A reminder of who invented terror bombing

A History of Bombing By Sven Lindqvist Granta Books, 2001 224 pages $39.95 (hb)

REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON

When the first bomb was dropped from the air on November 1, 1911, the pattern for the subsequent history of aerial bombing was set. A European power (Italy) bombed a Third World country (Libya, as its colony in North Africa became known), targeting non-combatants (Arab tribespeople at an oasis) to terrorise them and thus break their will to resist. Only four small bombs were dropped on this historic occasion but the terror potential of bombing would escalate exponentially in the following decades.

Sven Lindqvist's book records the history of the technological “advance” and military applications of aerial bombing.

Churchill's propaganda that only military sites were the targets of his “area bombing” strategy was a fiction, a fiction which was exploded with each bomb which fell on a broad “carpet” of civilian and other sites.

The economics of bombing, which had earlier won over Churchill, now didn't add up. Two thirds of the RAF bombs hit nothing of military-industrial importance. Panic and defeatism also failed to materialise as a military outcome, and with both the US and the Soviet Union now in the war against Germany, Churchill's terror bombing had lost its rationale. Churchill, however, and the RAF head, Arthur “Bomber” Harris, intensified the bombing, especially of residential areas, from 1942, focussing on the “morale of the enemy” civilian population, in particular industrial workers.

In the US military, the air force head, General Curtis Le May, was impressed by the outcomes in Hamburg and Dresden. Adding the newly invented sticky, inflammable substance, napalm, to the terror cocktail, Le May ordered the fire-bombing of Tokyo in March 1945. One raid on March 9 reduced one quarter of the city to ashes, killed 100,000 people and made a million homeless.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were reserved for a special fate as nuclear bombs were dropped on these intact cities, not to end the war or save the lives of US troops, but to intimidate the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany in Europe, fascist Italy in Ethiopia, and militarist Japan in China, did not stand alone when it came to the war crime of using weapons of mass destruction.

The US assumed post-war leadership in this law of the jungle. Napalm strutted its stuff — 32,000 tonnes of it in Korea and 373,000 tonnes of the sticky fire in Vietnam. B-52 carpet bombing was a staple in Vietnam, alongside vastly enhanced anti-personnel bombs in which multiple bomb particles penetrate the body at high velocity. The bombing frenzy prolonged the war at great human and environmental cost, and although the US lost the battle, it won the strategic war as bombs became a currency which raised the international price of guerilla warfare for those contemplating national liberation struggles against US political and economic domination.

Because of the domestic political problems arising from the use of ground troops, aerial bombing has moved to the forefront of military strategy. The US relied almost exclusively on bombing in the Gulf War in 1991, continuing the grand old tradition of bombing "a third rate power in the Third World". And ever present in the background is the arsenal of nuclear bombs, a majority in the hands of the trigger-happy North American state, with the ability to destroy the world hundreds of times over.

Lindqvist's book is a reminder that terrorism — the deliberate and indiscriminate killing of civilians for political purposes — was authored by the powerful states against the weak, is the root cause of the abhorrent retaliatory strikes such as the World Trade Center atrocity, and will not be eliminated from the world until the bombs, conventional and nuclear, are taken away from the imperialist states and destroyed forever.

Killing Civilians to Show That Killing Civilians is Wrong: A Briefing on the History of U.S. Military Interventions.

Since the September 11 attacks on the United States, most people in the world agree that the perpetrators need to be brought to justice, without killing many thousands of civilians in the process. But unfortunately, the U.S. military has always accepted massive civilian deaths as part of the cost of war. The military is now poised to kill thousands of foreign civilians, in order to prove that killing U.S. civilians is wrong.

The United States military has been intervening in other countries for a long time. In 1898, it seized the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico from Spain, and in 1917-18 became embroiled in World War I in Europe. In the first half of the 20th century it repeatedly sent Marines to "protectorates" such as Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. All these interventions directly served corporate interests, and many resulted in massive losses of civilians, rebels, and soldiers. Many of the uses of U.S. combat forces are documented in "A History of U.S. Military Interventions Since 1890" at

www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/interventions.htm

In the early 1960s, the U.S. returned to its pre-World War II interventionary role in the Caribbean, directing the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs exile invasion of Cuba, and the 1965 bombing and Marine invasion of the Dominican Republic during an election campaign. The CIA trained and harbored Cuban exile groups in Miami, which launched terrorist attacks on Cuba, including the 1976 downing of a Cuban civilian jetliner near Barbados. During the Cold War, the CIA would also help to support or install pro-U.S. dictatorships in Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and many other countries around the world.

The U.S. war in Indochina (1960-75) pit U.S. forces against North Vietnam, and Communist rebels fighting to overthrow pro-U.S. dictatorships in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. U.S. war planners made little or no distinction between attacking civilians and guerrillas in rebel-held zones, and U.S. "carpet-bombing" of the countryside and cities swelled the ranks of the ultimately victorious revolutionaries. Over two million people were killed in the war, including 55,000 U.S. troops. Less than a dozen U.S. citizens were killed on U.S. soil, in National Guard shootings or antiwar bombings. In Cambodia, the bombings drove the Khmer Rouge rebels toward fanatical leaders, who launched a murderous rampage when they took power in 1975.

