Bellum Justum

"It is part of the mechanism of domination to forbid recognition of the
suffering it produces, and there is a straight line of development between
the gospel of happiness and the construction of camps of extermination so
far off in Poland that each of our own countrymen can convince himself that
he cannot hear the screams of pain."--Theodor Adorno

To: Retort
Here is Cockburn's most recent editorial



The Left and The Just War
Alexander Cockburn
Oct 27, Counterpunch

The left is getting itself tied up in knots about the Just War and the
propriety of bombing Afghanistan. I suspect some are intimidated by laptop
bombardiers and kindred bullyboys handing out white feathers and snarling
about "collaborators" and being "soft on fascism." A recent issue of The
Nation carried earnest efforts by Richard Falk and an editorial writer to
mark out "the relevant frameworks of moral, legal and religious restraint"
to be applied to the lethal business of attacking Afghans. I felt sorry for
Falk as he clambered through his moral obstacle course. This business of
trying to define a just war against Afghanistan is what C. Wright Mills used
to call crackpot realism.

War, as the United States has been fighting it in Iraq and Yugoslavia,
consists mostly of bombing, intended to terrify the population and destroy
the fabric of tolerable social existence. Here's how a couple of Pentagon
briefers described the infliction of terror, as reported by Jonathan Landay
of the San Jose Mercury News on October 17: "'If you're on the ground and
get hit with a bomb from a B-52 it's over,' the officer said. 'But if you're
there and you hear an AC-130 coming, with its Gatling gun going, the
experience can be even more frightening.'" Marine Corps Lieut. Gen. Gregory
Newbold provided further context: "The psychological effect was intended to
convince the Taliban leadership that they have made an error and their
calculus some day will be in their interests to see that."

Those AC-130s were over Kabul. What else can the consequence be but to
terrify and kill civilians, whose anguish may or may not impinge upon the
"calculus" of the Taliban leaders? Remember, too, that bombs mostly miss
their targets. Colonel John Warden, who planned the air campaign in Iraq
said afterwards that dropping dumb bombs "is like shooting skeet. 499 out of
500 pellets may miss the target, but that's irrelevant." There will always
be shattered hospitals and wrecked old folks' homes, just as there will
always be Defense Department flacks saying that the destruction "cannot be
independently verified" or that the hospital or old folks' home were
actually sanctuaries for enemy forces, for "command and control."

How many bombing campaigns do we have to go through in a decade to recognize
all the usual landmarks? What's unusual about the latest onslaught is that
it is being leveled at a country where, on numerous estimates from reputable
organizations, around 7.5 million people were, before September 11, at risk
of starving to death. On September 16 the New York Times' Islamabad
correspondent, John Burns, reported that the United States "demanded
elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other
supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population." In early October the UN's
World Food Program was able to resume shipments at a lower level, then the
bombing began and everything stopped once more, amid fierce outcry from
relief agencies that the United States was placing millions at risk, with
winter just around the corner.

On October 15 the UN's special rapporteur, Jean Ziegler, said in Geneva that
the food airdrops by the same military force dropping bombs undermined the
credibility of humanitarian aid. "As special rapporteur I must condemn with
the last ounce of energy this operation called snowdropping [the air drops
of food packagers]; it is totally catastrophic for humanitarian aid." Oxfam
reckons that before September 11, 400,000 were on the edge of starvation
("acute food insecurity"), 5.5 million "extremely vulnerable" and the
balance of the overall 7.5 million at great risk. Once it starts snowing,
500,000 will be cut off from the food convoys that should, were it not for
the bombing, have been getting them provisions for the winter.

So, by the time Falk was inscribing the protocols of what a just war might
be, the United States was already engineering civilian deaths on an immense
scale. Not, to be sure, the ghastly instant entombment of September 11, what
Noam Chomsky has called "the most devastating instant human toll of any
crime in history, outside of war," but death on the installment plan:
malnutrition, infant mortality, disease, premature death for the old and so
on. The numbers will climb and climb, and there won't be any "independent
verification" such as the Pentagon demands.

Let's not be pettifogging and dwell on the point that nothing resembling
proof of bin Laden's responsibility for the September 11 attack has yet been
put forward either by the United States nor its subordinate in Downing St.
Disregarding the fact that the Bush administration now seems to be
substituting Mullah Omar and the Arch Devil (thus perhaps somehow trying to
make all out war on Afghanistan more explicable). Let's accept the so far
unproven charge that the supreme strategist of the September 11 terror is
Osama bin Laden. He's the Enemy. So what have been this Enemy's objectives?
He desires the widest possible war; to kill Americans on American soil; to
destroy the symbols of US military power; to engage the United States in a
holy war. The first two objectives the Enemy could accomplish by themselves;
the third required the cooperation of the United States. Bush fell into the
trap and Falk, The Nation and some on the left have jumped in after him.

There can be no "limited war with limited objectives" when the bombing sets
matches to tinder from Pakistan and Kashmir to Ramallah, Bethlehem,
Jerusalem. "Limited war" is a far less realistic prospect than to regard
September 11 as a crime, to pursue its perpetrators to justice in an
international court, using all relevant police and intelligence agencies
here and abroad.

The left should be for peace, which in no way means ignoring the demands of
either side. Bin Laden calls for: an end to sanctions on Iraq; US troops out
of Saudi Arabia; justice for Palestinians. The left says Aye to those,
though we want a two-state solution, whereas bin Laden wants to drive Jews
along with secular and Christian Palestinians into the sea. The US
government calls for a dismantling of the Terror Network, and the left says
aye to that too. Of course we oppose networks of people who wage war on
civilians.

So we're pretty close to supporting demands on both sides, but we know these
demands are not going to be achieved by war. What is this war about? On
Bush's side it's about the defense of the American Empire; on the other, an
attempt to challenge that Empire in the name of theocratic fundamentalist
Islam. On that issue the left is against both sides. We don't want anyone to
kill or die in the name of the American Empire, for the "war on terror" to
be cashed in blood in Colombia or anywhere else, or for anyone to kill or
die in the name of Islamic fundamentalism. Go to the UN, proceed on the
basis that September 11 was a crime. Bring the perpetrators to justice by
legal means.

A final word about "rationalizing": After the Columbine school killings,
people called for more security in schools. They also asked big questions:
How could we have raised such children? Was it distance parenting, violence
in culture, bullying? If you asked such questions, no one confused
explanation with justification. No one charged you with being soft on teen
killers.

Leave the final word to Seth Bardacke who remarked to his father Frank, the
afternoon of September 11, "I guess now we know that bombing civilians is
wrong."

Doug Lummis, a friend of the Bardackes and of mine, then wrote in his
widely-read column in a Japanese newspaper, "The son of an American Jewish
friend of mine in a telephone call to his father said I guess this proves
bombing civilians is wrong. Of course there are countless people around the
world who don't need such proof. Nevertheless, I find the statement
extraordinary in its simple wisdom. It doesn't use the crimes of the past
(the countless civilians who have been killed by US bombs) to lighten the
criminality of the New York and Washington attacks. Rather it suggests that
fully grasping the total criminality and horror of those attacks can be used
to grasp the equal criminality and horror of similar acts in rhe past. This
understanding can provide a solid ground for opposing all similar acts
(including state terrorism) in the future." CP