.

These are not civilians who are shocked by combat. As the article makes clear there has been war in Afghanistan for over 20 years. These are also not a simple people who were unable to sense that they were under the thumb of a particularly reprehensible theocratic regime, yet again the quotes are selected to make the people appear confused and uninformed about what is happening. This is racist, as racist and distorted as the "noble savage" depictions of the colonial era, and it's shameful of the left to resort to such propaganda.

It's also shameful of the left to continue to apologize for, in this case, Islamic-fundamentalist fascism, by blaming everything that has happened in Afghanistan for the last 25 years on "America". At some point, the Taliban have to be responsible for the bad acts they have done. The left likes to complain about the burqa, quite a bit, but willfully ignores when the Taliban and al Qaeda export violence. If we're supposed to "do something" about the burqa, but doing something about terrorism is condemned, what are we to believe of the moral priorities at play here?
posted by dhartung at 12:06 AM on December 19, 2001

The editor responds: I have been seeing some wires and networks, late in the day, leading with civilian casualties, even if there were very few of them, and then deeper in the story finding out that there is much more important information that should have been in the lead.

You may not believe it, but it's at least worth reading the response of the editor who allegedly wrote the memo (scroll down a few screens or do a search on "Hal Foster"). Maybe he's just backpedaling and making excuses, but his justifications seem pretty reasonable to me.
posted by straight at 5:37 AM on December 19, 2001

The figure from today's NPR piece was the estimated civilian death toll from 2 weeks of bombing Tora Bora, not the grand total after 10+ weeks of bombing Afghanistan.

Ah, that'll teach me to come in half way through a report. Thanks for the clarification.
posted by rushmc at 6:18 AM on December 19, 2001

Great post, dhartung...until you ruined it by starting to rant about the "left."
posted by rushmc at 6:19 AM on December 19, 2001

rushmc: I was, and still may be, part of the "left". My shock at watching people I've admired stake out positions in loonyland has been ... educational. As for my rant, consider it housecleaning.

Something I wanted to add to this but had to fact-check (such as I can). A few things people may not know about Afghanistan.

In 1978, the government of Afghanistan was taken over by Marxists, run by Taraki and then the Soviet-educated Najibullah. Under "Communism with a Human Face" of the Brezhnev years, women's rights were a key element in rehabilitating the image of socialism. Najibullah's government entered a law making literacy compulsory for women.

There had long been tensions between the secular Marxists and a growing Islamist movement. Yes, the Islamists existed before the CIA. They staged mass demonstrations against this policy. (Despite the fiction of liberated Afghan women, generally this was only in the cities where secular, educated people were. In the hinterlands tradition reigned.) The mass demonstrations grew into a widespread movement against the government, and Najibullah panicked. The Afghan Army was sent into Herat, where they systematically murdered between 5000 and 25,000 people (depending on who you believe). At this juncture, the Herat commander Ismail Khan -- the man who runs the city today -- broke with the Army, took his entire Army division into rebellion, and began defending his people. This was the beginning of the mujahedin movement. When the Army was routed from Herat, the Soviet advisers and other Marxist leaders in the city were torn limb from limb and their heads marched around the city on pikes (according to pro-mujahedin sources).

In other words, the entire US air campaign against the Taliban has been, using the maximum numbers provided by biased sources, less deadly than the deliberate massacre in just one city that began the civil war in the first place.

People sometimes need a sense of scale.
posted by dhartung at 6:43 AM on December 19, 2001

dhartung, exactly how is a cluster bomb an 'exceptionally accurate' weapon?

even the 'intelligent' missiles have a one in five mis-targetting rate. at 1 million dollars plus per missile, i'd be asking for a refund!

where is the study being dishonest?

how do you define 'freedom', in relation to the people of afghanistan?

i do not have the time to critique your review of the linked article. you obviously have a problem in dealing with people expressing opinions that differ from yours.

you may find the language used 'inflammatory', others may find the language used by the mainstream media inflammatory.
there have been many massacres in this present conflict and illegal activities, some of which are reported in the western press, how can a 'civilised' county be involved with such an action?

why do you feel the need to justify this barbaric behaviour?
posted by asok at 6:49 AM on December 19, 2001

Cluster bombs are used for spread-out targets like airfields and infantry emplacements. They are as accurate as they need to be. They are not generally used against precision targets for obvious reasons.

