They kill us. We kill them.

There is so much political news.  We’re drowning in it.  If I’m not careful I am grabbed by news stories out of Washington first thing in the morning and they stay with me all day.  My thoughts are taken up by what I read on illuminated screens rather than what I see in the real world around me.  I’m trying to find a balance, to inject humor, to turn my attention to other, perhaps smaller, less contentious topics. 

But I can’t ignore this.  Bill O’Reilly, while interviewing America’s recently elected president, called Vladimir Putin a killer.  He was referring, I think, to the particular mean spirited practice widely believed used by the Russian president of knocking off his critics and rivals by, among other things, fatally poisoning them. 

The President of the United States, a position which, up till a few weeks ago, was also considered the leader of the free world, as if to defend Putin, said in response, making a non committal face before answering:

“A lot of killers.  We’ve got a lot of killers.  What, you think our country’s so innocent?”

He is catching a lot of hell for that.  Senator John McCain was seen on video tape at a lectern in the Senate stiffly waving his arms, broken and badly healed in a North Vietnamese prison fifty years ago, denouncing Trump’s comments, saying in effect “how dare he equivocate American government and its values to Russia and its corrupt leader.” 

I didn’t take it that way.  Though I don’t for a second believe the United States government compares to Russia, a country that punishes, imprisons and yes kills journalists, dissidents, activists, and political foes who threaten those in power, neither do I believe our country is innocent.  I think we’re overlooking something. 

I failed to write the date on this clipping, but it was buried somewhere in the Tribune one day in this new political year which has started so badly.  I never heard it discussed on television news, no one shared it on Face Book, and if I’m not wrong it was not widely tweeted.   That, in these times, makes it obscure and overlooked.  I cut it out and put it in the shack, not knowing when or if I would use it.

That’s hard to read so let me summarize.  The U.S Central Command released an estimate of the number of innocent civilians killed since the U.S. began striking the Islamic State group.  The most recent deaths of innocents were eleven civilians that were “inadvertently killed” in airstrikes in Iraq and Syria that targeted Islamic State militants and equipment late last year.  Since August 2014 that brings the total to almost 200.  The U.S. military reviews reports of civilian deaths and deems them credible or not credible.  Four recent reports of deaths from such strikes, one near Raqqa, Syria in December and three in Mosul, Iraq in October and December were found to be credible, seven reports were deemed not credible, and ten reports are still being reviewed.  Because the reviews are not complete, the 200 figure is likely low.  This was before the recent attack, some say botched attack, in Yemen in which a U.S. citizen from Peoria lost his life, the first serviceman killed under our new president’s watch.  Independent monitoring groups and activists, whose estimates of those killed tend to run higher than official U.S. sources, agree that coalition airstrikes and other actions have killed hundreds of civilians.

Our country has been killing people in foreign countries regularly, both enemy combatants and innocent civilians, since 9/11/2001.  I remember naively saying on that day in the YSB office, after the second tower went down,

“We may go to war over this.”

My fiscal person, herself an Army veteran, said

“Well I certainly hope so.”

And we’ve been at war, a war against terrorism, and terrorists, for sixteen years.  This is our third president to be briefed by generals, learn of both overt and covert operations, and be asked to approve them.  I imagine it is an eye opener for the commander in chief.  Actually there are a lot of killers, us among them.  Our American presidents, our American government, our American servicemen all involved in killings in the name of national security. But then of course they have killed us.  We blame them for lives lost in this country, live lost to terrorism, often justifiably so.  They kill us, we kill them, they kill us, and so on.

Our methods are different.  They kill us crudely, with explosive devices, with automatic weapons aimed at soft defenseless targets; randomly it seems, in Europe and within our borders, for effect.  Crowds of young people were killed at a crowded music venue, such as the attack in Paris, gunned down while the band played.  It works.  Terrorists strike terror, and we are terrified.  We hit back.  We go after what we believe is their command structure in countries where they hide.  Or perhaps that is where they live.  In any case we do not respond in kind.

We claim to target chosen individuals.  We engage in tactical killing to weaken the terror organizations.  It has changed over the sixteen years.  We began with the Taliban, switched to Al Qaeda, and killed their leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, ostensibly a country allied with us.  We did all that, concentrating on Afghanistan first, the Iraq, and then the battle changed.  ISIS became the organization we now target, Syria and parts of Eastern Iraq the principal battlefield.  Names of new leaders emerge, but we cannot keep them straight.  We have few if any journalists on the ground and the military releases little information.  Occasionally there is an article like the one above.  Not often.

America does its killing outside our borders primarily with drones.  Pilotless aircraft controlled by remote operators and armed with cameras and missiles, swoop in, eliminate their target, and fly away.  We, America and countries allied with us, do use manned aircraft occasionally but our preference is to minimize or eliminate the possibility of casualties.  And so we use drones. 

Can you imagine anything more terrifying than to learn of, or worse yet watch, the killing of a family member in the country where you live by a flying machine operated by a country thousands and thousands of miles away?  We are haunted by the possibility of terrorism.  I think of how those drones must haunt our enemies.  I think what it would be like to be attacked by one.  I would be such an easy target.

