An Ethical Dilemma of Life and Death

Is it right to use aerial bombardment on residential neighbourhoods? Do we have the right to kill civilians? How many Afghan deaths is it worth to save one soldier's life?

In previous posts I've come out clearly against the use of aerial bombardment on residential neighbourhoods. It's indiscriminate. It's cowardly.

I became disgusted with aerial bombardment tactics when I watched video, back in the 90's, of Israeli warplanes bombing refugee camps in Lebanon. I thought that, if the Israelis wanted to get at the Palestinian guerrillas, they damned well ought to be willing to send soldiers in to fight soldiers.

I felt the same thing watching American airstrikes on Iraqi marketplaces and bombardment of their residential areas. I was revolted at the Israeli use of cluster bombs and white phosphorous against civilian populations in Lebanon.

Now the hens have come home to roost. Now it's Canadian troops calling in airstrikes. We can't pretend any longer. We've seen the results of these tactics for two decades. Airstrikes against residential neighbourhoods kill a lot of civilians, far too many to dismiss them as unintentional collateral damage.

Don't be fooled by talk about precision-guided weapons. Sure we can guide a bomb to a very small target, the front of a house for example. However, if that precision guided system is riding the nose of a 2,000 pound bomb, precision becomes almost meaningless. That weapon is going to destroy houses and kill innocents within a very big radius of where it hits. We know that's going to happen so we can't claim these deaths are unintentional.

Sure we're saving the lives of our soldiers but at what cost? Is one Canadian soldier's life worth the lives of 10 Afghans, 20 Afghans, even 60 Afghans? We have to ask ourselves that very question.

We also have to question how these "unintentional" deaths are advancing our battle for the hearts and minds of these Afghans, the survivors? Let's see, they don't endure Taliban airstrikes. We can claim the insurgents are responsible for mingling with civilians but these still aren't insurgent bombs. What we think, of course, is secondary to which side the Afghan people blame.

The Associated Press reports that a human rights watchdog is warning NATO that these airstrikese are turning the population against the alliance:

"Human Rights Watch argued that NATO is relying too much on aircraft to attack insurgent positions. In June, the U.S. Central Command reported 340 airstrikes in Afghanistan, double the 160 strikes in Iraq in the same month, the group noted.

"'NATO should reconsider the use of highly destructive but hard-to-target weaponry in areas where there is a clear risk of considerable civilian casualties,' Zarifi said, referring to aerial bombs and missiles.

Maj. Luke Knittig, the spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, said that "airpower is used extensively because it is an advantage and it can be decisive at a close fight."

Using this massive airpower against insurgent battle positions or in response to ambushes may well be justified. In other words we should have free access to these weapons when fighting out in the field or for defensive purposes. They should not be used, however, in residential neighbourhoods.