Let's Be Honest About War And Civilian Deaths

by James Glaser
January 28, 2004

About the only group of people in the world that are both surprised and upset about civilians getting killed in a war zone, is the American Anti-war movement. The rest of the world already knows that civilian deaths happen in every war.

Democracy Now! Had an "Exclusive" report yesterday about how their reporter Jeremy Scahill, confronted General Wesley Clark about his targeting of civilians in the war in Yugoslavia. Clark answered honestly that yes he did target civilians. His part in the war was looked at by the court in The Hague and he was found to have not done anything wrong. Heck, the General was just this year over there testifying against Slobodan Milosevic and if they wanted him, they could have arrested him right then.

The American Anti-war movement must understand that it is no longer a crime to kill civilians in a war zone and hasn't been for hundreds of years. Think about the fact that we killed over a million civilians in Vietnam. We lost and still no one was charged with a war crime. What about the millions and millions of civilians killed by both sides in WW II. Nobody on our side was hanged for the millions we killed.

The Just War Doctrine that every government pulls out as an excuse for going to war was written by Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) AD. The early church didn't even know about the earth revolving around the sun yet and they were still a member of the flat earth society. Still to this day, governments pull out this old Doctrine hoping for some cover for their war.

If in the first millennium and even into the Middle Ages, the church could try and control those in power to have "civilized" wars, it was done to protect church property. The church and its congregation were protected by these rules and the armies had to find a field away from the town or city to do battle in.

This worked for as long as their was one church in charge, but after Martin Luther, things started getting out of hand and all hell broke loose in "civilized" warfare and it is still that way today. Those wars that involved "infidels" were always total chaos.

Today when a nation tells you that they do everything in their power to not kill civilians, that is pretty much true. However, if the other side does not play "fair" and has troops or bases close to a civilian population, then all bets are off.

We know going in that our military, the most powerful military force the world has ever seen, is going to kill civilians. We have way too much fire power not to. The countries that America attacks, at least those in the last 50 years are all very inferior to our forces and the only chance they have is to get a gorilla war going as soon as they can, because we overwhelm any conventional military that we attack.

Gorilla Wars involve civilian populations, so civilians get killed. What any antiwar movement has to do is try and stop all War. Nipping around the edges and trying to protect civilians, casting blame for their deaths is a waste of time and effort. We will never have a "clean war," where one nation's military fights another on a battlefield away from civilian populations. Our bombs and guns have become too powerful to limit a battle. On top of that, both sides would cheat if they could. Military Chivalry and Honor went out centuries ago.


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