Friday, April 16, 2004
Out of the Muzzles of Babes
Isn't it funny how almost every Iraqi corpse who comes through the morgue at the Fallujah hospital mysteriously becomes a noncombatant?
I have no doubt that innocent people are losing their lives in Fallujah. But some of the newspaper reports on Iraqi casualties strike me as a little, well, credulous.
I keep hearing that U.S. Marines have killed over 56 Iraqi children in Fallujah. And every day, the director of the Fallujah hospital mentions more.
But according to this guy's account--republished in The Nation, there's more to the story:
We left the city as part of a long convoy of civilian vehicles loaded with families. On the way, we passed groups of mujahedeen at their posts, among them defiant armed boys as young as 11.
[emphasis added]
The author also describes a small boy yelling "We will be mujahedeen until we die!"
Now, the author uses the word 'boys' in the plural form. So he's not talking about one isolated incident. The insurgents' use of child-soldiers appears to be fairly common in Fallujah. (The numerous children in the photos from the mutilating Fallujah mob a couple of weeks back bear this out.)
The problem is, this guy can cite hospital officials that most of the dead and wounded are civilians, and then note that many of them are women and children, without noting the apparent irony here.
Now, call me quaint, but as soon as an 11 year-old walks onto a battlefield and picks up an AK-47, he becomes a combatant.
I don't hold the child morally responsible for anything, particularly. Rather, I blame his parents for not slapping him upside the head and telling him to stay inside and study Koran until this whole siege thing blows over and he can go back to school. Which I'm sure most Iraqi parents are doing--even in Fallujah.
So it seems, anyway, because the guy also writes that Fallujah's streets are deserted, except for bands of mujahedeen on every other street corner, with kaffiyehs covering their faces.
So if the only people on the streets are mujahedeen, then how are all these women and children getting wounded?
Yes, there are going to be innocent people hurt, and killed in Fallujah, and we all hate that. Well, the guys on our side hate that. The mujahedeen never gave a rat's ass for the Iraqi people in the first place.
But it is the nature of assymetrical warfare in the media age that the weaker belligerant in a conflict is going to nestle itself in and among the innocent, in order to inoculate itself against the superior firepower of the stronger side.
Americans need to understand what is happening. And reporters need to more finely delineate between combatants and noncombatants, and not be so easily manipulated by "hospital sources."
Splash, out
Jason
I have no doubt that innocent people are losing their lives in Fallujah. But some of the newspaper reports on Iraqi casualties strike me as a little, well, credulous.
I keep hearing that U.S. Marines have killed over 56 Iraqi children in Fallujah. And every day, the director of the Fallujah hospital mentions more.
But according to this guy's account--republished in The Nation, there's more to the story:
We left the city as part of a long convoy of civilian vehicles loaded with families. On the way, we passed groups of mujahedeen at their posts, among them defiant armed boys as young as 11.
[emphasis added]
The author also describes a small boy yelling "We will be mujahedeen until we die!"
Now, the author uses the word 'boys' in the plural form. So he's not talking about one isolated incident. The insurgents' use of child-soldiers appears to be fairly common in Fallujah. (The numerous children in the photos from the mutilating Fallujah mob a couple of weeks back bear this out.)
The problem is, this guy can cite hospital officials that most of the dead and wounded are civilians, and then note that many of them are women and children, without noting the apparent irony here.
Now, call me quaint, but as soon as an 11 year-old walks onto a battlefield and picks up an AK-47, he becomes a combatant.
I don't hold the child morally responsible for anything, particularly. Rather, I blame his parents for not slapping him upside the head and telling him to stay inside and study Koran until this whole siege thing blows over and he can go back to school. Which I'm sure most Iraqi parents are doing--even in Fallujah.
So it seems, anyway, because the guy also writes that Fallujah's streets are deserted, except for bands of mujahedeen on every other street corner, with kaffiyehs covering their faces.
So if the only people on the streets are mujahedeen, then how are all these women and children getting wounded?
Yes, there are going to be innocent people hurt, and killed in Fallujah, and we all hate that. Well, the guys on our side hate that. The mujahedeen never gave a rat's ass for the Iraqi people in the first place.
But it is the nature of assymetrical warfare in the media age that the weaker belligerant in a conflict is going to nestle itself in and among the innocent, in order to inoculate itself against the superior firepower of the stronger side.
Americans need to understand what is happening. And reporters need to more finely delineate between combatants and noncombatants, and not be so easily manipulated by "hospital sources."
Splash, out
Jason
Comments:
Post a Comment