A one in five "mis targatting" rate? Back that up. Other reports place the JDAM -- to which I assume you're referring -- at well over 95%. Target misses can occur because of a) faulty intelligence, b) incorrect communication, c) incorrect data entry, d) device failure, e) weather and other variables blowing the weapon off course. When you compare a JDAM to any previous ordnance, there is no way to describe it other than incredibly accurate. Of course, if you take the position that warfare should never result in any civilian deaths, any miss is too many. But we don't have the option of forgoing bombing. Your claim of "one in five" really isn't believable, especially given the lack of certainty about individual targets.

The study is being dishonest in multiple ways. First, it takes aggregate news reports about civilian casualties and assumes they are correct. They often do not agree on numbers, and news reports hardly ever account for the military casualties, hence the use of the word "people" when one wants to fudge. The study is being dishonest in that it makes no attempt to compare the numbers of civilian dead -- remember, which the study has identified as civilian -- with the numbers of military dead, which would give us an idea of whether or not these numbers were excessive in relation to their intended effect. Or should the number of civilian dead be counted independently?

The report makes every claim to being a dispassionate academic totting up of numbers from different sources, yet repeatedly resorts to phony characterizations, sloppy use of language, and yes, "inflammatory" rhetoric -- such as your use of "massacre", "civilised", and "barbaric". They have no place in an account which makes claims to objectivity; when they appear, it is legitimate to question the objectivity of the writer.

I see you consider a shooting battle with escaped, former prisoners of war, who have taken up arms and are attempting to break out of their position, as a "massacre". That is intellectually dishonest. You're fooling yourself.

I fundamentally dispute your characterization of "barbaric behavior". I do not justify it. I deny that it is barbaric. It is not an ideal outcome, but war never takes place under ideal circumstances; it is the very absence of ideal circumstances. It is not a bad choice when there are good ones; it is the very best of several available bad choices.
posted by dhartung at 7:12 AM on December 19, 2001

By the way, asok dear friend, you do realize that "How can you justify such barbaric behavior?" is a childish debating trick on the order of "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" To respond in any way is to appear to accept the faulty premise. It is just this sort of BS which eliminates any possibility of my having respect for you. Have a nice day.
posted by dhartung at 7:16 AM on December 19, 2001

Quick: how many civies died in (a) Dresden...
130,000

...(2) Heroshima?
71,379

Pearl Harbor? 59.
posted by Eamon at 7:39 AM on December 19, 2001

"The innocent dead in a coward's war -- Estimates suggest US bombs have killed at least 3,767 civilians. ...Now, for the first time, a systematic independent study has been carried out into civilian casualties in Afghanistan by Marc Herold, a US economics professor at the University of New Hampshire. Based on corroborated reports from aid agencies, the UN, eyewitnesses, TV stations, newspapers and news agencies around the world, Herold estimates that at least 3,767 civilians were killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10. That is an average of 62 innocent deaths a day - and an even higher figure than the 3,234 now thought to have been killed in New York and Washington on September 11." [The Guardian]
posted by Carol Anne at 6:17 AM on December 20, 2001

Still, once we give it a "sense of scale" and we strip away the "inflammatory language" and the "propaganda", it's still a pretty big number.
posted by lagado at 8:45 PM on December 20, 2001

"The truth is that neither military action nor diplomacy alone will in the short term end terrorism. We're kidding ourselves if we think that anything (even increased security at home) will ever fully end terrorism. But bombing (especially the recent carpet bombing) is not somehow the moral solution, nor is it the 'best of a bad bunch'. Because in the blink of an eye it will be next year and we will have killed 3,000 people ourselves. That's just revenge, not justice."

posted by skylar on November 6
posted by lagado at 9:02 PM on December 20, 2001