They would fly over my house plotting the attack.  It wouldn’t take them long.  Imagine the report being discussed by those planning and ultimately authorizing my death.  I don’t know why anyone would kill me these days, unless they violently disagreed with a blog.  Maybe years ago but not now.  However in the unlikely event I was a target, the conversation would go like this.

“OK, what do we know about this McClure guy.”

“He’s retired and pretty predictable.  Every morning around dawn he walks from his back door, across the patio, and into a little shack in the back.”

“Is it open?”

“There are a lot of trees.  You could best take him out close to the house, but there’s a narrow window.  Did you look at the pictures I sent you?”

“Yeah, I got them up on the screen.  How about the front of his house, the street side there?”

“He’s not there much.  On Wednesday morning he takes out the trash, but sometimes it’s his wife.  It will be like that till lawn mowing season.”

“He’s got a mailbox across the road.  You telling me he never picks up the mail?”

“Yeah, from inside his car.  Pulls up and reaches out the window.   Lazy bastard.”

“How about away from his home?”

“I’m telling you, he drives everywhere.”

“So?  We could take out his car.”

“Yeah, well that could be messy.”

“OK, where does he go when he leaves?”

“He goes to the YMCA.  Building downtown near where the two rivers meet.  Pulls in the parking lot about 10:35 on Tuesday and Thursdays mornings, about noon on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  Not always though.  Somewhat erratic.”

“So how about there?”

“Lots of cars in the parking lot.  Mom’s putting kids in car seats.  It’s open. But there’s a good possibility of collateral damage.”

“Anywhere else?”

“Hardly.  He goes to a church on Wednesday night and Sunday morning but parks close and ducks in quick.  Same way at the liquor store.  Always the same one.”

“Doesn’t this guy ever walk anywhere?”

“Not much.  He’s got a limp.  That must be why he’s at the Y so much.  He’s not getting any exercise walking.  The most he walks is from one end of the Kroger parking lot into the store on a busy day.”

“Where’s that?”

“Just across those two ravines east of his house.  See the big building south of the main drag by the interstate?”

“Oh Christ, that’s no good.  Look.  We have to make some choices here.  How about we just take out that whole shack?  How big is it anyway?”

“Just shy of 12 by 12.  A little under 144 square feet.”

“What’s it made of?” 

“Wood.  His shack is made of wood,  he burns wood, there’s wood stacked outside.  The guy is surrounded by wood.”

“Is there anyone else in there with him?”

“We’re not sure but we don’t think so.  I mean, it’s so small.  Who else is going to stay in there all day?”

“Wait.  Did you say he burns wood in there?”

“Yeah.  We see smoke soon after he enters.  Appears to be heated with a little wood stove.  Look at that third photo.  See that skinny chimney coming out the roof?  In the winter he burns wood all day.”

“I see it.  Yeah, that’s perfect.  We can use one of the old heat seeking missiles.  Let it loose and it will go straight down his stove pipe.  He’ll be blown to bits.  Mission accomplished.  Big fire.  No problem.”

See how it might go if we were hunted by a foreign government as we hunt others?  Surveillance, then data, after which a plan forms, the order is given, the plan is carried out.  Cold calculated killing.  Their killers crudely confront us and yell slogans before killing us and nearly always dying themselves.  American killers calculate coordinates and guide soulless machines that swoop in, kill, and disappear.  Same result however you cut it.  Death.  They kill us.  We kill them.  And so it goes.

During the reign of George W, I used to print and post information on my office door regarding the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq because it seemed so seldom reported and repeated.   Do you know those numbers?  They are at best estimates.  One with some credibility is the Iraqi Body Count project, which collated deaths reported in newspapers.  They counted 174,000 Iraqi deaths between 2003 and 2013 with 112,000-123,000 being civilian noncombatants.  That was count the count four years ago.  The number continues to grow.

In Afghanistan, beginning in 2001 with the “shock and awe” U.S. air campaign, through 2014 the number of Afghanis killed by foreign military commands number 91,000 which includes 26,000 civilian deaths.  This does not include deaths which occurred in Pakistan, nor does it take into account the high casualties suffered by the Afghan people in their war against the Soviets in the 1980’s.

Hope springs eternal in the American soul.  I hoped that Barack Obama would chart a course for us to end the killing on both sides.  It didn’t happen.  In the recent election I saw neither major party emphasize a desire, much less a plan, for peace.  We continue to advocate for an increased more well equipped military.  Somehow I am not comforted by a military three times bigger than any other in the world.  I’m sorry, but I don’t believe it has kept us safe so far, nor do I think a bigger military will keep us safer in the future. 

Terror in our country strikes fear and influences our behavior.  Some believe the shootings in San Bernardino, which killed 14 Americans and was attributed to a homegrown American born extremist and his foreign born wife, may have been one of the factors that tipped the election far away and months later in the Midwest, where the margin of victory in key rust belt states was so slim.  It most certainly prompted the famous campaign promise, then openly called a ban on Muslims entering the country “until we find out what the hell is going on”, which has manifested itself in the fiasco executive order now on its way to our supreme court.

Emotions run high.  They kill us.  We kill them.  We ban them.  Our leaders now pledge to “wipe them off the face of the planet.”  I don’t think that is a winning strategy.  It’s been sixteen years.  We need a way out.  Killing hasn’t work.  We kill them.  They kill us.  Neither side is innocent.  We need a change.