Afghan civilian deaths: more than, the same as, or less than Sept. 11 is beside the point
I have to say I disagree with Matt Welch's piece late last week (Afghan civilian deaths: More than Sept. 11?) about the importance of the relative casualty counts, other than in the kind of propaganda game that seems to be sweeping the world press these days.

In the end, we are weighing not “just” the thousands who died at WTC, at the Pentagon, and on the four planes, but the lives and safety of the millions of Americans who survive them, against unintended and minimized (I’m willing to assume) civilian casualties abroad. Absolutely, we should do our best to hold such casualties as low as possible and get the job done. But the point is to get the job done, be civilian casualties lower, the same, or many times higher than those we suffered.

Back in late September when I started this blog, I was thinking to myself that we were going to have to stick with this even if thousands of Americans came home in body bags, and thousands of civilians over there died in the crossfire and bombing. I’m deeply, deeply relieved that didn’t come to pass, that our armed forces adapted so excellently to the task, and with such low civilian casualties, as best as can be estimated.*

But all that, including and especially the civilian casualty count, was in a way just a lucky accident of history and/or military procurement. Imagine everything about the attack and the geopolitical situation was the same, but in 1980; if that seems too hypothetical, imagine instead that the 1980 “Bin Laden” was holed up in some other third country with a lackey regime and an oppressed population. We didn’t have the smart munitions then we have now, we didn’t have the armed forces we have now, yet we would have had the same absolute right and faced the same absolute necessity to go after the guy and his organization, come what may. Even at the cost of disproportionate civilian casualties, not to mention those of our own troops.

In 1941, we lost 2403 men at Pearl Harbor. It would have been absurd to plan fighting Japan based on holding their civilian casualties under that figure. Given the arms of the time (and the opponents), massive civilian casualties were inevitable if we seriously intended to win the war that had been thrust on us. Those casualties were regrettable and tragic. And I’m aware that reasonable people differ on how many of them were inevitable and necessary in some awful sense, and how many were not. But their safety and their deaths were not ultimately our responsibility, and the horribly necessary civilian deaths – as opposed to the horribly unnecessary ones -- do not cast a shadow on the war we waged. The party that starts an unjust war has the ultimate blame for all the casualties: not just his foe’s, but his own, at least those of his own who were victims of weapons that missed their true targets. Four hundred, a thousand, four thousand, or twice that many Afghan civilian dead: assuming reasonable precautions -- aiming at targets that mattered, using weapons and ordnance calibrated to those targets -- they're on Al Qaeda and Taliban consciences, not on American ones.


=====
* Project on Defense Alternatives (Operation Enduring Freedom: Why a Higher Rate of Civilian Bombing Casualties) estimates around 1000 Afghan civilian lives were lost. Via Matt Welch, 1/20: More on civilian Afghan deaths. posted by Thomas Nephew at 3:12:00 PM -- |    

 

Saudi "humanitarian" among Al Qaeda detainees?
At the end of an otherwise dispiriting article ("Al-Qaida PoWs revolt in Pakistan"), the Guardian reports:

Fifteen detainees from Mazar-i-Sharif have been turned over to the US Marines at a new jail at the American base at Kandahar. [...]

One prisoner is believed to be Abdul Aziz, a Saudi Arabian official of the Wafa humanitarian organisation, a US official said. Wafa's assets have been frozen by President George Bush's administration for alleged terrorist links.

Getting at the money, and understanding how it flows, is as important as rounding up Al Qaeda, so Aziz's capture, if it indeed happened, could be a big break.

Our good friends the Pakistanis
But the rest of the Guardian story above paints a picture of a pretty leaky bucket when Al Qaeda types get to Pakistan, or within reach of Pakistan forces. The incidents described by the Guardian appear to be due to incompetence by the Pakistanis, but I have to wonder. In a similar vein, Seymour Hersh alleges in the New Yorker ("The Getaway") that Pakistani forces got a lot of their friends out with them as the Kunduz noose tightened in November.

In interviews, however, American intelligence officials and high-ranking military officers said that Pakistanis were indeed flown to safety, in a series of nighttime airlifts that were approved by the Bush Administration. The Americans also said that what was supposed to be a limited evacuation apparently slipped out of control, and, as an unintended consequence, an unknown number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters managed to join in the exodus. "Dirt got through the screen," a senior intelligence official told me. Last week, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld did not respond to a request for comment. [...]

Indian intelligence had concluded that eight thousand or more men were trapped inside the city in the last days of the siege, roughly half of whom were Pakistanis. (Afghans, Uzbeks, Chechens, and various Arab mercenaries accounted for the rest.) At least five flights were specifically "confirmed" by India's informants, the RAW analyst told me, and many more were believed to have taken place.

In the Indian assessment, thirtythree hundred prisoners surrendered to a Northern Alliance tribal faction headed by General Abdul Rashid Dostum. A few hundred Taliban were also turned over to other tribal leaders. That left between four and five thousand men unaccounted for.