Echoes of Vietnam reverberated in Central America during the 1980s, when the Reagan administration strongly backed the pro-U.S. regime in El Salvador, and right-wing exile forces fighting the new leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Rightist death squads slaughtered Salvadoran civilians who questioned the concentration of power and wealth in a few hands. CIA-trained Nicaraguan Contra rebels launched terrorist attacks against civilian clinics and schools run by the Sandinista government, and mined Nicaraguan harbors. U.S. troops also invaded the island nation of Grenada in 1983, to oust a new military regime, attacking Cuban civilian workers (even though Cuba had backed the leftist government deposed in the coup), and accidentally bombing a hospital.

The U.S. Navy also intervened against Iran during its war against Iraq in 1987-88, sinking Iranian ships and "accidentally" shooting down an Iranian civilian jetliner.

U.S. forces invaded Panama in 1989 to oust the nationalist regime of Manuel Noriega. The U.S. accused its former ally of allowing drug-running in the country, though the drug trade actually increased after his capture. U.S. bombing raids on Panama City ignited a conflagration in a civilian neighborhood, fed by stove gas tanks. Over 2,000 Panamanians were killed in the invasion to capture one leader. Common Themes Some common themes can be seen in many of these U.S. military interventions. First, they were explained to the U.S. public as defending the lives and rights of civilian populations. Yet the military tactics employed often left behind massive civilian "collateral damage." War planners made little distinction between rebels and the civilians who lived in rebel zones of control, or between military assets and civilian infrastructure, such as train lines, water plants, agricultural factories, medicine supplies, etc. The U.S. public always believe that in the next war, new military technologies will avoid civilian casualties on the other side. Yet when the inevitable civilian deaths occur, they are always explained away as "accidental" or "unavoidable."

Second, although nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of "freedom" and "democracy," nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. elites. Whether in Vietnam, Central America, or the Persian Gulf, the U.S. was not defending "freedom" but an ideological agenda (such as defending capitalism) or an economic agenda (such as protecting oil company investments). In the few cases when U.S. military forces toppled a dictatorship--such as in Grenada or Panama--they did so in a way that prevented the country's people from overthrowing their own dictator first, and installing a new democratic government more to their liking.

Third, the U.S. always attacked violence by its opponents as "terrorism," "atrocities against civilians," or "ethnic cleansing," but minimized or defended the same actions by the U.S. or its allies. If a country has the right to "end" a state that trains or harbors terrorists, would Cuba or Nicaragua have had the right to launch defensive bombing raids on U.S. targets to take out exile terrorists? Washington's double standard maintains that an U.S. ally's action by definition "defensive," but that an enemy's retaliation is by definition "offensive."

Fourth, the U.S. often portrays itself as a neutral peacekeeper, with nothing but the purest humanitarian motives. After deploying forces in a country, however, it quickly divides the country or region into "friends" and "foes," and takes one side against another. This strategy tends to enflame rather than dampen a war or civil conflict, as shown in the cases of Somalia and Bosnia, and deepens resentment of the U.S. role.

Fifth, U.S. military intervention is often counterproductive even if one accepts U.S. goals and rationales. Rather than solving the root political or economic roots of the conflict, it tends to polarize factions and further destabilize the country. The same countries tend to reappear again and again on the list of 20th century interventions.

Sixth, U.S. demonization of an enemy leader, or military action against him, tends to strengthen rather than weaken his hold on power. Take the list of current regimes most singled out for U.S. attack, and put it alongside of the list of regimes that have had the longest hold on power, and you will find they have the same names. Qaddafi, Castro, Saddam, Kim, and others may have faced greater internal criticism if they could not portray themselves as Davids standing up to the American Goliath, and (accurately) blaming many of their countries' internal problems on U.S. economic sanctions.

One of the most dangerous ideas of the 20th century was that "people like us" could not commit atrocities against civilians.

German and Japanese citizens believed it, but their militaries slaughtered millions of people.

British and French citizens believed it, but their militaries fought brutal colonial wars in Africa and Asia.

Russian citizens believed it, but their armies murdered civilians in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere.

Israeli citizens believed it, but their army mowed down Palestinians and Lebanese.

Arabs believed it, but suicide bombers and hijackers targeted U.S. and Israeli civilians.

U.S. citizens believed it, but their military killed millions in Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere.

Every country, every ethnicity, every religion, contains within it the capability for extreme violence. Every group contains a faction that is intolerant of other groups, and actively seeks to exclude or even kill them. War fever tends to encourage the intolerant faction, but the faction only succeeds in its goals if the rest of the group acquiesces or remains silent.

