{"id":844,"date":"2026-09-28T11:35:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T15:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/?p=844"},"modified":"2026-09-28T11:35:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T15:35:42","slug":"reading-response-for-9-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/jrn449-f26\/reading-response-for-9-29\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Response for 9\/29"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was impressed and appalled by Azmat Khan\u2019s investigation into the U.S.\u2019s devastating airstrikes on Syria and Iraq. I was particularly struck by how Khan was able to establish a pattern of \u201cconfirmation bias\u201d in which civilians were consistently presumed to be combatants. Rather than a series of incidental errors, the killings of civilians were an inherent feature of a system in which all ethical considerations were subordinated to the goal of obliterating ISIS targets. While reading, I wondered whether the astonishing civilian death toll was a product of Pentagon incompetence, or merely a callous disregard for human life. The stagnation of the accountability process made me inclined to believe the latter; that no disciplinary action was taken in nine out of ten cases of failed strikes and only a quarter garnered further review suggests that the Pentagon views civilians as disposable. I was also curious as to how much of the misidentification of civilians as combatants can be attributed to racism, and whether myths and stereotypes about Arabs are being perpetuated at the highest levels of the military, leading to the devaluation of human life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I appreciated how Khan drew attention to the replacement of boots-on-the-ground warfare with airstrikes directed by controllers sitting at computers far away. I think the remoteness of airstrikes likely contributes to their inhumanity, as it is harder to conceptualize the impact of violence on real people when you are divorced from their physical presence. The cold, clinical language in the military chat logs that Khan reproduced revealed the dehumanization of civilians in strike zones, reflecting the gamification of violence. The rise of autonomous weapons seems like an even more dystopian extension of this trend. The Pentagon\u2019s lack of transparency about the civilian toll of its strikes and failure to make condolence payments to victims was horrifying but unsurprising. Drawing any attention to this devastation would lay bare, as Khan\u2019s reporting does, the contradiction between the soft power image the U.S. seeks to project of itself as a bastion of liberal democratic values and humanitarianism, and the destructive effect of U.S. intervention on the rest of the globe. ISIS\u2019s exploitation of the strikes for propaganda purposes demonstrates how they undercut the U.S.\u2019s diplomatic goals, calling into question whether the Pentagon was more motivated by the expansion of American empire than the defeat of ISIS alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also thought Khan did a fantastic job explaining the methodology of her investigation and why it matters. She spelled this out particularly well in the nut graf, writing that \u201cthe <\/span>Times <\/span><\/i>did what military officials admit they have not done\u201d: the piece epitomizes how journalists should serve as democratic watchdogs. Khan also preemptively shuts down potential skepticism of her damning findings by clearly delineating her methodology \u2013 she went to the strike sites, looked for eyewitnesses, did not give advance notice of her visits, and more to prevent bias from tainting the information she received. Journalism shouldn\u2019t have to justify itself, but in an era of the erosion of trust in mainstream media, reporters can enhance their own credibility by reaffirming why their function is vital. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was impressed and appalled by Azmat Khan\u2019s investigation into the U.S.\u2019s devastating airstrikes on Syria and Iraq. I was particularly struck by how Khan was able to establish a pattern of \u201cconfirmation bias\u201d in which civilians were consistently presumed to be combatants. Rather than a series of incidental errors, the killings of civilians were<\/p>\n

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