Problem of 'collateral damage' adds to Bush's bad week
By Andrew Buncombe
29 October 2001
news.independent.co.uk
The man from the Pentagon was polite enough but you would
not have described him as being particularly enlightening.
"We have no information on that. We are not speculating at
this time," he said, when asked about the reports of more than
a dozen civilians being unintentionally killed during the US
airstrikes in Afghanistan yesterday morning. "Perhaps there
will be additional information at the briefing tomorrow."
Well, what about the reports of those civilians being
unintentionally killed during the strikes on Saturday? "I have no
information to confirm that," the spokesman countered.
"Perhaps tomorrow."
The reports of civilian casualties from US strikes were always
going to play badly – particularly in the Muslim world – but if
you are going to support a campaign of aerial bombardment
you are supporting a campaign that has a high risk of resulting
in innocent civilian deaths.
For the past three weeks, the US has revealed its ability to
bomb targets inside Afghanistan around the clock – day or
night makes no difference. They might not always hit the
correct targets with those bombs, but they can certainly drop
them.
They have also revealed their inability to answer questions
about such bombing raids outside of normal working hours,
Monday to Friday. Even if seven Afghan children have just been
blown up by the US as they sat eating their breakfasts.
Perhaps there is a reason for this. These latest revelations
about "collateral damage" came at the end of a somewhat
troubling week for US President George Bush. After the first
two weeks of a bombing campaign which seemed to carry with
it the support of the entire nation, questions were starting to be
asked last week about where things were going.
Afghan warlord Abdul Haq was captured and executed by the
Taliban on Friday, after vainly pleading for more help from the
allies. His supporters said that the US had wasted an
opportunity to use Mr Haq to bring the campaign to a speedier
end.
But it had already become apparent that the White House had
become distracted by the gathering anthrax hysteria.
It seemed as though the administration's thoughts were not
entirely on the job of dealing with those "evildoers".
At a photo session with members of Congress last
Wednesday, a somewhat testy Mr Bush was forced on to the
back foot when questioned about the detection of spores in a
White House mail facility. "I don't have anthrax," he said.
While Mr Bush was worrying about his spores, others were
starting to worry about the bombing campaign and just where it
was going. Why were civilians being killed while Osama bin
Laden was still at large?
After all the gung-ho talk of locating Mr bin Laden and "bringing
him to justice", why was the administration forced to admit it
still had no idea where he was? Were things stalling? Even
Rear Admiral, John Stufflebeem, the deputy operations director
for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was forced to admit of the Taliban:
"I am a bit surprised at how doggedly they're hanging on to
their to power."
There were rumblings on Capitol Hill as well. Echoing a
comment by the Pakistani leader, General Pervez Musharraf,
who said he hoped the bombings raids would soon be
completed, Senator Joseph Biden, the chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, warned: "The longer the bombing
goes on, the more susceptible we are to criticism, justified and
unjustified, in the Islamic world."
The Bush administration was again having to defend the course
the military campaign was taking yesterday. The Defense
Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, a man who can spin with the best
of them, contended that the operation was "not a quagmire.
"It is going very much as expected. It is going very much as
predicted," he said. "From day one, the President has said,
and I have said repeatedly, that this will be a long, long effort."
Unfortunately, on the matter of those seven dead children, the
Secretary of Defense had no information to offer. Perhaps
tomorrow. |
