BRENDAN O’NEILL responds to my Rall post below, and my mention of new, lower figures for civilian casualties, and issues a challenge: “Now, how about some of those who hide behind the numbers coming out as either being for the war, or against it?”
Okay. Here’s my response. I’m for the war. I’m glad that we killed a lot of Al Qaeda and Taliban. I’m sorry we didn’t kill them all. I’m sorry that we killed any non-Al Qaeda and non-Taliban Afghans, but it was a war, and that kind of thing happens. I don’t believe — with Mary Robinson — that you have a moral duty not to engage in war if anyone might be hurt as a result. In fact, I think that when you engage in war you have a moral duty to use sufficient force to end it swiftly, because that actually saves lives overall.
But Ted Rall claims that we were “carpet-bombing” Afghan cities, something pretty easily refuted by the (low) casualty figures I cited. Most everything Rall says is easily refuted. Which is what makes the glowing Time review of his book so pathetic.
In a weird sort of way, though, I see reason in O’Neill’s final point. I don’t believe that the war is an imperialistic venture by America to solve its internal problems — unless, you know, having crazed Arabs crashing loaded planes into skyscrapers counts as an “internal problem.” But if there’s something wrong with our war effort, it’s that it’s “ineffective.” In other words, we’re not bombing enough people to ensure that attacks like 9/11 won’t happen again.
I’d be happy to sit in isolationist splendor if I thought we could do it. (Of course, then people would complain about the U.S. not being “engaged,” and about its “ignoring world problems,” instead of complaining about “imperialism.”) But if we have to bomb a lot of people to make America safe from dangerous wackos, then so be it. “Kill Americans and you’re dead meat” still seems like a good operative principle to me. I’d rather see all the Islamofascists turn peaceful and become McDonald’s franchisees or whatever. But that’s not an option at the moment.