[Mb-civic] Making enemies in Pakistan

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

  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/2006/01/2
1/making_enemies_in_pakistan/


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"A war of aggression is the supreme international crime." -- Robert Jackson,
 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

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