It’s almost as if Bill Moyers was reading my mind because on the same day that I wrote my long diatribe on human shields and collateral damage, Moyers discussed “America’s Policy of Air Bombing” with former Pentagon official Pierre Sprey and Marilyn Young (author of Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth Century History). In his introduction, Moyers says,
The bombing of civilians from the sky is an old and questionable practice, argued over since the moment the military began to fly. It was deliberate strategy in World Wars I and II. American presidents approved it in Korea and extensively in Vietnam, again in the first Gulf War, then in Bosnia and Kosovo, and six years ago during the campaign of “shock and awe” over Iraq.
But what lifted those reports last weekend out of the routine is the simple fact that for the first time the air strikes occurred on President Obama’s watch. As he said during his campaign, and as Secretary of Defense Gates reaffirmed this week, Obama is escalating America’s military presence in Afghanistan. He may increase it to as many as 60,000 troops this year.
Both Sprey and Young express their concerns and disappointment about Obama’s Afghanistan policy and the backwardness and counter-productivity of the very premise of the “War on Terror”. Continue reading