“Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
President Obama stated more than once on the campaign trail that he didn’t only want to end the war in Iraq, he wanted to “end the mind-set that got us into the war.” This was one of the many visionary statements our new president made and was a major reason why I and millions of others voted him into office.
Obama has set in motion the process for fulfilling his promise to end the war in Iraq. He has ordered all combat troops out of Iraq by August 2010 — a few months later than his 16-month campaign promise, but close enough for government work. Some 50,000 noncombat troops are to remain, but he has also stated that all troops will be out of Iraq by 2011. If this comes to pass, our misadventure in Iraq will truly be over and the Iraqi-led process of reconciliation and re-building can continue.
While these are very promising developments regarding Obama’s promise to end the war in Iraq, it does not look so promising regarding the more visionary goal of ending the mind-set that got us into this horrendous war.
To date, Obama has ordered 21,000 new troops be sent to Afghanistan in order to quell the resurgence of the Taliban — the repressive fundamentalist movement that the United States and its allies removed from power in 2001. This is not the answer. Civilian deaths, maimings and other injuries mount by the day in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are no official figures regarding civilian casualties in Afghanistan and this is itself a major problem. Unofficial counts put U.S.-inflicted civilian deaths in Afghanistan at 8,000 to 28,000, based on news reports. This is surely an under-counting, as counts based on news sources always are. Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s embattled and ineffectual president, repeatedly pleads with our commanders and politicians to minimize civilian casualties — highlighting the obvious negative consequence of such impacts on the U.S. war effort and our image more generally.
The most glaring incident occurred in July 2008. A wedding party, considered by the U.S. military to be a “target of opportunity,” was attacked from the air. Forty-seven civilians were killed, including 39 women and children. The U.S. military at first denied any civilians were killed. But after investigations by many parties, the military finally agreed it had struck a wedding party and killed 47 civilians. Many other incidents like this have occurred in the last eight years, all of which are met first by official denials and then by an admission that a horrible tragedy has occurred.
A 2008 report from Human Rights Watch concludes: “The combination of light ground forces and overwhelming air power has become the dominant doctrine of war for the U.S. in Afghanistan. The result has been large numbers of civilian casualties, controversy over the continued use of air power in Afghanistan, and intense criticism of U.S. and NATO forces by Afghan political leaders and the general public.” Obama appears to be upping the ante on this failed strategy — exactly the wrong direction he should be going.
Civilian deaths and injuries in Iraq, however, have been far, far higher. The most recent comprehensive survey, from the British surveying company Opinion Research Business, found (based on interviews with 1,500 randomly selected Iraqis) that by the middle of 2006 there had been 1.2 million excess deaths, plus or minus 2.5 percent, since the 2002 invasion — fully 5 percent of the population. That same percentage of the U.S. population would be 15 million people. These figures, if even remotely accurate, obviously demonstrate a tragedy of the highest order has been perpetrated. And, in my view, crimes of the highest order have also been committed.
We cannot simply forget these impacts. The past is not wiped clean because we have a new president and a new policy to end the war in Iraq. We must learn from these mistakes, tragedies and crimes and never repeat them.
On Iran, a major foreign policy issue for the last administration and this one, Obama has not acted or sounded very different than former President George W. Bush, despite some promising rhetoric in reaching out to Iran’s leaders and people. Obama and his foreign policy team continue to make clear their view that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, despite the International Atomic Energy Agency’s repeated failure to find any strong evidence that there is such an effort (although the IAEA has expressed long-standing concern about Iran’s lack of full compliance with information requests), and despite the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had suspended its attempts to make nuclear weapons in 2003 and that it was unlikely Iran had changed this policy as of mid-2007. Obama administration officials continue to state that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons without citing any new evidence to contradict the 2007 report, which still stands as the collective judgment of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. Obama’s tone toward Iran is encouraging, but Iran will continue to react negatively to threats that aren’t based on good evidence.
On Israel, Obama’s words and political appointments indicate the United States will likely continue its uncritical pro-Israel stance regarding the Palestinian conflict and conflicts with other neighbors, despite Israel’s noncompliance with numerous U.N. resolutions and violations of the laws of war. Israel is consistently the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, receiving about $3 billion each year in recent years and a total of more than $100 billion since World War II. Israel is a rich nation, so there is no good reason why it should receive this level of funding from the United States — or any funding from us at all, for that matter. Moreover, Israel’s aggressive policies were explicitly mirrored in U.S. action in Iraq and Afghanistan — leading to a similarly high level of civilian casualties. Recent statements from Israeli soldiers, described in detail in Ha’aretz and Maariv, two major Israeli newspapers, demonstrate that it was official Israeli policy to, among other things, shoot any and all Palestinians in homes invaded by Israeli troops in the recent Gaza invasion. One Israeli soldier talked about the permissiveness regarding the rules of engagement in Gaza: “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road ... He doesn’t have to be with a weapon ... and you can just shoot him. With us it was an old woman, on whom I didn’t see any weapon. The order was to take that person out, that woman, the moment you see her.” The same soldier discussed his dismay about an order to kill every Palestinian upon sight as they entered homes in the Gaza Strip.
This is insanity and utter immorality. Hamas and some other Palestinian groups also indulge in extreme immorality by targeting Israeli civilians and this must stop — there is never justification for targeting civilians for any purpose. But Israel’s actions must not sink to similar levels of depravity. In many ways, Israel’s actions are worse because they are official policy. Terrorism can be practiced by nonstate actors and by states. The United States and Israel are, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon, committing what would be called terrorism if practiced by nonstate actors. Amnesty International recently concluded that Israel had committed war crimes in its latest misadventure into the Gaza Strip. And these actions are all funded by our tax dollars. This must stop.
We are, then, far from ending the mind-set that got us into Iraq and are moving in the opposite direction in many ways. We must take Gandhi’s admonition seriously and reserve violence — war in this case — for the most rare occasions. International law allows for armed defensive actions when a nation is attacked and this is clearly good sense. Preemptive war is also permissible when it is certain that an attack is imminent. Preventive war — the essence of the Bush Doctrine — is very different than preemptive war. Preventive war advocates argue that the United States may take action when it fears a future attack but has no evidence an attack is imminent. There are no limits on war under this doctrine, because any argument may be made that a given country or region poses a future threat. This doctrine must be relegated to the trash heap of history.
Obama is, however, practicing preventive war in Pakistan, another major trouble spot regarding global security. He has ramped up unmanned aircraft strikes in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is explicitly contrary to international law and good sense because there is no immediate threat to the United States from this region and it is counterproductive, to say the least, to ongoing U.S. efforts to create a stable democracy in this nuclear weapon-empowered Muslim nation. There are other ways to effect change in Pakistan and other troubled regions, through building civil society and dialogue. These “smart power” techniques have worked well in other hot spots around the world.
We must also strengthen international institutions like the United Nations, providing them with greater power to prevent conflicts and enforce international law. This is a long road, but Obama should take advantage of this moment in history, when the United States still enjoys great power and a renewed admiration around the world, and use his enormous influence to work toward a world in which no single nation can wage aggressive war against the judgment of its peers. We must also, as a nation, conduct a serious soul-searching about our collective reaction to the 9/11 attacks. As part of this inquiry, we should all question our own feelings about violence and its permissible use.
Through these actions we may eventually move toward truly ending the mind-set that got us into the Iraq war.
— Tam Hunt is a Santa Barbara-based attorney.
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