[Peace-discuss] Obama's lies vs. his murderous reality

[C. G. Estabrook]

Bombs Away: Afghan Air War Peaks With 1,000 Strikes in October
By Noah Shachtman November 10, 2010

The U.S. and its allies have unleashed a massive air campaign in Afghanistan, 
launching missiles and bombs from the sky at a rate rarely seen since the war’s 
earliest days. In October alone, NATO planes fired their weapons on 1,000 
separate missions, U.S. Air Force statistics provided to Danger Room show. Since 
Gen. David Petraeus took command of the war effort in late June, coalition 
aircraft have flown 2,600 attack sorties. That’s 50% more than they did during 
the same period in 2009. Not surprisingly, civilian casualties are on the rise, 
as well.

NATO officials say the increase in air attacks is simply a natural outgrowth of 
a more aggressive campaign to push militants out of their strongholds in 
southern Afghanistan. “Simply put, our air strikes have increased because our 
operations have increased. We’ve made a concentrated effort in the south to 
clear out the insurgency and therefore have increased our number of troops on 
the ground and aircraft to support them in this effort,” Lt. Nicole Schwegman, a 
NATO spokesperson, tells Danger Room.

On the other hand, some outside observers believe the strikes are part of an 
attempt to soften up the insurgency before negotiations with them begin in 
earnest. But one thing is clear: it’s a strategy Petraeus has used before. Once 
he took over the Iraq war effort, air strikes jumped nearly sevenfold.

Next month, the Obama administration is set to review the strategy for the 
Afghanistan campaign. Petraeus’ newly-aggressive approach will almost certainly 
part of that examination. It’s a dramatic reversal from Gen. Stanley 
McChrystal’s strategy, which drastically restricted the use of air power — even 
when troops came under fire.

But the new general is doing more than launching an expanded air war. He’s also 
unleashing special operations forces to go after militants on the ground. 
According to Petraeus’ team, those commandos conducted more than 1,500 
operations in 90 days ending October 21. 339 insurgent leaders were killed or 
captured, as were 3,444 militant footsoldiers.


The ultimate goal of this aggression, ironically, may be a peace deal. The New 
York Times’ Dexter Filkins is one of several veteran observers of the war that 
sees the push as “a coordinated effort by American commanders to bleed the 
insurgency and pressure its leaders to negotiate an end to the war.”

But in the meantime, more innocents are getting caught in the cross-fire. 
Schwegman emails Danger Room that “while our air strikes have gone up, our 
incident rate of causing civilian casualties has actually decreased. As you 
know, our main principle in our counterinsurgency strategy is to protect the 
civilian population first and foremost.”

According to NATO statistics, however, 49 by-standers were killed or wounded by 
coalition forces last month, compared to 38 last October. It’s an increase of 
30%. The militants’ civilian toll has gone up at a similar rate. But the 
insurgents have been far more ruthless, far more callous about innocent life. 
They killed or wounded 322 civilians last month — four times as many as the 
coalition.

NATO has escalated its air campaign in Afghanistan before — most notably in the 
early summer of 2008, when coalition aircraft went on 2,366 attack missions. But 
each rise has been followed by a dip, often because the civilian costs of the 
air operations grew too high. In 2004, for example, then-commander Gen. David 
Barno halted all pre-planned air operations after a number of the strikes went 
awry, slaying innocents. “I was very concerned that if killing local Taliban 
leaders with airstrikes produced civilian casualties, the tactical benefit would 
not offset the strategic damage it did to our cause,” Barno later said. After 
U.S. aircraft killed as many as 97 civilians in a single incident in May 2009, 
McChrystal imposed his tight guidelines on air power. Whether a similar 
constriction will happen after this current air campaign remains to be seen.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/bombs-away-afghan-air-war-peaks-with-1000-strikes-in-october/