Becuase Everything Else Sucks

The Myth of Sanitary War

By Allison Kilkenny
Published Thursday, January 1st, 2009, 11:48 am
Filed under: Human Rights, War, World Issues

There is a myth circulating in the mainstream media that Israel’s missiles are finding their targets with surgical precision.

The lie entails comparing something like the 250-pound GBU-39 “smart bomb” to a surgeon’s knife. A small side-note: the United States Congress approved the sale of this bomb to Israel. Actually, they approved the sale of 1,000 of these bombs to Israel. Second side-note: Your tax dollars bought the bombs.

So-called “rational adults” argue that this horrible, destructive device, which has enough explosive power to decimate six feet of reinforced concrete, is exactly the same as the precision guaranteed between a doctor’s steady hand, a blade, and a patient’s flesh.

It’s generous to call this myth stupid. It’s probably fairer to call it dishonest. Of course a bomb can’t be smart, or precise, primarily because of its very nature as a bomb - a tool of mass destruction. This is like the difference between if I punch you in the face or I slam you with a wrecking ball. You may get up after I deck you, but the wrecking ball will turn you into a human stain. I may also knock over a few buildings whilst trying to thwart you because a giant tool of destruction doesn’t offer any precision. That’s also the difference between a ground invasion and aerial bombing. The whole idea of using a bomb or a missile instead of 100,000 ground troops is to cause maximum damage with minimal casualties on the side of the bomb-dropping or missile-firing country. 

That’s why we’re seeing all of these terrible images coming out of Gaza of bloodied children, slain doctors, and hundreds of young men, who may or may not have been fighting for Hamas. “Smart bombs” and “smart missiles” did this damage because a huge explosion causes unplanned consequences. Shrapnel goes flying. Other buildings topple from the impact. The wrong buildings are bombed. Some bombs don’t detonate until much later when a curious child pokes it, thinking it’s a toy.

The myth of sanitary war isn’t reserved just for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but is used in most western-backed offenses. This lie extends past “smart bombs” and addresses the very parameters of war itself. In our interconnected world, the lines of good guy and bad guy are blurred.

America sends billions of dollars of military aid to Israel, and has almost single-handedly built Israel’s arsenal that is now massacring Gaza’s residents. Meanwhile, Hamas uses Katyusha rockets built in China.

In a way, the war in Gaza is a microcosm of a stand-off between the superpowers. Separate ideologies sparked the proxy war, of course. America viciously (and unquestioningly) defends its pro-Western ally, and therefore supplies the old girl as she attempts to “defend” herself, and China’s interests are profit-oriented.

Still, it’s difficult to make the argument that this is a sanitary war when a quarter of the casualties are Palestinian civilians and the bombs, missiles, and rockets themselves are supplied by foreign superpowers.

Israel does herself a disservice by engaging in offenses that will guarantee the deaths of many innocent civilians. Sanitary war is impossible, and just as America lied that its “smart bombs” would spare innocent Afghanis and Iraqis, so Israel lies that her precision missiles will spare innocent Palestinians.

One Response to “The Myth of Sanitary War”

  1. There are, of course, no sanitary wars. Violence pretty much always leads to unintended nasty consequences, and no one escapes the friction of war.

    But as a former munitions system specialist, there is truth in the claim that _some_ civilians will be more likely to be spared through guided systems. A regular rocket or an unguided bomb makes a piss poor weapon by itself because the odds of hitting what you are actually trying to hit are low. If you are not guiding your munitions then you expend thousands more of them in order to destroy a specific target. You get things like US carpet bombing or the huge rocket waves of the Soviets, attempting to saturate an area in order to kill the intended targets.

    Since the military organizations of the world are going to continue to destroy targets, guided munitions are an improvement (casualty wise) in the target area. An A-10 dropping 12 500 lb. laser guided bombs will certainly kill and maim and destroy, but considering that the next military option without guided munitions would be something like a B-52 strike dropping 1200 500 lb bombs over a wide area, “smart” munitions are incrementally better for the target population than carpet bombing.

    The real myth is that bombardments, smart or dumb, are universal solutions to military situations. Most situations require sticking a 19-year old with a rifle on top of whatever it is you want. And as David Drake observed, a kid with a rifle in his hand and his life on the line becomes a policy maker, which also leads to unintended consequences.

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