The ‘Casualty’ Canard
Syria, Iraq faced worse horrors without American involvement
THERE will be more casualties in the war on ISIS. But minimizing those deaths will take more, not less, American involvement.
Quietly, President Trump is sending hundreds of additional troops into Syria and Iraq, and is widening US-led air attacks there. The president has also asked Defense Secretary James Mattis to take a more active role in developing the West’s anti-ISIS strategy and in overseeing its implementation, in sharp departure from the micromanagement that characterized President Barack Obama’s war efforts.
Such a leadership role is not without its naysayers. In one incident last week, 112 civilian bodies were pulled out of a house in Mosul — Iraq’s second largest city, where the Iraqi military is fighting under a US air umbrella. The Pentagon has acknowledged a bombing operation in the area. Cue the critics. The Mosul incident fits an “alarming pattern” of US-led airstrikes that “destroyed whole houses with entire families inside,” announced Amnesty International. In Geneva, UN human-rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said air sorties in heavily populated areas “potentially have a lethal and disproportionate impact on civilians.”
So are Americans heartless war criminals?
Well, as Zeid, a Jordanian, acknowledged, ISIS is using “children, men and women to shield themselves from attack.” Such “cowardly and disgraceful” tactics, he said, include shooting civilians in the back as they flee — “an act of monstrous depravity.”
Meanwhile in Syria, according to a widely quoted report by the Russian military, US air attacks destroyed bridges over the Euphrates River and hit a critical dam near ISIS’s stronghold in Raqqa. Such attacks, tut-tutted Russian Gen. Sergei Rudskoi, risk an “ecological catastrophe” and could lead to “numerous” civilian deaths.
Pot, meet kettle: Russian jets have razed entire cities on behalf of Moscow’s ally, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Diplomatically, the Russians shield Assad from accountability for his war crimes, including well-documented chemi- cal attacks on civilians.
The United States, by the way, denies damaging the dam. In fact, according to some reports ISIS is trying to score propaganda points by damaging it themselves.
Free societies, enjoying a free press and unfettered antiwar protests, are by definition at a disadvantage in modern, urban, asymmetrical warfare. And undoubtedly we must minimize civilian casualties.
Yet, if America is to do what Trump promised and “obliterate” ISIS, mistakes will be made and innocents will perish — each one a tragedy for which the responsible parties must be held accountable. No war can be free of civilian blood, so expect more of it — and the accompanying criticism.
Those critics will at times be 100 percent right, too. But what’s the alternative? For five years, America mostly sat aside as the defining war of the new century raged in Syria. But our clean hands allowed a bloodbath. More than half a million people, mostly civilians, were killed. Millions more fled their homes, living in refugee camps or risking life and limb to escape to Europe.
America’s absence from the war did nothing to limit the toll on civilians. To end it, and ensure it stays ended, America’s presence is needed more than ever.
As long as Assad remains in the presidential palace, Syria’s Sunnis will forever seek revenge. If we let Iran and its proxy Hezbollah stay, it will be a staging ground for violence throughout the Middle East.
No wonder the Russians, Iranians and other Assad allies hope to keep out the United States and our allies. They (and ISIS) will exaggerate any report of alleged war atrocities, no matter how flimsy.
Some of our politicians and the press will bite. They’ll amplify such reports to prove we must stay on the sidelines, as Obama did.
But America’s interests were harmed by our self-imposed vacation from history.
We lost credibility. Our ability to promote freedom around the globe is now in doubt. Terrorists continued to strike the West, as seemingly victorious ISIS inspired Islamists to take up the “jihad in place.”
As the Mideast and its environs burned, we claimed to no longer be the world’s fire department, so no one accused us of committing war atrocities (except for occasional drone strikes in Afghanistan). But that didn’t stop the humanitarian disaster.
So yes, if America gets more involved, there will be casualties. Any number of civilian deaths is too many, but there will almost certainly be fewer if the United States belatedly takes the wheel.