[Mb-civic] MUST READ: Making enemies in Pakistan - Derrick Z.
Jackson - Boston Globe Op-Ed
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Sat Jan 21 06:26:11 PST 2006
Making enemies in Pakistan
By Derrick Z. Jackson | January 21, 2006 | The Boston Globe
PAKISTANI OFFICIALS say three or four top Al Qaeda operatives died in
the US airstrike in Pakistan. The reported 13 civilians killed in the
attack faded behind America's arrogant contrition. Republican Senator
John McCain of Arizona on Thursday told MSNBC, ''I understand how this
would upset the Pakistanis, and we regret it. And obviously, we should
do whatever we can to compensate the families of the innocent people who
were killed. But for us to say that Al Qaeda has sanctuary any place in
the world would put us at a significant disadvantage. Again it's a tough
situation. But if we don't take these guys out when we have the chance .
. . "
President Bush has yet to comment on the 13 civilians, which included
women and children. White House press secretary Scott McClellan turned
the deaths upside down, saying, ''We are engaged in a war on terrorism
against a deadly and determined enemy, an enemy that continues to target
innocent civilians. In this war, we go out of our way to target the
enemy, to target the terrorists, those who want to do harm to innocent
civilians in Pakistan, in that region, in the United States. We work
very hard to minimize the loss of civilians. And we go out of our way to
minimize civilian loss."
Let us assume that we got some of the key commanders and weapons experts
in Al Qaeda. The incident remains bloody proof that we are repeating the
Vietnam mistake of destroying villages to save them. If the current
reports hold up, we still killed three times more civilians than
terrorists in the attack, a ratio we would not accept from our local
police, no matter how desperate we are to curb youth violence or
organized crime. That is a gruesome parallel to conservative estimates
that American forces killed at least three times as many innocent
civilians in invading and occupying Iraq than were killed on our shores
on Sept. 11, 2001.
For all the real dangers that foreign terrorism poses, we will not win
the hearts of the world and secure global peace by following the
mentality of William Westmoreland. The late American commander in
Vietnam famously dehumanized civilian slaughter in our 10-to-1 kill
ratio of enemy soldiers by saying, ''The Oriental doesn't put the same
high price on life as does a Westerner . . . life is cheap in the Orient."
Kill ratio is not the only way we declare life cheap in the rest of the
world. It was curious that McCain talked about compensating families of
innocent victims in Pakistan. We have barely done that in Iraq.
According to a 2004 report by Newsday, the US military had given out an
average of $393 to Iraqi families whose loved ones were killed or maimed
by our bombs and bullets. Later an award-winning feature by the Dayton
Daily News found contradictory evidence of American restitution to Iraqi
civilians.
While the Army claimed that 79 percent of 14,000 claims were paid, the
Daily News found through the Freedom of Information Act that only about
25 percent of cases in the Army database resulted in a payment. Prior to
that, Newsday had reported that the military denied compensation in a
little over half the cases.
Contrast that to the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund. It gave out an
average of $2.1 million to families of 2,880 people who were killed and
an average of $400,000 to the 2,680 people who were injured. Contrast
that to what happens when cities are forced to compensate for mistakes
by the police.
Boston made a $5 million settlement with the family of Victoria
Snelgrove, the woman who was killed by a pepper pellet during a rowdy
Red Sox victory celebration. New York City made a $3 million settlement
with the family of Amadou Diallo, who was hit with 41 bullets when
police mistook his wallet for a gun. Riverside, Calif., made a $3
million settlement with the family of Tyisha Miller, who was hit in her
car with 12 of 24 shots, accompanied by racist comments.
On Thursday, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke in New York, again mixing
9/11 with Saddam Hussein and his nonexistent weapons of mass
destruction. Cheney said again that we face ''a loose network of
committed fanatics . . . enemies who hate us, who hate our country, who
hate the liberties for which we stand." His response is fanatical acts
of needlessly invading countries and destroying a village to kill a
terrorist.
Soon, it will not be just our enemies who hate us.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/21/making_enemies_in_pakistan/
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