Paved With Good Intentions

In war, what distinguishes the good guys from the bad? The bad guys take aim at the innocent and the helpless. They do dastardly things like crashing passenger airplanes into buildings full of people, bombing nightclubs full of teenagers and bulldozing entire residential neighborhoods to punish one suspected terrorist.

The good guys, on the other hand, do their utmost to protect civilians during times of war. They use laser-guided “smart bombs” to make sure that they blow up only military installations and not civilians. Along with their explosives, they also drop thousands of tasty treats, ensuring that the poor people living behind enemy lines do not starve. They are even kind enough to halt bombing on the enemy’s weekly holy day.

At least this is how the story goes. Since the beginning of America’s war against Afghanistan (a.k.a. “Terror”), Bush, Cheney and Co. have maintained their moral high ground through a variety of well-intentioned measures designed to make this war as painless as possible for civilians. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions—a lesson Afghanis have already learned.

Let’s start with the much-praised “smart bombs.” In theory, even if a target is in a residential neighborhood, a smart bomb can annihilate it with limited risk to the surrounding area. In practice, however, “smart bombs” are only 60 percent accurate, according to statistics compiled by the Pentagon during the Gulf War. Perhaps this is satisfactory performance by military standards, but it means that for every 1,000 bombs dropped, 400 will go astray and land in schools, hospitals and homes. And this estimate assumes that all of the bombs dropped are, in fact, smart bombs. However, the Pentagon tactfully neglects to mention that only a very small percentage of our bombs are smart. During the Gulf War, smart bombs accounted for only about 7 percent of explosives dropped on Iraq and Kuwait. The rest—all 88,500 tons—were of the dumb variety, which missed their targets 70 percent of the time. Maybe this time around we are using a few more smart bombs for every dumb bomb, and maybe the dumb bombs have gotten smarter (more accurate). Of course, the Pentagon will not release these figures until the war is over and the dust has cleared—when it is too late for the American public to complain.

Washington knows it can sustain this war only as long as American voters and our so-called allies support it. In an attempt to show that it cares about the Afghanis who will be starved or made homeless by this war, our planes have been dropping food packets into Afghan territory. But when you drop anything from 15,000 feet, it is a miracle if it arrives intact. And when these food packets do reach the ground safely, it is unlikely that they reach their intended recipients. In 1999, U.S. forces conducted a similar operation in Kosovo, and most of the food ended up in the hands of Yugoslav soldiers. Even Rep. Jim Colby (R-Ariz.), who chairs the congressional committee that approved the food drops, admits that the operation is “symbolic more than anything.”

Other critics are less merciful. “It looks like what is happening is some sort of silent genocide,” Noam Chomsky wrote in a recent op-ed. Before the war, eight million Afganis were on the brink of starvation. The only thing keeping these people alive was the food rations provided by international NGOs and the United Nations World Food Program. But when the bombing began, these organizations were forced to abandon the eight million Afghanis who depended on them for their daily bread. Suppose the food drop operation was flawless and all 37,000 daily packets reach their intended recipients. Even under this best-case scenario, millions of Afghanis will starve. While our bombs may kill a few hundred Afghanis, the bombing campaign will be indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions.

Yet even if President Bush is responsible for starving millions of innocent people, he can be proud nonetheless for making this a war against terrorists and “not a war against Islam.” To our president’s credit, he made this point frequently and emphatically, all the while soliciting Muslim countries for support. U.S. armed forces also respectfully ceased bombing on the first Friday of the bombing campaign to let Afghanis pray in peace on the holiest day of the week. And over these past five weeks, there has been a constant rush to pulverize Afghan cities quickly in order to complete the campaign before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

But Afghanis have a hard time believing that this is not a war against them, especially as bombs shower their villages. Try telling Shaida Ahmed, 14, that the bomb that killed her mother was meant for Osama bin Laden. The Times of London reported that U.S. planes bombed Shaida’s village on the evening of Oct. 22, killing 17, presumably by mistake. Villagers of Chowker Karez claim that neither the Taliban nor bin Laden has any association with their village—a claim that human rights investigators have verified.

Fine, this is not a war against Islam. But it is a war against Muslims. Afghan Muslims. And Afghan Christians. And Afghan Hindus. A war against anyone unfortunate enough to live in this war-plagued nation.

In this struggle of good versus evil, the only thing separating the good guys from the bad are good intentions. We do not intend to bomb civilians, but we do it. We do not intend to starve millions of people, but we do it. We do not intend to make war on Muslims, but we do it. One hopes the recent successes of the Northern Alliance will prompt Washington to stop trampling on a country that has already been trampled on by 25 years of warfare. Otherwise, we will be the most benevolent perpetrators of genocide history has ever known.

Nader R. Hasan ’02 is a government concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.