I thought Azmat Khan’s two part series did a spectacular job of not only showing in great detail how flawed the US’ air warfare in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan is, but of also writing it in a way that would make a US audience care. After reading the comments on the NYT for the first part, it became clear to me that even to non-military people in the US, civilian casualty is viewed as morally okay and actually even as a necessary consequence of war. One comment even asked why articles like Khan’s were needed, if it’s already acknowledged, or well-known, that casualty is a necessary part of war.
It’s somewhat unnerving that a reader could finish reading Khan’s article and walk away thinking that the US military shouldn’t change its air warfare methods, particularly in Iraq and Syria, moving forward. I think that shorter breaking news articles that reveal civilian casualty counts are more easily dismissed by a reader as a necessary result of any war, no matter the precautions taken. But Khan’s article interweaves actual military personnel dialogue, along with the words of the military spokesman, Urban, to put a face to the all-encompassing “military” that’s supposedly making calculated, thoughtful, and ethical decisions in these wars.
Not only did Khan use their words, but he contextualized them effectively. I was particularly struck when he described the atmosphere of the actual buildings that the soldiers were calling for and executing these airstrikes. Khan writes that “soldiers can sound as if they are playing video games, in one case expressing glee over getting to fire in an area ostensibly “poppin” with ISIS fighters – without spotting the children in their midst.” Comparing the chat logs and the soldiers’ dialogue to the kind typically seen or heard by people playing combative video games, and contextualizing it within the detailed stories of real families devastatingly impacted by the airstrikes, a reader can more easily understand the gravity of what it means to have soldiers who sound like they’re playing a video game, yet are calling very real fatal strikes on civilians.
Additionally, the comparison to a video game further elucidates why these “mistakes,” or inaccurate strikes could be happening so often. Without actually being on the ground, facing the same danger as the civilians you’re standing feet away from, and basing your war decisions only on what you see through a computer screen, then the task at hand does become all too much like a consequence-less video game you play for fun. Khan even writes about how this change in attitude, a seemingly direct result of the transition to a remotely controlled air warfare, is reflected in the shift from “deliberate” strikes (those that require extensive planning and vetting) to the now much more common “dynamic” strikes that can be called “within minutes or hours in the flow of war.”
Finally, I want to also comment on the exact kinds of human stories that Khan centered on. What resonated with me most throughout the article were the anecdotes, informed by both documents and actual survivors of the civilian airstrikes, that placed these supposedly necessary and expected casualties of war in relatable settings. I specifically think of the three families who were eating breakfast when two separate strikes hit, the man who waved to his friend in the car beside him at a stoplight and witnessed his friend’s wife be incinerated by an airstrike, and then also the man who was eating fruit below a tree before being killed.
The abundance of anecdotes like these in the article, along with the documents, do a great job of highlighting just how unnecessary the civilian deaths were. Although Urban tries to push that this idea that due to a lack of time and the “fog of war,” soldiers, or “targeteers” are forced to make decisions that result in civilian harm, these human examples of civilian tragedy show that it was really moreso a lack of care or concern, rather than time, for the people on the other side of the airstrike.
