Aerial Bombardment In The Racist Contemporary

Everything is predictable. The aerial sorties, the helicopter operations, theSpecial Forces raids, the encouragement of a local ally (here the NorthernAlliance). What was also predictable was the inevitable "errant clusterbomb" and the "collateral damage."

Reports came in almost immediately from sources that the US tends to consider"unconfirmed" (such as Iranian television) that "errantbombs" landed in civilian areas and took civilian lives. We heard of thebombs on a UN mine-removal office in Kabul, we heard of the two strikes onHerat, and we heard about the bombing of the CNN (Communist News Networks,according to some Republicans!) offices in Kandahar as well as the Al-Jazeeranetwork office. The New York Times reported (John F. Burns, "ErrantCluster Bomb Leaves Danger Behind, UN Says," 25 October 2001) "thePentagon has said errors were unavoidable in a bombing campaign of the intensityof that being conducted in Afghanistan." The United Nations, whosecredibility is stretched to the limit once again, reports that "residentialareas and some villages" have become targets of "errant clusterbombs" because "Taliban troops have moved into those areas."There is little concern that however smart we think the bombs can be,"errors" in the world of aerial bombardment are inevitable.

To say that the civilian deaths from aerial bombardment are unintentional issophistry, because if there is a probability that the bombs will hit civiliantargets, then ipso facto the civilian deaths are not unintentional. This istantamount to saying that a drunk driver who did not intend to kill someone inan "accident" should be set free for good motives. US law prosecutesdrunk drivers regardless of whether they have been in an accident, because itrecognizes that drunk driving is an inevitable accident. The same must be saidof aerial bombardment. It always already intends to kill civilians, despite thebest intentions of the military planners.

Early laws on warfare recognized the question of "intention" assophistry, but even here there was a desire to accommodate flagrant acts ofmilitary violence. It began well in 1899 and then went downhill by 1907. HagueII (Laws and Customs of War on Land, 29 July 1899; and ratified by the US Senateon 14 March 1902) was farsighted in its insistence (article XXIII) that militarycombat should prohibit "arms, projectiles, or material of a nature to causesuperfluous injury." By Hague IV (18 October 1907, and ratified by the USSenate the next year) the last phrase was amended to read, "to causeunnecessary suffering." Necessary suffering, I suspect, was permissible.

But all this was before the present history of bombing, as recounted sowonderfully by Sven Lindquist in his new book (New Press, 2001). For the firstact of aerial bombardment only took place on 26 October 1911 when the ItalianAir Force bombed Tripoli in their war against Turkish North Africa. As areaction to the violent turn of air warfare and the fear that it would be turnedagainst each other, the powers committed to end aerial bombardment, but thetreaty they penned did not come into effect. That rather farsighted treaty(Draft Rules on Aerial Warfare, February 1923) pointedly noted (in article XXII)that "aerial bombardment for the purpose of terrorizing the civilianpopulation, of destroying or damaging private property not of militarycharacter, or of injuring non-combatants is prohibited," and furthermore(according to article XXIV) any belligerent state that did bomb civilian targetshad to compensate them.

The very next year Squadron Leader Arthur "Bomber" Harris of theRoyal Air Force ruthlessly bombed the Kurds and Iraqis. In March of 1924, Harrisreported the following to his superiors (the text of which was added to theRAF's August 1924 "Notes on the Method of Employment of Air Arm inIraq," a report to Parliament, thereafter expunged from the record):"Where the Arab and Kurd had just begun to realise that if they could standa little noise they could stand bombings, they now know what real bombing means,in casualties and damage; they now know that within forty-five minutes afull-sized village (vide attached photos of Kushan-Al-Ajaza) can be practicallywiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured by four or fivemachines which offer them no real target, no opportunity for glory as warriors,no effective means of escape."

