Casual Casualities
All right, I know I'm going to come across as a heartless warmongering baby killer here, but that's only because I'm a heartless warmongering baby killer. Well, not really, but you can pretend if you wish.
Listen, yes, this war is translating into civilian casualties. We knew going in that this would be the case. Mothers would die. Fathers would die. Children would die. Puppies and kittens would die. And, hopefully, Saddam Hussein would die in a spray of crimson and moustache. And, yes, the Iraqi leadership, lacking a military capable of winning a physical war with the U.S., is doing their best to win the propaganda war. That means we're going to be treated to pictures of dead civilians every day, compliments of Al Jazeera and any other media outlet that Iraq leaks photos to.
Of course, the anti-war protestors lap this stuff up like its candy, using it as background noise while staging their moronic "die ins" and whatever other grand theatrical show that gets them on television. They hold up these pictures as proof that the U.S. military, and its bombing raids, are tearing through the Iraqi citizenry with reckless abandon, and they yell and scream that precision bombing is a farce. Riiiiggght (insert Dr. Evil inflection). As soon as the U.S. decides to fire up their B-52s and conduct carpet bombing assaults on Baghdad, then come and talk to me. When we start gunning down civilians rather than bandaging their wounds, give me a call. When soldiers start playing games of keep-away with shipments of humanitarian aid, perhaps I'll raise an eyebrow. Then, and only then, will I re-consider my pro-war stance.
As an Iraqi ex pat recently pointed out, war kills civilians, but Saddam's regime kills civilians on a daily basis anyway. The irony in the anti-war stance here is that they can't, or won't, see that point. Apparently, if the U.S. accidentally kills Iraqi civilians, it's a tragedy and a crime of the highest order, but if Saddam and his cronies kill for the fun of it, well, that's not our problem.
We're up against an enemy that wears U.S. uniforms to attack our troops and visit misery, rape and torture on their own people so they can blame the U.S. An enemy that puts military targets in the middle of heavily populated areas knowing full well they're going to get bombed. An enemy that runs command and control operations from hospitals. An enemy that snaps pictures of dead civilians that they don't actually give a rat's ass about, but they know it makes good PR.
In WWII, London, Berlin and Tokyo were all bombed to atomized mist with no regard for the populations being decimated below. Now we're doing our best to put the population in high regard, and we're somehow the bad guy? Anti-war factions have no idea how restrained the U.S. military is in its use of force on Iraq.
I admit that the loss of civilians is unfortunate, but I'm certainly not going to dwell on it or lose sleep over it. We're at war.
Posted by Ryan at March 28, 2003 02:41 PM
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