Posted by 
Obama and his hackneyed ilk like to prattle on about how Gitmo or our harsh interrogation tactics are actually causing Al Qaeda to grow by providing PR fodder for their recruiting drives. It is true that the U.S. is continuously villified in Arab/Muslim media for many things, including these issues, but if you spend some time on Al Jazeera (easy to do, they publish on YouTube) or other sources, you’ll quickly realize that U.S. caused civilian casualties is the biggest issue they scream about. Today’s report of 27 civilian deaths caused by NATO air strikes in Afghanistan is business as usual for us (despite our apologies) and you can guarantee that this will be huge on Islamic media.
Rightly so. U.S. and coalition forces have killed thousands – maybe tens of thousands of civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It is also true that many more civilian deaths have been caused by ‘insurgents’ of various stripes. It seems clear at this point that in the Muslim world an individual’s life is not worth that much when taken by a fellow Muslim in the name of Allah (pause, throw up, continue). However, that doesn’t matter when measuring our own actions against our own morality, and in fact, it’s clear that some of these deaths are the foreseeable consequences of our actions so we do bear some moral responsibility for even these deaths. It’s this dissonance that is used against us and what makes our claim of serving the higher purpose of freedom ring hollow in the Muslim world.
The facts are hard to find, as the reporting is always sketchy and politicized, and our own defense dept isn’t very forthcoming about this issue (understandably). Fighting an insurgency is, defacto, something that occurs in the midst of civilian populations and will result in civilian deaths as collateral damage (what a euphemism that is, ehh?). After all, the insurgents don’t wear uniforms (not unlike many militia-men in our own revolutionary war, btw) and many civilians support the insurgents openly or covertly, so they may even be legitimate targets in some sense. Even taking all of this into account, the bottoms line is that we are killing innocent people every day.
Just look at our drone attacks in Pakistan on Al Qaeda and other targets. Obama has launched 57+ such attacks since taking office – more than Bush did in his entire administration. Since the inception of this tactic, we have killed about 900 civilians in drone attacks. Just stop and think about that for a moment. From remote control in Nevada, the USAF is launching and controlling these unmanned drones, not unlike a video game, in your name. What do you think that is like for some poor peasant living in Waziristan? They see robots in the sky tracking them down, blowing them, their friends and family members up. If you lived there, what would you think? Do you think you might want to join up with the only folks brave enough to fight back?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not supporting these Islamic maniacs. The Jihadi movement is repugnant to me in so many ways. However, I cannot stomach these civilian deaths. There are many reasons to oppose our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere, be on the lookout for what we are doing in Yemen), but this is something that breaks my heart, and I think that it creates a future generation of Jihadis to fight us. Hmm, why doesn’t Obama talk about this as a recruiting tool? Answer: He’s just another political hack without any real vision. Some of us saw this ahead of time, but hey, it’s not like McCain was any better.
Libertarians believe that we should only initiate force in defense of our rights, and country (although some libertarians would debate the latter). Our policy of non-intervention in foreign affairs is based on the beliefs which many of our founding fathers held dearly, and a belief that the unintended consequences of our actions ultimately make the world less safe for Americans. We also believe that we cannot afford our military adventurism – with a price tag of over 700 billion slated for 2010. Can you imagine? That is more than the GDP of 170+ countries. It is wrong, scary and very far from what I want America to be. How about you?
