The Orbis

On Saturday, a U.S. air strike aimed at Taliban member Mullah Wazir killed nine children and one 25-year-old man in Hutala, Afghanistan. It appears that Wazir may not even have been in the village at the time of the attack. The response from the U.S. military has been merely to apologize and express its "regret" that 10 civilians died.

Last week, the U.S. forces in Iraq claimed to have secured one of the biggest victories since the official end of combat in Samarra, allegedly killing 54 guerrilla fighters. Evidence now indicates that the majority of the deaths were civilians, not guerrillas.

These are not isolated incidents. There is no way of knowing how many Iraqis and Afghans have been killed since Sept. 11, 2001, but estimates suggest that between 8,000 and 10,000 civilians in Iraq alone have died. The total number of deaths of Iraqi and U.S. soldiers and civilians has been estimated at between 22,000 and 55,000.

Considering that both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are still "at large," that neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is stable and that U.S. casualties in Iraq continue to mount -- up to 444 by Dec. 5 -- these tens of thousands of deaths are beyond horrific.

It is bad enough that so many soldiers on both sides have given their lives to this struggle with no end in sight, worse that thousands of civilians have died, and worse still that the United States, with what is supposed to be the most advanced military technology in the world, has been unable to avoid killing so many innocents.

President Bush has barely acknowledged the deaths of hundreds of U.S. soldiers in these "conflicts," much less the Iraqi and Afghan losses. The U.S. responses to the countless "mistakes" in which Iraqi or Afghan civilians have been the accidental targets of deadly missions have been indifferent and unsympathetic -- essentially a careless "Oops!"

After so many attacks have resulted in civilian deaths instead of, not in addition to, terrorist or soldier deaths, it would seem that the U.S. military would reconsider its strategy of bombing whole villages to kill a single person. There is no excuse for the United States, a supposed guardian of human rights and a leader of modern technology, to make the gross miscalculations that it has made.

Having been victims of horrific attacks on civilians ourselves -- intentional attacks at that -- we as Americans should put an extremely high priority on military accuracy and the prevention of civilian deaths.

The father of two of the children killed in Afghanistan on Saturday said, "The Americans are all the time making these mistakes." Of the children, he said, "What kind of Al Qaeda are they? Look at their little shoes and hats. Are they terrorists?"

Surely we can manage more compassion than this.

Article Tools