As Washington escalates air war US-NATO jets bomb Kosovan civilians

By the Editorial Board 15 April 1999

One day after President Clinton told US congressional leaders that the NATO air war was being ratcheted up to the "next level," the implications for the civilian population throughout Yugoslavia were seen in the bombing of two convoys of ethnic Albanians in western Kosovo. Yugoslav sources report 75 killed and 31 wounded.

In broad daylight, NATO jets struck a line of hundreds of tractors and other vehicles bearing several thousand Kosovars, mainly women, children and elderly people, who were being escorted by Serb military forces on the road to Djakovic. A total of three strikes were launched over a two-hour period. A second civilian convoy was hit near the village of Zrse.

In the face of Yugoslav television footage of bombed-out tractors and dead and wounded civilians, US and NATO spokesmen responded with absurd and conflicting claims, all unsubstantiated: that the incident had been staged by Serb authorities, that the civilians had been hit by Serb jets, that NATO planes had bombed military vehicles after which Serb soldiers fired on the civilians.

Such lies have become commonplace. Last week American and NATO officials initially claimed that Yugoslav TV footage of bomb wreckage in residential centers of the Kosovan capital Pristina had been orchestrated by the Serbs. Subsequently they retracted these allegations and admitted that the damage had been caused by NATO missiles.

Meanwhile, the death toll from Monday's bombing of a passenger train in southern Serbia has risen from 10 to 27

There is a curious double standard: only the most criminal explanations are offered for the actions of the Serbs, while every death resulting from NATO's actions is given the most innocent of explanations.

Large-scale bombing of a relatively small geographical area inevitably places the civilian population in immense danger. It is simply impossible to reconcile the humanitarian pretenses of the US and NATO with the military tactics which they are pursuing. As the Kosovars are learning, to be "saved" by American imperialism is a perilous fate.

The devastation, human and material, that is being visited on Kosovo as a result of the US-NATO war recalls the mordant phrase that summed up US military tactics in Vietnam: "We had to burn the village to save it."

McCain's Vietnam

Rather than accepting America's defeat in Vietnam as a humbling one and a fitting end to an arrogant and vainglorious exercise of military power, McCain considers the war in Vietnam to have been a "noble cause," whose loss might have been avoided but for the timidity of America's political leaders. Like many Vietnam-era military men, McCain believes that the war could have been won had America sent ground forces into North Vietnam and launched a strategic bombing campaign using B-52s. "That," says Daniel Ellsberg, the Vietnam-era Defense Department official who leaked the so-called Pentagon Papers, "is an incredibly discredited point of view." McCain appears unworried by concern that such actions would have led to enormous US casualties and perhaps caused either China or the Soviet Union to enter the war.

"Like a lot of Vietnam veterans, I believed and still believe that the war was winnable," he said. "I do not believe that it was winnable at an acceptable cost in the short or probably even the long term using the strategy of attrition which we employed there to such tragic results. I do believe that had we taken the war to the North and made full, consistent use of air power in the North, we ultimately would have prevailed."

Practically speaking, McCain considers the lessons of Vietnam to be as follows: America's armed forces should be utilized when "US vital interests are threatened," which interests McCain liberally defines as including "ensuring the survival and prosperity of the American people, defending our allies and combating such global threats as terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or narcotics." Though McCain consistently opposes the use of US forces in nonstrategic or humanitarian missions like Somalia and Haiti, when US interests are at stake, he believes, Washington must make a full-scale commitment to win, even if it means total war--an approach that he applies to crises around the world.

At the height of the crisis in Kosovo, McCain clamored for an invasion, bitterly criticizing the Clinton Administration for its "excessively restricted air campaign" and its decision to "refrain from using ground troops," adding: "These two mistakes were made in what almost seemed willful ignorance of every lesson we learned in Vietnam." Similarly, during the flare-up in 1994 over North Korea's nuclear program, McCain recklessly accused President Clinton of "appeasement" of Pyongyang, warning, "The time for more forceful, coercive action is long overdue." McCain demanded that the United States increase its alert status; mobilize US troops; deploy aircraft carriers, more fighters and Apache helicopters; pre-position bombers and tankers; and announce the immediate application of economic sanctions--even while recognizing the strong possibility that such actions could lead to war on the Korean peninsula.

"It seems to me that he finds it uncomfortably normal that we should be blowing somebody up," says John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists. "I think McCain has not been able to come home from the war."

Certainly McCain could not have been unaware of the havoc unleashed by his bombing missions over Vietnam. Though Pentagon war planners and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara preferred to emphasize the antiseptic nature of aerial bombardment against carefully chosen targets, a highly publicized series of articles in late 1966 by Harrison Salisbury in the New York Times described the widespread devastation of civilian neighborhoods around Hanoi by American bombs. "Bomb damage...extends over an area of probably a mile or so on both sides of the highway" near one target, he wrote, noting that "small villages and hamlets along the route [were] almost obliterated." Several years ago, a chastened McNamara acknowledged that Operation Rolling Thunder, which unloaded 800 tons of bombs a day over North Vietnam, caused more than a million deaths and injuries in Vietnam each year from 1965 to 1968.< BR>