By the time the next major convention against aerial bombing was drafted, allthe major powers joined in the immorality of bombardment. The Spanish inMorocco, over the city of Chechaouen; the French in Syria (the bombardment ofDamascus' neighborhoods on 18 October 1925); the United States in CentralAmerica (the bombardment of revolutionary Nicaraguan farmers in the 1920s); andfinally, those who started it, the Italians in Ethiopia in 1935-36. But race isat the heart of "international" revulsion at aerial bombing. AsLindquist puts it, "the truth about Chechaouen required no cover-up.Bombing natives was considered quite natural. The Italians did it in Libya, theFrench did it in Morocco, and the British did it throughout the Middle East, inIndia, and East Africa, while the South Africans did it in Southwest Africa.Will any ambassador ever ask for forgiveness for that? Of all these bombedcities and villages, only Guernica [in Spain, bombed by the Fascists in 1937]went down in history. Because Guernica lies in Europe. In Guernica, we were theones who died."

On the eve of World War II, on 30 September 1938, the League of Nationsproduced a unanimous resolution entitled "Protection of CivilianPopulations Against Bombing from the Air in Case of War." The Leaguedeclared, "intentional bombing of civilian populations is illegal"mainly because "on numerous occasions public opinion has expressed throughthe most authoritative channels its horror of the bombing of civilianpopulations." The key word here is "intentional" and the Leaguedid not go over the philosophical conundrums posed by the word, as they perhapsshould have to prevent the sophistry of "collateral damage" and"errant cluster bombs." On the first day of World War II (1 September1939), US President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote a note to the governments ofFrance, Germany, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom, begging them to desistfrom aerial bombardment.

The note bears quotation in full: "The ruthless bombing from the air ofcivilians in unfortified centers of population during the course of thehostilities which have raged in various quarters of the earth during the pastfew years, which has resulted in the maiming and in the death of thousands ofdefenseless men, women, and children, has sickened the hearts of every civilizedman and woman, and has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity. If resortis had to this form of inhuman barbarism during the period of the tragicconflagration with which the world is now confronted, hundreds of thousands ofinnocent human beings who have no responsibility for, and who are not evenremotely participating in, the hostilities which have now broken out, will losetheir lives. I am therefore addressing this urgent appeal to every governmentwhich may be engaged in hostilities publicly to affirm its determination thatits armed forces shall in no event, and under no circumstances, undertake thebombardment from the air of civilian populations or of unfortified cities, uponthe understanding that these same rules of warfare will be scrupulously observedby all of their opponents. I request an immediate reply."

The immediate reply was on 20 June 1940 when the Royal Air Force began thebombardment of Germany (and declared that industrial centers and the workers'homes beside them are legitimate targets), and when the Nazi regime began theBlitz against the British on 6 September. Munich, Coventry, London, Hamburg, andthen finally Dresden - this was the barbarism of aerial bombardment withinEurope. On 27 July 1943, the RAF killed 50,000 people in Hamburg. Reflecting onthis barbarity, nuclear physicist Freeman Dyson who was then a clerk for Arthur"Bomber" Harris wrote that the Nazis "had sat in their offices,writing memoranda and calculating how to murder people efficiently, just likeme. The main difference was that they were sent to jail or hanged as warcriminals, while I went free."

Eighty per cent of all the bombs in World War II fell in the last ten monthsof the war during which the British, for instance, decided to bomb residentialareas with the argument that this would foreshorten the war. The US borrowedthis logic at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but only after the USAF firebombed Tokyoon 8 May (General Curtis LeMay who directed the operations, said "we knewwe were going to kill a lot of women and kids when we burned that town. Had tobe done"). On 13 February 1945, the RAF killed 100,000 in Dresden; on 6August 1945, the USAF killed 100,000 instantly in Hiroshima (another 100,000died over the course of the next year). Two days later, the Soviets, theBritish, the French and the US signed the Nuremberg principles - an act of utterhypocrisy. A "war crime" (article VI) is specifically defined by theseprinciples as the "wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, ordevastation not justified by military necessity." No action was takenagainst the signatories, now the guardians of the new world order.

Not even against the French army in Madagascar, where the French massacred bybombardment 89,000 to 100,000 people in 1948 in the anti-colonial wars. Nor wasthere to be any action against the US air force for its acts in Korea (1950-53):A senior officer in General MacArthur's command hoped that a harsh US attackwould "give these yellow b astards what is coming to them." The racisthatred of the Asians took the form of ruthless destruction, such as aerial raidson the northern part of the peninsula to destroy irrigation dams that providedwater for three-quarters of the north's food production.