Hersh has published a number of "insider" stories about the true course of the war now, generally of the "it's not going quite as well as they say it is" tenor; I don't know what his batting average will turn out to be. But if this is even nearly true, we may have really blown it at Kunduz. Why could we not have insisted those flights head to Uzbekistan under US fighter escort? "Good guys" would have gotten a ticket to Islamabad (and some thorough debriefing and photographing for future reference), bad guys a ticket to "Club Fed" in the lovely Caribbean. What alternatives would they have had? ("No, I'll stay in Kunduz rather than accept such humiliation." "Fine.") As for Musharraf, I would think in some ways he might be pleased to have corralled and controlled some of his nation's own wild and woolly military types, under the guise of "debriefing" or whatever.

Although hindsight is always 20/20, I really don't understand the U.S. reasoning here -- again, assuming Hersh got the story more or less right. We need the Pakistanis... because? Because we want to catch Al Qaeda. Where were the Al Qaeda? .... In Kunduz. Leaving out those who wound up in Mazar-e-Sharif, we seem to have had hundreds, maybe thousands of birds in the hand, that we seem to have traded for nothing in the bush.

For some coverage at the time, see my posts of 11/24/2001, "B-52 that airport now", and 11/21/2001, "72 virgins not enough, argue trapped Al Qaeda fighters" (to explain, that was an attempt to poke fun at would-be martyrs suddenly eager to escape). Obviously not so much for my deathless prose, but the news links still work. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:39:00 AM -- |    

 

Flu
Back when it's over. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:22:00 AM -- |    

 

Reproductive cloning: blog debates overtaken by events
On January 11, libertarian Jason Soon promised a response to readers' e-mails (one of them mine) about his January 6 posting on reproductive cloning. He's been busy moving, but has now apparently resumed posting. In my reaction to his January 6 piece, I argued that reproductive cloning will necessarily mean experiments on humans which they can not consent to and can not withdraw or be withdrawn from. Which to me means reproductive cloning research and development (where these experiments would be necessary) should be banned. Which obviously would put the kibosh on reproductive cloning, period, but I'm less ideologically committed to the pursuit of any research any time for any reason than libertarians seem to be.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that a National Academy of Sciences panel released a report recommending that human reproductive cloning should be banned, but not therapeutic cloning, an outcome that I strongly support. According to the Post,

The production of babies by cloning "is dangerous and likely to fail," the 113-page report concludes. "The panel therefore unanimously supports the proposal that there should be a legally enforceable ban on the practice of human reproductive cloning." [...]

The House has already passed a bill that would ban both the creation of human embryo clones and the transferring of those clones to a womb. A coalition of patient advocates and medical research groups hopes the Senate will pass a bill along the lines of the NAS recommendations, which would outlaw only the transfer of cloned embryos to the womb.

Meanwhile, back at competing libertarian HQs Reason magazine and dynamist.com, eye-rolling continues about principled objections to reproductive cloning. In Reason, Jacob Sullum comes within one thought of shooting down his own article, "Twin Room":

Kass' most compelling argument against reproductive cloning is that it would frequently produce babies with serious birth defects. Most scientists agree that, given the current state of technology, trying to produce a cloned baby now would be reckless. But this objection will lose its force once the technology improves to the point where birth defects are no more likely in cloned babies than in babies produced the usual way.

Sullum thus fails to consider exactly how that technology will be developed and validated -- with human test clones -- and appears to gloss over what his own scenario implies: an interim time period where cloning birth defects are in fact more likely than normal.

Meanwhile, Ms. Postrel recirculates Glenn Reynolds and Dave Kopel's uninteresting claim that federalism precludes Congress from passing laws regulating cloning. My reaction to this is that these are not matters of interstate commerce, but human rights I hope are already protected by the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. While admitting my lack of legal expertise, I suggest that the 8th amendment right to freedom from cruel or unusual punishment might be one legal foundation for banning reproductive cloning research.

My feeling about libertarians on this issue is increasingly that they're ideologically blinded to reasonable and even essential limits on human behavior. Many libertarian writiers on the subject are so committed to freedom of research -- usually an excellent sentiment -- that they at best fail to consider the details of that research, and thus the human rights of the research subjects. And at worst, writers like Sullum seem to simply take those details and trampled lives in stride. Half the time I used to call myself a libertarian. But these libertarians, and this issue, make me wonder why. (And that's before even touching that whole "well-regulated Militia" thing).

So I'm still looking forward to Mr. Soon's libertarian reactions to these developments, and his responses to readers like myself. Mr. Soon's first article was thoughtful and worthwhile, and the topic seems timely enough for him to revisit it.

=====
Update, 1/21: Ask and ye shall receive: Mr. Soon responds, raising (1) IVF and (2) eugenics issues I've already addressed -- to some extent -- in an earlier piece on reproductive cloning. Briefly: (1) IVF is a far less chromosomally and developmentally disruptive technique than cloning protocols are, both in principle and in fact, and (2) good point! But I'm willing to distinguish between "unskilled labor" and laboratory techniques for making babies. I may respond at more length later.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:05:00 AM -- |