[Peace-discuss] "Where is the Outcry over Children Killed by US Led Forces?"

[Stuart Levy]

After Karen Aram's discussion about trying to move people by showing
them pictures of children harmed by US-supported wars, I found this:

     
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/where-is-outcry-over-children-killed-by-u-s-led-forces/

A September, 2015 article in a mainstream science magazine (Scientific
American), by a guy whom I'd known as mainstream science writer (John
Horgan).    He appears to have a whole series of anti-war articles in
Sci Am over the last few years.   Quoting from this one:

> [...] Unfortunately, many people react to the killing of children with
> a shrug or a cheer. Americans flocked to /American Sniper/, which
> lionizes a soldier who, in the opening scene, shoots an Iraqi boy and
> his mother. (See my critique of the film here.
> <http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/what-war-propaganda-like-8220-american-sniper-8221-reveals-about-us/>)
> When I object to the U.S. military killing children, I often hear
> three counter-arguments. Here they are, with my responses:
>
> *Argument 1: Children are often killers themselves, whom our troops
> kill in self-defense.* This is the view advanced implicitly in
> /American Sniper/. The sniper, Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, shoots a boy who
> is threatening U.S. soldiers with a bomb. The phenomenon of child
> warriors is all too real. According to the United Nations
> <https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/effects-of-conflict/six-grave-violations/child-soldiers/>,
> “hundreds of thousands of children are used as soldiers in armed
> conflicts around the world.” But child soldiers are victims, who
> should if possible be rescued and rehabilitated, not killed. Moreover,
> the vast majority of children killed by U.S. forces are not suspected
> combatants. They are “collateral damage” resulting from U.S. attacks
> on adult targets.
>
> *Argument 2. Our enemies kill children too.* The Islamic State of Iraq
> and Syria (ISIS), Boko Haram and other militant groups have indeed
> committed atrocities against children, according the United Nations
> <http://www.un.org/press/en/2015/sc11832.doc.htm>. But we abhor these
> groups, supposedly, because we find their brutal treatment of
> civilians (among other acts) inexcusable. Their behavior cannot excuse
> ours. Moreover, when we commit atrocities, we provide ISIS and other
> groups with a provocation and justification for their behavior. We
> should set a moral example for militant groups, not stoop to their
> behavior.
>
> *Argument 3. We don’t kill children on purpose.* When presented with
> irrefutable evidence that its forces have killed children or other
> civilians, the U.S. occasionally apologizes (see below), while
> insisting that the deaths were unintentional. But when our forces kill
> children over and over again, claims that the killings are
> unintentional become hollow, a cynical evasion of responsibility. We
> would be outraged if American police, in attacks on suspected
> criminals, routinely killed children who happened to be nearby. We
> should be equally outraged when U.S. troops kill children in their
> operations.
>
> Last November, for example, an air strike by the U.S.-led alliance
> aimed at a suspected “explosives-making and storage facility” in Syria
> “likely caused the deaths of two civilian children,” the Pentagon has
> acknowledged
> <https://www2.centcom.mil/sites/foia/rr/CENTCOM%20Regulation%20CCR%2025210/CIVCAS/Harim%20City,%20Syria%20-%205-6%20Nov%2014/AR%2015-6%20Investigation%20-%20Harim%20Syria%20CIVCAS,%205-6%20Nov%2014.pdf>.
> One was a five year old girl, Daniya Ali Al Haj Qaddour, who poses
> with her father, Ali Saeed Al Haj Qaddoura, a suspected militant, in
> the photo above. Airwars.org <http://airwars.org/> has posted a video
> of Daniya and the other child killed in the attack here
> <http://airwars.org/news/6-months-after-deadly-syrian-air-raid-centcom-finally-concedes-us-strike-killed-children/>.
> Pentagon officials admit that the deaths of the two children violate
> “international humanitarian law” and state that the alliance should
> “ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”
>
> At this point, many readers are no doubt thinking that war is a messy,
> unpredictable business, which always ends up hurting innocent people,
> such as children. Exactly. That is why war must end.
>

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