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March 06, 2005

Collateral Damage in Iraq

We've been hearing and reading about freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena's brush with death at the hands of American forces after being freed by Iraqi insurgents.

The latest word is that she's rejecting the U.S. account of what exactly happened and has suggested she might have been deliberately targeted.

Personally, I find it plausible that it was an accident. Nervous soldiers with itchy trigger-fingers not sure who is friend and who is foe is a scenario that I find very likely and very plausible.

What has really struck me about this story is that we're hearing about it because she is an Italian and because world attention was focused on her plight before she was released. How many completely innocent Iraqi's might also have been killed by nervous American forces?

As I've pondered this, the refrain from Sting's anti-war song, Russians goes thru my head... "... the Russians love their children too." Surely the Iraqi's love their children too. Consider how you would feel if your (insert relative) were driving along on a perfectly innocent mission and they were shot dead by nervous cops. Would empathizing with the situation the cops found themselves in mollify you? I doubt it. Would it drive you to armed insurrection? Perhaps, but not likely. Would it cause you to wish for some sort of justice via retribution? Probably, if you're honest with yourself about it.

Are we sowing the seeds of future anti-Americanism in Iraq?

Update: Iraqi Jawdat Abd al-Kadhum told a Reuters reporter that nobody is safe on Baghdad's streets. He lost part of his leg to an American bullet fired from a convoy traveling ahead of him as he drove his uncle to a nearby hospital for treatment of kidney disease.

The young Iraqi attributes the problem to cultural and language barriers on all sides. Which is consistent with my own assessment of the likelihood that the Italian journalist's car was not deliberately targeted out of some sort of animosity or retribution.

Jawdat Abd al-Kadhum says that the American convoy he was following was hit by some type of explosion and the soldiers started firing in all directions indescriminately. Clearly those soldiers were firing in fear. Who can't understand that? I certainly can! I would be scared too.

However it seems that U.S. security contractors (non-military types with guns) do have a reputation for being trigger-happy.

Ultimately I think this newest report underscores my concern about what kind of long-term problems we are creating by leaving a swath of collateral damage in our wake. Worst of all, it all traces back to the profoundly unrealistic expectations that this Administration had of how we would be received by the Iraqis once Saddam was toppled. How many on all sides have died or been disfigured as a direct result? We will probably never know.

Posted by Kevin at March 6, 2005 10:38 AM