Of Human Shields, Collateral Damage and Consequences

by Bruce Monson, 3/15/03

 

"Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power"

                                                                                                             --George Bernard Shaw (1940)

 

The Hypothetical  

Suppose there was a gunman (we'll call him a terrorist) holding a group of school children hostage at a daycare center in your city.  Let's say that there are 60 children total in the school and the gunman is using 15 of them as a "human shield" to discourage attacks against him from the police department and their "laser-guided precision weapons."  The media is outside.  Hysterical parents are outside.  The place is surrounded.   

The Question  

What would be the public response if the police department, in their desperation to "get this evil man," simply opened fire on the "human shield," and in so doing did in fact kill the gunman, but also killed the 15 children that made up the human shield?  

The official "justification" from the police?    "This man is a convicted killer who had escaped from prison last week.  It's unfortunate that 15 children had to die but their deaths probably saved lives.  We had to take-him-out or he might have killed all 60 children!  How dare you even question us!  We were acting in the interests of the people we are paid to protect and serve.  We did our job, and now you are you questioning us?  What are you, anti-police or something?  Don't you know that by questioning us you are helping monsters like this along?  And what did you say your name was?"   

In the days and weeks following, as the pictures and life stories of the dead children are displayed in the media across the country, with the grieving parents appearing on Oprah and other popular shows expressing their outrage, what would public opinion be toward the police and their "justifications"?

We all know the answer to that--it's a no-brainer!

The Moral

Even if it is true that Saddam Hussein is placing civilians as "human shields" around so-called "military targets" (and beyond the rhetoric of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and other war hawks in the Bush administration, that claim is a big "if."*), the fact still remains that to drop a "precision-guided smart bomb" on such sites will kill those innocent civilians, be they there as "human shields" or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time!  We know this in advance.  Drop the bomb and these civilians will die.   Do not drop the bomb and they do not die!  Thus, no matter how one tries to justify the act, the fact remains that when we know there are "human shields" and we attack anyway, we are murdering these people with premeditation just the same as a local police force killing a "shield" of children in order to get the bad guy would be acting with premeditation in their decision to kill innocent children! 

I wonder: what would be the opinion among the American public if, in the days and weeks following such attacks against Iraq, the photos, names and life stories of hundreds of dead Iraqi children were to be presented on network television and newspapers? What would happen if the human element were brought into our living rooms?  Would we really be so eager to take the arrogant and reckless "screw the world, bombs away" attitude?  I think not.

In fact, we already know the answer to this question because we have seen it before, during the Vietnam war.  It was the graphic pictures and news footage of that debacle that brought the tragic human element of war and suffering into the hearts and minds of the American public, and they were appalled.

In the Gulf war we didn't see any of that--The Government war department learned it's lesson well.  Instead, the media circus did their "patriotic duty" and played along with the war rhetoric by depersonalizing the war.  We didn't see dead and maimed Iraqi children or grief-stricken mothers, and we certainly didn't see dead American soldiers.  No, we saw General Norman Schwarzkopf propped up in front of a big map of the Middle East giving a play-by-play while moving little army pieces around as though the event in question was just a big game of virtual Risk where the blood, gore and human destruction of war no longer apply.  We saw war as primetime entertainment!  We can expect more of the same this time around I suspect.  

The Consequences

But the question that seems to be lost on America is that of consequences for our actions if we proceed with this insanity of a preemptive attack against Iraq.  And I don't mean the consequences of increased terrorist attacks against American cities and its citizens, or further destabilization in the Middle East (although these are certainly issues of great consequence).  The consequences I am referring to are those of "crimes against humanity" that our President and his henchmen should be held accountable for by an international war crimes tribunal for (1) illegally invading a sovereign nation in direct defiance of the UN, and (2) for the thousands of innocent Iraqi people who died and suffered as a result of their roguish behavior and blatant disregard for human life.      

The U.S. has all the really big guns, of course, so there is little chance that Bush and his cronies will ever have to answer to anything beyond the ideological agendas paid for by their corporate and religious backers.  Even when our own terrorist activities in foreign lands have been exposed and condemned by the World Court in the past, such as in Nicaragua, we have simply disregarded it, labeled the World Court a "hostile forum," and continued with the atrocities.  Other countries that lack the military muscle to tell the World Court and UN to kiss the dark side of the moon don't have that luxury, however, which is why people like Milosevich end up before such tribunals, while the Dubyas and Blairs and Sharons of the world may act with impunity.  

But Rome always falls.  And one day--perhaps sooner than many may believe--the World may decide that one superpower is one too many, and the alliances we have spurned today may come to bear against us in the future.  Perhaps the next "preemptive action" against a rogue tyrant will be that of The World Alliance demanding a "regime change" in Washington, or else...? 

* It is a well known and historically popular rhetorical tactic to preempt public opinion on matters of "collateral damage" so that after the war they can conveniently claim that the blood of those dead civilians is not on their hands, but those of the "evil" tyrannical enemy.  

===> See my Dialogue with Lance Watts RE: his rebuttal to this essay.