"The subsequent flash flood waters wiped out [supply routes, etc],"the US air force noted in an official report. "The Westerner can littleconceive the awesome meaning which the loss of [rice] has for the Asian -starvation and slow death." From Korea to Vietnam, to the carpetbombardment of Cambodia, the list is endless from here on, and Lindquist coverssome of the ground for us. The US dropped four times the amount of firepower onVietnam than was used in the entire Second World War, a tonnage equivalent tosix hundred and forty Hiroshimas - some of this includes the 373,000 tons ofnapalm that seared the Vietnamese landscape and made the construction ofsocialism in that land so much harder.

In 1964, US President Lyndon Johnson built on the fabricated Tonkin Gulfincident to demand that the military be allowed to employ "all necessarymeasures" in the war. Since then we have moved to depleted uranium, to talkof tactical nuclear missiles, and the routine use of napalm and cruise missiles.On 19 December 1968, the UN's "Resolution on Human Rights" affirmedthe International Red Cross's 1965 Vienna statement that combatants cannot adopt"unlimited" means to injure the enemy, that "it is prohibited tolaunch attacks against the civilian populations" and (here we are on weakterritory that dilutes the problem of the "intentional") "thatthe distinction must be made at all times between persons taking part in thehostilities and members of the civilian population to the effect that the latterbe spared as much as possible."

As much as possible - not entirely, not totally. There will be casualties -this is the realism, the pragmatism of the racist contemporary - where we acceptas given that a few of the dehumanized other will succumb to the pedagogy of thebomb despite our best, most civilized intentions.

In 1996 the International Court of Justice, bombarded with three millionsignatures on an anti-nuclear petition, among other incentives, voted"unanimously, that threat or use of nuclear weapons is illegal" whenit violates various UN statutes, but three justices (from Sierra Leone, Guyanaand Sri Lanka) wanted to go further and ban nuclear weapons under anycircumstances. They knew that bombs such as these are used basically againstthose of color, those who are already subhuman to Europe-US, seen to require therod for discipline, seen to be a civilization apart.

Lindquist documents the genocidal fantasies of Europe-US against the coloredOther, from Charles Dilke's 1869 Greater Britain (which calls for the"gradual extinction of the inferior races" as a "blessing ofmankind" and does so as airplanes drop "a rain of awful death to everybreathing thing [in China], a rain that exterminates the hopeless race") toJack London's 1910 The Unparalled Invasion (which calls for an aerialbombardment of the Chinese by fragile glass tubes that carry every possiblebiological weapon - and those that flee are felled by the powers at theirborders, the land is disinfected and then whites move into a cleansed China)."The dream of solving all the problems of the world through massdestruction from the air was already in place," Lindquist writes,"before the first bomb was dropped. "

There is talk of tactical nuclear devices, and the US has probably alreadyused depleted uranium shells. The Pakistani government sealed its borders andrefugees are being sent back to desolation. The UN High Commissioner onRefugees, Mary Robinson, calls for an end to the bombardment so that food can besent into Afghanistan, real food not the measly food drops orchestrated forpropaganda by the US State Department. None of this is to be heeded, as thecampaign continues, as bombs fall, as "errant cluster bombs" land oncivilian targets who are now "collateral damage."

The Taliban bomb without concern for human life, Hikmatyar (a great CIAasset) once killed 25,000 people by indiscriminate rocket fire into Kabul, andnow the US bombs "with precision" from the air to shift rubble fromone valley to the next, to devastate the productive capacity of Afghanistan andleave it as easy pickings for the next marauder who wants a strategic post onthe Great Silk Road. There are those who die "unintentionally" andthen there will be those who will starve because we have decapitated thecapacity of the country. Where is the Geneva Convention when we need it? Ourgrief is not a cry for war.

(Vijay Prashad is Associate Professor and Director, International StudiesProgram, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA)