Daniel, the U.S. attack that killed at least 62 Syrian soldiers and wounded others is poisonous fruit of the U.S. killing machine. The U.S. forces who spot positions, relay the information, and decide to call in air strikes are showing the results of being trained to kill, being rewarded to kill materially and psychologically, and over-eagerness to make a big kill. Even the battlefield weaknesses in ascertaining which side is which, what looks like incompetence, is infected by the killing ethic, culture and atmosphere. The same kind of result arising from similar causes was shown when the U.S. bombed the Kunduz hospital in Afghanistan repeatedly. This over-eagerness to chalk up a substantial kill is also shown again and again in drone strikes. It was also a feature of wars in Vietnam and Iraq that degraded into “kill anything that moves” thinking and wipe out any suspect village.
Excesses are the result of a system that produces such excesses. This is not what one would accurately call an error or incompetence. It is more that the lower levels of the war machine or system, those close to the battle or in the battle or who press the modern buttons of killing, develop a kill spirit and ways of operating to make the kills, come hell or high water. Some voices in Washington might rue such embarrassing events; many won’t. It is certainly incompetence when leaders get involved in unwinnable and costly wars in the first place, while thinking that the war will be a breeze (as Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney and many others thought would be the case in Iraq). But from the view of the cavalry or force that massacres whole Indian villages, or even from their superiors who look the other way and let it happen without sanctioning the men responsible, there is no incompetence and no real regret. They’d all just as soon kill.
This attitude of killing rises from the lower echelons of the war machine to permeate its highest levels and also radiates downward from the highest to the lowest levels. In that kind of atmosphere, there is no incompetence that can be held responsible.
Before these events, a position has to be spotted, either by air (drone), satellite or by ground observers (U.S. Special Forces). The “information” has to be “developed” or understood. There is a chain of command to make the strike decision. There is an incentive to kill, as opposed to refrain and be sure of the target, and this arises from training, from the developed atmosphere and ethic of the killers (how gung-ho they become), from the desire to do something, and from the rewards of promotion and psychological reinforcement from a big kill or even a small kill. Place men trained to be aggressive and kill into a situation like this and they will lean toward dropping the bombs as opposed to being careful about their targets.
What may seem to be errors in judgment from an outsider’s view are not. They are consequences of training and the system. The system creates and allows for mistakes in identification of targets and doesn’t go out of its ways to punish them. The reconnaissance errors are influenced by the desire under time pressure to make a hit, and this desire is instilled and rewarded. It only appears to be sheer incompetence to mistake a hospital for an enemy position or a large-scale gathering of Syrian troops for an ISIS position or a wedding or funeral party for a terrorist aggregation. It is almost impossible to imagine such large errors of mis-identification, but they arise from the kind of training to err on the side of killing, to gain medals and advancement by killing, and to be gratified by scoring kills. In this environment, every kill is a positive reinforcement and this generates strong and habitual behavior to kill. It then infects how one interprets and “sees” the data about where the “enemy” is, that is, who and what a potential target might be. There are too many such “mistakes” not to conclude that the killing system generates them as part of its routine operation. As such they are treated not as errors to be rooted out but as “collateral damage”. The killing machine cannot be made too careful about whom it is targeting and killing without undermining its capacity to kill. The killing machine has top priority.
8:58 am on September 18, 2016
