Among the many stories you’ll find regarding the Wikileaks release of secret government reports on the warfare in Afghanistan, you may note the complaint by some officials this threatens the safety of troops and operations.
The primary issue at hand is massive and senseless civilian casualties. That is, we are slaughtering thousands of innocent bystanders. Troops are trained to kill and break stuff, but we proclaim so loudly to all the rest of the world these actions must be taken with some reasonable care to prevent harming innocent bystanders. Maybe it’s hard for our troops to differentiate, as we heard so often back when we were trying to subdue Vietnam. They don’t play fair? Fine, we’ll nuke `em all, right?
Where did we get the notion there was some moral obligation to avoid harming non-combatants? It goes back to the values proclaimed at the dawn of Western Civilization, and particularly as pressed upon warriors by the Western Church. While I maintain the Western Church gets most things wrong in one way or another, this is one thing they got right. All the way back to the Old Testament, we find the only justification for harming non-combatants is when God specifically pronounces judgment on a nation, typically for some deeply ingrained commitment to their own horrendous practices. To wit: The Canaanites who willingly burned alive their own firstborns in the arms of Molech, the bronze oven god. Or the Amalekites who had a religious conviction Israel must be exterminated. God alone gets to decide this.
Guess what? God is no longer in that business. That’s because no one is qualified. There is no longer any nation vested with such authority, or the authorized mechanism for discerning such commands. This is unlikely to change since there is not a single government on earth today with the faintest interest in doing things God’s way according to any covenant offered in Scripture. Any imaginary nation seeking to adhere to such a covenant has to actually commit to it publicly first, then they can talk about getting a word from God about such things. Not in mere lip service, but that nation has to be sincere, and it has to be a credible commitment evidenced by laws and conduct. No, not 100% every breathing citizen, but a majority, obviously. So when we find some nation meeting that test, we might be able to discuss it, but as long as there are no takers, no one can justify significant civilian casualties in battle.
Further, there is ample evidence most of these casualties are the result of bad faith. That is, for whatever reason, the troops on the ground knowingly commit war crimes. Official policy is not an excuse, even by the military code of law which applies. That the reviewing officials find no violation of policy does not absolve anyone on the moral level, nor under any imaginary International Law. Insofar as there might be a plausible war crimes tribunal or some such review, the US and her troops would justly face serious sanctions. Either way, it doesn’t take a legal eagle to recognize we as a nation are morally responsible for some really awful stuff.
And it puts us on par morally with some of the nations Israel was commanded to wipe off the face of the earth. The greatest threat to our troops is not the publication of our sinful secrets, but our sins in secret. By refusing to restrain them, we have called down upon our own heads the wrath of God. May the Lord continue ripping the cover off all sin, holding them up for public ridicule.
Update: A few wiser heads have noted the supposed “revelations” in these leaked documents say nothing new. Indeed, it appears the whole thing may be little more than propaganda theater, since reading this pile of reports seems to indicate little more than the warmongering elite already wanted you to believe. “It’s all Iran’s fault, and we have to go to war to stop them!”
Yes, no doubt there are a great many “ideological sympathisers” of the Taliban’s Shiite-hating Sunni extremists among the, er, Shiites in Iran. But such nuances don’t matter; all that matters is that you get some headlines out there about “Iran’s covert operations in Afghanistan.”
The only effect this has on my thesis above is to support it.
