TERRORISM AND A
JUST WAR
Let's Not Fool Ourselves About What We're Doing In Afghanistan
Let's Not Fool Ourselves About What We're Doing In Afghanistan
Howard Zinn is an historian and author of A People's History of the United States.
There are some people on what is loosely called "The Left" who have said publicly that while they have been opposed to previous American military interventions, they consider the present action in Afghanistan as a "just war."
I have puzzled over this. How can a war be "truly just" which involves the daily killing of civilians; which is terrorizing the people of Afghanistan, causing hundreds of thousands of men, women, children to leave their homes to escape the bombs; which has little chance of finding those who planned the September 11th tragedy (and even if found, no chance that this would stop terrorism); and which can only multiply the ranks of people who are angry at this country, from whose ranks terrorists are born?
The stories of the effects of our bombing are beginning to come through, in bits and pieces: the wounded children arriving across the border, one barely two months old, swathed in bloody bandages; the Red Cross warehouses bombed; the use of deadly cluster bombs; a small mountain village bombed and entire families wiped out.
That is only a few weeks into the bombing. The "war against terrorism" has become a war against innocent men, women, and children, who are in no way responsible for the terrorist attack on New York.
I believe the supporters of the war have confused a "just cause" with a "just war." A cause may be just -- like ending terrorism. But it does not follow that going to war on behalf of that cause, with the inevitable mayhem that follows, is just.
Richard Falk talks of "limited military action." But the momentum of war rides roughshod over limits. Atrocities are explained by the deceptive language of "accident," "military targets," "collateral damage." Killing innocent people in war is not an "accident." It is an inevitability.
The moral equation in Afghanistan is clear. Civilian casualties are certain. The outcome is uncertain. Take the money allocated for our huge military machine and use it to combat starvation and disease around the world. One third of our military budget would provide water and sanitation facilities for the billion people in the world who have none.
Let us be a more modest nation. The modest nations of the world don't face the threat of terrorism. Let us pull back from being a military superpower and become a humanitarian superpower. We, and everyone else, will then be more secure.
THE END
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